Editing Neil Young (section)

===''After the Gold Rush'', acoustic tour and ''Harvest'' (1970–1972)===
Later in the year, Young released his third solo album, ''[[After the Gold Rush]]'' (August 31, 1970), which featured, among others, [[Nils Lofgren]], [[Stephen Stills]], and CSNY bassist [[Greg Reeves]]. Young also recorded some tracks with Crazy Horse, but dismissed them early in the sessions. The eventual recording was less amplified than ''Everybody Knows This is Nowhere'', with a wider range of sounds. Young's newfound fame with CSNY made the album his commercial breakthrough as a solo artist, and it contains some of his best-known work, including "[[Tell Me Why (Neil Young song)|Tell Me Why]]" and "[[Don't Let It Bring You Down]]"; the singles "[[Only Love Can Break Your Heart]]" and "[[When You Dance I Can Really Love]]"; and the title track, "[[After the Gold Rush (song)|After the Gold Rush]]", played on piano, with dreamlike lyrics that ran a gamut of subjects from drugs and interpersonal relationships to [[environmentalism|environmental concerns]]. Young's bitter condemnation of racism in the heavy blues-rock song "[[Southern Man (song)|Southern Man]]" (along with a later song entitled "Alabama") was also controversial with southerners in an era of desegregation, prompting [[Lynyrd Skynyrd]] to decry Young by name in the lyrics to their hit "[[Sweet Home Alabama (song)|Sweet Home Alabama]]". However, Young said he was a fan of Skynyrd's music, and the band's front man [[Ronnie Van Zant]] was later photographed wearing a ''[[Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)|Tonight's the Night]]'' T-shirt on the cover of [[Street Survivors|an album]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2010/02/ronnie-and-neil-laying-to-rest-feud.html|title=Ronnie and Neil: Laying to Rest the "Feud Myth" Once and for All|website=Thrasher's Wheat|access-date=July 20, 2024}}</ref>

[[File:Neil Young-early promo.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Young in the 1970s|left]]
In the autumn of 1970, Young began a solo acoustic tour of North America, during which he played a variety of his Buffalo Springfield and CSNY songs on guitar and piano, along with material from his solo albums and several new songs. Some songs premiered by Young on the tour, like "Journey through the Past", would never find a home on a studio album, while other songs, like "See the Sky About to Rain", would only be released in coming years. Many gigs were sold out, including concerts at [[Carnegie Hall]] and a pair of acclaimed hometown shows at Toronto's [[Massey Hall]], which were taped for a planned live album. The shows became legendary among Young fans, with ''[[Live at Massey Hall 1971]]'' being released in 2007, and other shows as official bootlegs in 2021 and 2022, as a part of Young's [[Neil Young Archives|Archive]] series.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2023/04/neil-youngs-original-bootleg-series.html|title=Neil Young's Original Bootleg Series Releases: 'Somewhere Under The Rainbow" & 'High Flyin'|website=Thrasher's Wheat|access-date=July 20, 2024}}</ref>

Near the end of his tour, Young performed one of the new acoustic songs on the ''[[The Johnny Cash Show (TV series)|Johnny Cash]]'' TV show. "[[The Needle and the Damage Done]]", a somber lament on the pain caused by [[heroin addiction]], had been inspired in part by Crazy Horse member [[Danny Whitten]], who eventually died while battling his drug problems.{{sfn|Williamson|2002|p=42}}{{sfn|Taylor|2006|p=279}} While in Nashville for the Cash taping, Young accepted the invitation of [[Quadrafonic Sound Studios]] owner [[Elliot Mazer]] to record tracks there with a group of country-music session musicians who were pulled together at the last minute. Making a connection with them, he christened them [[The Stray Gators]], and began playing with them. Befitting the immediacy of the project, [[Linda Ronstadt]] and [[James Taylor]] were brought in from the Cash taping to do background vocals. Against the advice of his producer [[David Briggs (producer)|David Briggs]], he scrapped plans for the imminent release<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bad-news-beat.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1889 |title=Neil Comments on Massey Hall Release |date=January 17, 2007 |website=Bad-news-beat.org |access-date=July 11, 2017 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928010740/http://www.bad-news-beat.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1889 |archive-date=September 28, 2007 }}</ref> of the live acoustic recording in favor of a studio album consisting of the Nashville sessions, electric-guitar oriented sessions recorded later in his barn, and two recordings made with the [[London Symphony Orchestra]] at Barking (credited as Barking Town Hall and now the [[The Broadway (theatre)|Broadway Theatre]]) during March 1971.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://www.longlivevinyl.net/classic-album-neil-young-harvest/ |title=Classic Album: Neil Young – Harvest|date=June 2, 2017 |work=Long Live Vinyl |access-date=October 10, 2017 |language=en-GB}}</ref> The result was Young's fourth album, ''[[Harvest (Neil Young album)|Harvest]]'' (February 14, 1972), which was also the best selling album of 1972 in the US.<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/1972/top-billboard-200-albums|title=Billboard Year End 1972|magazine=Billboard|date=January 2, 2013|access-date=September 15, 2021}}</ref>

After his success with CSNY, Young purchased a ranch in the rural hills above Woodside and Redwood City in Northern California ("Broken Arrow Ranch", where he lived until his divorce in 2014).<ref name="rollingstone.com">{{cite magazine | url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-neil-youngs-nature-themed-opus-20160705 | title=Inside Neil Young's Nature-Themed Opus | first=Patrick | last=Doyle | magazine=Rolling Stone | date=July 5, 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160706154812/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-neil-youngs-nature-themed-opus-20160705 | archive-date=July 6, 2016 | access-date=March 14, 2023}}</ref> He wrote the song "[[Old Man (song)|Old Man]]" in honor of the land's longtime caretaker, Louis Avila. The song "[[A Man Needs a Maid (song)|A Man Needs a Maid]]" was inspired by his relationship with actress [[Carrie Snodgress]]. "[[Heart of Gold (Neil Young song)|Heart of Gold]]" was released as the first single from ''Harvest'', the only No.&nbsp;1 hit in his career.<ref name="whitburn Top40">{{cite book|last = Whitburn |first=Joel|date=2010 |title=The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits: Revised and Expanded Ninth Edition |location=New York |publisher=Billboard Books |page=722 |isbn=978-0-8230-8554-5}}</ref> "Old Man" was also popular, reaching No. 31 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart, marking Young's third and final appearance in the chart's Top 40 as a solo artist.<ref name="whitburn Top40" />

The album's recording had been almost accidental. Its mainstream success caught Young off guard, and his first instinct was to back away from stardom. In the ''[[Decade (Neil Young album)|Decade]]'' (1977) compilation, Young chose to include his greatest hits from the period, but his handwritten liner notes famously described "Heart of Gold" as the song that "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."<ref>{{Cite AV media notes |title=Decade |chapter=Heart of Gold |title-link=Decade (Neil Young album) |first=Neil |last=Young |author-link=Neil Young |date=1977 |type=liner notes |publisher=Warner Bros.}}</ref>