Harvest

And Tonight's the Night is the third album in what Neil Young fans call the Ditch trilogy.

He made the Harvest album which made him this huge pop star and just was really uncomfortable with being that huge.

And so his next three albums are just all really weird, really kinda messy, sloppy.

Like Time Fades Away, which was the first one he released after Harvest, he recorded it all live on the road so their audience is hearing songs for the first time so the reaction is not gonna be that enthusiastic.

He didn't even re-release it on CD for years and years and years.

He even kinda hates Time Fades Away.

And welcome to Ridiculous Rock Record Reviews, a podcast where we discuss and review a rock record of our choice.

Today we'll be discussing Harvest, the 1972 classic from rock music icon Neil Young.

I think we've touched on this perhaps in the past, but, uh, we'll go over it again for the, uh, the new listeners.

Aaron, where do you come in with Neil Young, sir?

I mean, I didn't know these songs were by Neil Young, but I knew Heart of Gold and Old Man.

Everybody did, right? Uh, I first became interested in old Neil with Rockin' in the Free World.

Now, that song was on rock radio a ton at the end of the '80s, but I didn't bite the bullet and buy a Neil Young record until Harvest Moon on CD in '92, which is kinda sorta the sequel to this album that we're gonna talk about.

But then right after that, I got the Decade compilation on double CD, which was, like, this whole big greatest hits overview and primer of Neil's career, and that blew things open for me.

Wow, nice graduating heavy set there.

Uncle Neil, sorry, Neil Young with Words from Harvest.

Then a little bit heavier with Led Zeppelin and Four Sticks, the alternate mix from Led Zeppelin IV, the super deluxe edition, blah, blah, blah, the usual,

you know.

He's not my uncle.

I wished.

This album, Harvest, I loved growing up.

It has my favorite Neil Young song on it, The Needle and the Damage Done, all two minutes and I think 14 seconds or something.

So that would be one of them.

Another one would be Harvest.

That's Neil Young.

That had Old Man on there, Heart of Gold.

played on a couple of those cuts.

And he kind of spent the rest of the 70s running away from that album because it was so popular and everybody wanted to hear more of it.

It wasn't until the 80s that he decided that he came out with Harvest Moon, which was kind of a sequel to it.

heart of gold it's these expressions i never give that keep me searching for a heart of gold and i'm getting old keep me searching for a heart Hollywood, I've been to Redwood.

I think the Revolver one was, was it 250 or something? Yeah, it's

kind of outrageous, right? It's the same as Neil Young's Harvest.

Like, I love that album.

We'll be coming back to that at some point.

First of all, ironically, you know, people said that it sounded very much like Neil Young.

And it does, which made it ironic that actually I believe this song and the album it was on Both replaced Neil Young's Heart of Gold and the album Harvest at the number one single and album position, which must have pissed Neil Young off to no end.

It would have pissed me off, too, because I hate both of them.

But yes.

Absolutely, yeah, and that's one thing I love working with Shane on.

He's, you know, we've talked a lot about records like Harvest, Neil Young, and where there is exactly what you're saying, space, room for instruments to breathe, room for vocals to breathe.

You know, a lot of modern productions about bells and whistles and filling all the space, but absolutely, I agree with you 100%.

Okay, so let's talk about the title track, Sleepwalking.

That's a good question.

I mean, it's probably most often the one I said before.

Neil Young's Harvest, I think, is just the perfect album for me and it represents everything that I value in music, of just a space of a song being purely about melody, words...

So that song just always, you know, whenever I'm sort of unsure where I'm at, that song always brings me back to what I got into music for and what I value most in music.

We were trying to do something heavy and something, but the other guys in Month of Sundays were really into – prog rock or even just like different metal or different, you know, things that were like very complicated and lots of twists and turns and changes and stuff like that, which I'm definitely into that stuff too.

But I'd begun to fall in love with music like Neil Young Harvest and Carole King Tapestry and bill withers and stuff like that and i was started writing these songs that were softer and more folkier and stuff and i and i took those to the month of sundays guys and they were just like oh i don't you know we tried to bumble through a couple but they just weren't weren't interested in that so i began uh just doing open mic nights and stuff like that by myself and just kind of exploring that side by myself and then it was interesting because i started to make demo tapes and send out demo tapes, and the universe kind of steered the ship.

It's like the My Morning Jacket demo tape got some excitement and got some thing, and nobody ever responded to the Month of Sundays demo tapes.

So it's kind of like I just kind of kept going in that direction.

Remove religion for the second, for humanity and anything in life.

But I have no problem sitting with someone and, and going over every lyric from Neil Young's album, Harvest, you know? Those things don't...

I don't feel like I'm...

Mach, I don't care.