Harvest by Neil Young - Released on February 1, 1972
Here's a multi-voice narrative on the Harvest album by Harvey Kubernik. Harvey Kubernik is the author of 19
books, including "Neil Young - Heart of Gold" (see TW review). We interviewed author Kubernik while TW celebrated Neil Young's 70th birthday back in 2015.
Neil
Young: Harvest
By
Harvey Kubernik Copyright 2022
On
February 23, 1971 at the BBC Television Centre in London,
producer/director Stanley Dorfman filmed Neil Young for BBC’s In
Concert.
It
was a pivotal U.K. small screen exposure for Young, who previewed
some un-recorded material that would later surface on his epic 1972
album, Harvest.
Stanley
Dorfman: At
the time I was co-producing/directing Top
Of The Pops
with a guy called Johnnie Stewart. We started it in 1964. Around
1968, I had the thought of having a show of singer songwriters. And
the first was with Leonard Cohen and Julie Felix. We then called them
BBC
In Concerts
and the first one was with Randy Newman.
When
we started this thing, BBC2 had just gone color. And the head of BBC2
was David Attenborough. And he liked folk music a lot. So I said,
“Let’s do singer songwriters.” “Great.”
So,
he sent me to California to find acts. And I met [David] Geffen and
[Elliot] Roberts. It wasn’t a hard sell at all. The artists
couldn’t get on television in England unless they had hit records.
The
reason Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and the others connected very
strongly with the English audience was because they were folk music
oriented. British love folk music. The Scottish, the Welsh, the
Irish. Plus, Neil Young citing Bert Jansch and the Shadows in his
interviews didn’t hurt.
I
loved the singer songwriters of the time. To me they were the poets.
Laura Nyro. Brilliant songs last forever. With all these acts, I
never dictated what they should do anyway. They’d come over and
we’d have a lunch and a chat. We had marvelous lighting and they
lit these things like portraits.
The
other thing that I said to them before doing the program was that the
editing would be very minimal. We had four cameras, five if you were
lucky, no hand-held, so the only editing you would do was cut tunes
out. Or put them in. So I told Neil and all the others, if they
wanted to they could come to the editing room the next day and kind
of decide how to structure the show. And they all liked doing that.
Neil came. He was charming, lovely and delightful. Neil was not
elusive in any of my dealings.”
In
February 1971, Neil Young travelled to Nashville to tape The
Johnny Cash Show. An
ABC-TV national broadcast.
Neil
Young had a star turn on the February 17, 1971 Johnny
Cash on Campus episode,
performing "The
Needle and the Damage Done" and "Journey Through The Past.”
"One
reason country music has expanded the way it has is that we haven't
let ourselves become locked into any category,” Johnny Cash assured
me during a 1975 interview I conducted with him in Anaheim California
for the now defunct Melody
Maker.
When
I asked Johnny about his bold policy of booking established country
artists and mixing relative new comers to his TV program artist
lineup, Cash replied, “We do what we want.”
Guesting
around Young’s screen stint Cash spot were James Taylor and Linda
Ronstadt. Huddled around a microphone, these three blossoming talents
gave a taste of the burgeoning singer/songwriter movement in rock.
While
in Nashville Young took time to record some new material.
Serendipity played its designated role as always; a chance encounter
with an acquaintance of Elliot Roberts, veteran producer/engineer
Elliot Mazer, introduced Neil to a new set of musicians who would
influence his sound from this point on.
With
Mazer handling the console at Quadraphonic Studios, Young laid down
the tracks for what would become Harvest,
his biggest seller and, for many, his most enduring work.
Elliot
Mazer engineered and co-produced the Area Code 615 band. An album of
highly respected Nashville session musicians, including Wayne Moss,
David Briggs, Mac Gayden, Charlie McCoy, and Kenny Buttrey. [The BBC
music program The
Old Grey Whistle
Test
used
their “Stone Fox Chase” as the theme].
In
Nashville, Mazer, David Briggs, and Norbert Putnam built Quadraphonic
Sound Studios.
Elliot
Mazer: "I
had a friend who smoked a lot of weed, which I wasn’t then, who
played nothing but After
The Gold Rush
a lot. That was the first time I heard of Neil Young. I was
interested in the voice. All of a sudden we read about Neil coming to
Nashville to tape The
Johnny Cash Show.
I said, “We need to host a dinner.”
Neil,
Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Tony Joe White attend, have dinner,
and I get introduced to Neil. “You work with these Nashville guys.
Can I get the studio tomorrow to mess around?” “Sure.” I moved
a session to accommodate him. And called some musicians."
