Neil Young Reflects on the Making and Legacy of After the Gold Rush

Neil Young’s iconic song “After The Gold Rush” traces its mysterious beginnings to Peru in 1969, during the chaotic filming of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie. Hopper, fresh off the success of Easy Rider, was accompanied by actor Dean Stockwell, a former child star who would later gain fame for Quantum Leap. Stockwell recalls that Hopper encouraged him to write a screenplay during the shoot, promising to get it produced. Returning to his home in Topanga Canyon, California, Stockwell wrote After The Gold Rush. Neil Young, living nearby at the time, came across a copy amid a long period of writer’s block and soon wrote the After The Gold Rush album in just three weeks.

Stockwell’s screenplay has since been lost, but according to Young’s biographer Jimmy McDonough, it was a surreal, end-of-the-world story culminating in a tidal wave crashing down on the protagonist at a local hippie hangout, The Corral. The screenplay featured Stockwell’s friend Russ Tamblyn as a recluse rocker living in a castle and local artist George Herms carrying a symbolic “tree of life” through Topanga Canyon. “It’s not a linear, regular storytelling kind of film,” Stockwell said. “Really, what was in my mind was that the gold rush, in effect, created California. And the film took place on the day California was supposed to go into the ocean. So that’s what happened after the gold rush.”

Recording the Album: Intimate Sessions in a Lead-Lined Basement

Young kept Stockwell’s screenplay for some time, and in his 2012 autobiography Waging Heavy Peace, he acknowledged that many of the songs he was writing seemed to fit the screenplay’s narrative. Stockwell even introduced Universal producers from Hopper’s company to potential cast members like Janis Joplin and Young himself, hoping to develop the film with Young composing the soundtrack. However, studio executives quickly backed away due to Hopper’s erratic reputation.

Undeterred, Young proceeded with the music. The After The Gold Rush album was recorded between legs of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 US tour and sessions with Crazy Horse. Most of the work was done in the cramped, lead-lined basement of Young’s Topanga home. Teenage guitarist Nils Lofgren recalled:

“I was an eighteen-year-old who was with these twenty-three, twenty-four-year-old people, and it was all overwhelming to me… Neil didn’t mind rehearsing a bit, but we didn’t belabor stuff.”

The album features “Southern Man,” which later inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” but its emotional core is the haunting title track. Young plays solo piano for the first two minutes before session musician Bill Peterson’s mournful flugelhorn joins in. The song’s three verses depict vivid, contrasting scenes: medieval knights, a sunburst in a burned-out basement, and humanity’s “silver seed” escaping a dying Earth.

The Meaning Behind the Music: Environmental Themes and Artistic Vision

Young explained that the title track was written to complement Stockwell’s screenplay and the story of a character carrying the Tree of Life through Topanga Canyon. “It relates to the screenplay in an artistic way, not directly, in dialogue or anything,” Stockwell said. “Neil’s rush of writing then has something to do with the film – except for Southern Man,” Lofgren admits he never fully understood the song’s meaning, but cherishes having played it live many times.

In Waging Heavy Peace, Young described the song as “an environmental song,” highlighting a recurring “time-travel” thread in his work.

“When I look out the window, the first thing that comes to my mind is the way this place looked a hundred years ago.”

Though initially criticized by Rolling Stone upon release, After The Gold Rush became Young’s first solo album to break into the US Top 10, setting the stage for his later triumph with Harvest. Reflecting on the project, Stockwell noted:

“Even then, though I had the album, I still couldn’t get that screenplay produced.”