The stripped-down arraignment of just the acoustic guitar adds an emotional intensity. It is a very powerful and emotional performance. He sings as if he is reliving the hurts of his friend’s death. We can hear that this is a song that is meaningful to him. Young’s vocal on “Needle and the Damage Done” is haunting and moving.

He has a great line: “Every junkie’s like the setting sun”. Young doesn’t chastise them, he empathizes them, and recognizes that there is a bit of them in all of us. It is sad how damaging a portrait Young paints. It is about an addict coming around his house looking for drugs or money and how they will say anything to score. He talks about how he has lost a bunch of friends to drugs– he says it is always heroin, so he decided to write this song. Interestingly, the instrument given a solo is a trumpet.In Live at Massay Hall, Neil Young introduces his brand new song: “The Needle and the Damage Done”. His piano playing is slow and deliberate, and it gives the song a somber mood. His voice is controlled and gentle throughout. Young’s “After the Gold Rush” has very high notes and it is interesting how Young slips in and out on falsetto so smoothly. He sees the connection between the need to harvest the earths minerals and the destruction of the environment and the wars to obtain the riches from the earth. He contrasts that to a future wartime when the children will be crying as the chosen people are selected to escape the hazy earth towards the sun to find a new home. There are knights, and drumming and peasants nearby cheering…overall it seems like a relatively idyllic, orderly time.

As he is waiting there he has dreams of the past and future, as well as thoughts about his current situation. It appears that Young (or the narrator) is in his bedroom getting high waiting for his (or his replacement’s) draft number to be selected to go to the Vietnam war. The song is vague, but Young’s one clear lyric that stands out is the above, “Look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies.” The rest of what happens in the song is very much open to interpretation. Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” is a song (kind of) about environmental conservatism and activism from over forty years ago.

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