The
future Stray Gators, a bunch of good ol’ boys covered all the
musical bases: rascally Tim Drummond on bass, the timekeeper from
Dylan’s immortal Blonde
on Blonde,
Kenny Buttrey, on silky smooth drums, pianist John Harris, guitar
player Teddy Irwin and Ben Keith, Neil’s future right-hand-man on
yowling steel guitar. They would set the table for their irascible
leader on countless gigs and studio sessions. For now, it was time
to bring in their first harvest, and they all knew it was something
special.
Elliot
Mazer:
I knew “Heart of Gold” was a hit when Neil played it. His songs
are generally an overpowering feeling. Kenny, Drummond, Ben, Teddy
and I are in the control room. Small space. 12 feet by 20 feet. And
Neil plays “Heart of Gold” and I look up and Kenny and I both at
the same time put our fingers up as number one. We knew it. From then
it was only a matter of time to get the thing done properly and out.
Neil’s singing and playing on it was magnificent. His tempo was
perfect. It was great. All we had to do was make sure we didn’t
mess him up. I used a Neumann U67 or 87 microphone on his voice and
rode his sound levels.
Neil
played “Old Man” and sang it beautifully. I knew that was the
take. I would know very early with Neil if it would be a take or not.
I remember after that take, Neil came into the control room and saw
Linda and James there and said, “Let’s record the backing
vocals.” And we did the backing vocals right in the control room.
James played six-string banjo on it.”
Linda Ronstadt as told to Gary Strobl, Henry Diltz archivist and photo librarian (who gave me his transcription in 2015):
Linda
Ronstadt: “I
sang in Nashville with Neil [at Quadraphonic]. We were doing The
Johnny Cash Show
and Neil was there. James Taylor was there. After we got finished
with the TV show, Neil said, “I’m going to go record. Will you
guys come along?” So we recorded “Old Man” and “Heart of
Gold.” It took all night long. We didn’t get there until
midnight. It was just before dawn, we came out of there and it had
begun to snow.
I
remember I had to be on my knees for most of the session because
James and I were singing together. But James was so tall, he had to
sit in a chair, then I’d have to bend over to sing, so I knelt on
my knees. I could just reach the microphone. (laughs) James was bent
over and I was kneeling. So I was really tired by the time we
finished. Because it took hours. But we loved the music. It was so
good. James was playing a banjo. Actually, it was a guitar with a
banjo head on it with six strings. That’s James playing banjo that
you hear on “Heart Of Gold.”
Two
of the most beautiful, poignant songs. Neil is just the best. He’s
my favorite writer from that time. I was a huge Neil Young fan. We
didn’t think in those terms about those songs having an impact. I
just went, “This is the best thing I’ve ever heard. I wanna be on
it.” I was glad that I got to sing on it. I had sort of learned how
to do or how Neil’s harmonies go by listening to them on the radio.
(laughs). I was just glad to be part of it.”
Elliot
Mazer:
Neil and Jack Nitzsche went to London and did “A Man Needs a Maid”
and “There’s a World” live with the London Symphony. Neil
recorded “The Needle and the Damage Done” from a [January 30,
1971] concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
We
did other tracks that were taped with the Stray Gators in California
inside a barn on Neil’s ranch. We used a mobile truck with a UREI
tube mixer. "'Words,” “Alabama” and “Are You Ready For
The Country.” Nitzsche was on these sessions.”
Finally
released in March, 1972,
Harvest raced
to Number One on Billboard,
a defining moment for Neil Young.
“More
than anyone in rock and roll, Neil Young has the guts to be
romantic…If “Heart of Gold” is an admission, “A Man Needs a
Maid” is an outcry… Harvest
also
sounds better than any other Neil Young album.” --- Jimm
Cushing, University of California Santa
Cruz, The
City On A Hill Press,
April 13, 1972.
Harvey
Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including Leonard
Cohen: Everybody Knows
published in 2014 and Neil
Young Heart of Gold during
2015. Kubernik also authored 2009’s Canyon
Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and
2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles
1956-1972. Sterling/Barnes
and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The
Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In
2021 the duo wrote
Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo
Child for
Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld
Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s book, Docs
That Rock, Music That Matters,
featuring interviews with D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Albert
Maysles, Murray Lerner, Morgan Neville, David Leaf, Dick Clark,
Curtis Hanson and Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
Kubernik’s
writings are in several book anthologies, including The
Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats
and Drinking
With Bukowski.
Harvey
wrote the liner note booklets to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s
Tapestry,
The Essential Carole King, Allen
Ginsberg’s Kaddish,
Elvis
Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century
and
Big
Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey
International Pop Festival.
Harvest 50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe LP Box SetRelease Date: 12/02/2022
(Click photo to enlarge)
Harvest by Neil Young - Released on February 1, 1972
Labels: album, harvest, neil young, review
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