After the Gold Rush

The songs were inspired by a screenplay of the same name by Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann that was never produced, though only the title song and Cripple Creek Ferry were tied directly to it. Stockwell said Young wrote the album in three weeks after reading it. Most of it was recorded in mid-March 1970 at the home studio Young had built in Topanga Canyon, with Nils Lofgren, then eighteen, on piano, Greg Reeves on bass and Ralph Molina on drums. Sessions with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound in August 1969 had already produced I Believe in You and Oh, Lonesome Me. When You Dance I Can Really Love, recorded on 6 April 1970, was the last time Crazy Horse played together with Danny Whitten, and Birds was cut at Sound City on 30 June.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart was written for Graham Nash after his breakup with Joni Mitchell. Young wrote Southern Man in the Topanga studio at a time when his wife Susan Acevedo was angry with him. Oh, Lonesome Me, a Don Gibson song, was the first Young recording to feature harmonica and the first he recorded that he had not written. The album entered the Billboard chart on 19 September 1970 and peaked at 8 in October. Langdon Winner's Rolling Stone review was negative, while Robert Christgau found it pleasant and hard at the same time. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014, and The Guardian ranked it 47th among the best albums ever in 1997.