Best Albums !: Neil Young. Harvest (1972)

Harvest is an album by Neil Young, which was the best-selling album of 1972. The album featured several high calibre guests, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Linda Ronstadt, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and James Taylor. Harvest hit #1 on the Billboard Music Charts (North America) pop albums chart, spawning two hit si

ngles, "Old Man," which peaked at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Heart of Gold," which peaked at #1.

After the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young split, Young recruited a new group of country session musicians, which he christened The Stray Gators and recorded a country rock record in Harvest. The record was a massive hit, producing a US number one single in "Heart of Gold". Other songs returned to some usual Young themes: "Alabama" was a rehash of "Southern Man"; "Words" featured a lengthy guitar workout with the band and "The Needle and the Damage Done", a lament for great artists who died of heroin addiction. The album's success caught Young off guard and his first instinct was to back away from stardom. He would later write that "Heart Of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."

In 1998 Q magazine readers voted Harvest the 64th greatest album of all time. In 1996, 2000 and 2005, Chart's polled readers to determine the 50 greatest Canadian albums of all time; Harvest placed second in all three polls (losing the top spot to Joni Mitchell's Blue in 2000, and to Sloan's Twice Removed in the other two polls). In 2003, Rolling Stone named Harvest the 78th greatest album of all time.

According to a Rolling Stone interview, Young had wanted the album sleeve to biodegrade after the shrink-wrap was broken, but was overruled by the record company on the basis of expense and the possible product loss due to shipping accidents.