Neil Young is the kind of artist that the “kids” would call “not media-trained.” The Canadian singer-songwriter has always talked about his work with a sort of dry flippancy, like the time he said the sci-fi novel he was working on was a “f***ing mess.” This aloof demeanor hides a deeper artistic sensitivity. Still, it makes for some funny stories.
Take, for example, the time a group of fellow musical stars rang up Young to ask him about the title track to After the Gold Rush. The Trio, a supergroup composed of Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt, planned on covering the song on their 1999 album, Trio II. Parton was the first to suggest it, which Harris said seemed to “come from left field.”
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However, as Parton would later explain, “‘After The Gold Rush’ happens to be one of my favorite songs of all time. I loved the song on Neil Young’s [1970] album, and I loved it when Prelude had it out in 1974.”
Dolly Parton Wanted to Dive Deeper Into “After The Gold Rush”
Dolly Parton, just like all music lovers, superimposed her own emotions and meanings onto “After The Gold Rush”. She assumed the song was about certain things, and those assumptions helped shape how she related to the track. But when it was time to actually cut her own version, she wanted to hear what the song was really about straight from the source. She didn’t have a working relationship with Neil Young, but Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt did. So, they called Young up to ask him the true meaning of his song.
“He said, ‘I have no idea,’” Parton recalled. “I thought that was so funny. I think it’s about the Second Coming or the invasion of aliens or both.”
In Young’s 2012 memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, he had a more clear-cut explanation: a friend, Dean Stockwell, came to visit Young in Topanga shortly after recording Déjà Vu with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. Stockwell had a screenplay in the works, and he wanted Young to write the music for it. Coming off an arduous recording process with CSNY, Young was eager to point his creative energy somewhere else.
The screenplay’s title was After The Gold Rush, so Young started there. Speaking to Classic Rock in 2025, Stockwell recalled Young having intense writer’s block. “After he read this screenplay, he wrote the After the Gold Rush album in three weeks.”
The title track, specifically, Young said, “was written to go along with the story’s main character as he carried the tree of life through Topanga Canyon to the ocean.”
An interesting explanation, but it probably wouldn’t have made Dolly laugh as much.
Photo By Evan Agostini/Getty Images
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