After the Gold Rush

After the Gold Rush was a 1970 album release by Neil Young.

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1970 - Neil Young

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Neil Young's third solo album was a coda of sorts to the first, most prolific

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stage of his career: after leaving Buffalo Springfield in late 1968 Young had

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Buffalo Springfield - 1968

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recorded two solo albums and the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Déjà Vu album in less than a year. Gold Rush was Young's most eclectic album yet, alternating the hard-rock that had

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Déjà Vu

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made up the bulk of 1969's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere with the

Related Topics:
1969 - Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

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country-flavored, acoustic work he had contributed to CSNY.

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In Neil Young's biography Shakey, it was stated that he was intentionally trying to combine Crazy Horse and CSN on this release. That is why Crazy Horse's Danny Whitten and Ralph Molina appear with Stephen Stills and CSNY bass player Greg Reeves. After the Goldrush marked the first appearance on record for the young

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Nils Lofgren (19 years old at the time), playing piano and singing background.

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Critics were not immediately enamored; the original review in Rolling Stone began

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:"Neil Young devotees will probably spend the next few weeks trying desperately to convince themselves that After the Gold Rush is good music. But they'll be kidding themselves. For despite the fact that the album contains some potentially first rate material, none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface."

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As is typical of Young releases, time proved on the side of Gold Rush, and it has become a milestone in Young's recorded career. Ink Blot magazine's retrospective review summarizes more current critical

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thinking:

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:"One of his least stylized efforts, the record gains its strength from not only the rock solid songwriting, but the array of musical personalities that Neil displays. ... The variety and quality of the songs causes After The Gold Rush to play like a greatest hits album, which unbelievably it is not."

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In 1998 Q magazine readers voted After the Gold Rush the 89th greatest album of all time.

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1998 - ''Q'' magazine

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The album reached #8 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.

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After The Gold Rush was ranked 92nd in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.

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