Neil Young
After the Gold Rush
1970 · After the Gold Rush
Official audio. Official audio on the Neil Young channel. Provided to YouTube by Reprise.
Documented
Song by Neil Young, from the album After the Gold Rush, released 1970 on Reprise. He wrote it. The link is official audio on the Neil Young channel, supplied by Reprise.
What can be seen or heard
The lyric is a dream in three times. Knights and a fanfare toward the sun. A burned-out basement and a full moon. Then silver spaceships, children crying, and a loading: Mother Nature’s silver seed flown to a new home in the sun. He has sung the “Mother Nature on the run” line with the decade updated. The picture of leaving is in the song.
What the artist said
In his 2012 autobiography Young said the song came from an unproduced screenplay by Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann, in which a catastrophe destroys California. He called the song environmental, and he noticed a time-travel thread in it. That is his account. The spaceships are in the lyric. His account of why they are there is the screenplay and the environmental reading.
Living Realm comparison
Catastrophe, a dream, and an evacuation to a new home can be set beside other reset chairs. Young’s screenplay account is not replaced by that comparison. A visitor can hold both.
Related
A link is a place to compare. It does not move this recording onto that record.