After the Goldrush - Neil Young
The band Heart (see last two posts) were originally called The Army but then changed their name to White Heart, a moniker in turn borrowed, with permission, from a defunct band called "White Hart". The latter had originally been named after science fiction author Arthur C Clarke's 1957 short story collection "Tales from the White Hart".
The White Hart of the book was modelled on the White Horse, a pub in Hatton Garden, in central London, where, during the late forties and fifties, the science fiction authors of the time used to meet up on a regular basis, and chew the fat.
After the break up of Buffalo Springfield (see post Feb 1st 2019, https://www.unclestylus.com/single-post/2019/02/01/i-am-a-child-buffalo-springfield ) Richie Furay formed folk rock band Poco (see last post and posts https://www.unclestylus.com/single-post/2017/04/11/too-many-nights-too-long-poco and https://www.unclestylus.com/single-post/2019/02/12/lets-dance-tonight-poco ), Steve Stills joined up with David Crosby of the Byrds and Graham Nash of the Hollies to form the Crosby, Stills and Nash "supergroup" (CSN). Neil Young made a couple of solo albums which were unsuccessful. In 1969 he joined CSN, adding a "Y" to the namelist, and ensured the success of his subsequent albums from "After the Goldrush", of which this is the title track, onwards. Not that it wouldn't have been successful anyway: his combination of beautiful melodies, high-pitched vocals and lyrics of startling poetic intensity, along with his eclectic mix of folk and bitingly heavy, grungy rock, was something entirely new at the time.
I have never seen it mentioned anywhere else before, but I am convinced that the events in the final verse of "After the Goldrush" describe the final chapters of Arthur C Clarke's novel "Childhood's End" where the children of mankind, highly evolved beyond our human stage, ascend to alien spaceships to leave the doomed earth behind.
"Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flying
in the yellow haze of the sun
there were children crying and colours flying
all around the chosen ones -
all in a dream, all in a dream
the loading had begun
flyin' mother nature's silver seed
to a new home in the sun
flyin' mother nature's silver seed
To a new home."
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