42 years ago Neil Young released ''Harvest''

Harvest is the fourth album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on February 14, 1972 on Reprise Records, catalogue MS 2032. It featured the London Symphony Orchestra on two tracks, while noted guests David Crosby, Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Stephen Stills, and James Taylor contributed vocals. It topped the Billboard 200 album chart for two weeks, and spawned two hit singles, "Old Man", which peaked at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Heart of Gold", which peaked at #1. It was the best-selling album of 1972 in the United States.

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After Neil Young left Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, he recruited a group of country session musicians (whom 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 "an unblushing rehash of 'Southern Man'" and "The Needle and the Damage Done" was a lament for great artists who had 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 the record "put me in the middle of the road.