Neil Young’s Relationship with Carrie Snodgress in Song

By Michael McMahon

PICTURE THE SCENE, It's late 1970. Neil Young has just abandoned his tour with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, after a certain band member went on an unplanned cocaine-fuelled solo set at Fillmore East (motivated by rumours that Bob Dylan was in audience). He's made a sh*tload of money from the release of his second solo album, After the Gold Rush, and Déjà Vu, the first Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young album (what a mouthful). He's also just divorced his wife of two years. What does Neil do? Neil does what any sensible 25-year-old with a sh*tload of money would do; he buys a massive ranch in Northern California and starts a relationship with a Hollywood actress.

I empathise a lot with Neil in this regard (I too hope to have a country house and gorgeous girlfriend by the time I'm 25), but the real reason I mention all this is to set the scene for his 1972 album, Harvest. There's a lot more context to this album than this article can contain, but throughout the 37-minute masterpiece Neil doesn't stop going on about two things: his girlfriend Carrie Snodgress (aforementioned Hollywood actress), and his new $3 million plot of land, Broken Arrow Ranch (fun fact - the reason Harvest lacks electric guitar is that Neil injured his back trying to lift a slab of walnut wood whilst renovating Broken Arrow Ranch, and hence could only pay acoustic till he had recovered).

We kick off the album with 'Out on the Weekend', where Young complains about how sad and tired of life he is ("Think I'll pack it in and buy a pick-up, take it down to L.A."), despite his burgeoning relationship ("The woman I'm thinking of, she loved me all up, but I'm so down today"). There's a real sense of weariness in Neil's lyrics, but no clear discontent, much like me on a Thursday after Scala. What is clear, however, is the strength of Neil's affection and his wish to "stay up somewhere in her [Carrie's] mind". This is followed a couple songs later by

'A Man Needs a Maid', a song which prima facie is titled with a quote from me looking at the dishes in my first-year flat kitchen. On a literal reading, Neil spends this song wailing about how he can't manage basic household tasks (" Just someone to keep my house clean, fix my meals and go away"). There's some force behind this reading, considering Neil was just hospitalised for his back injury, but the striking backing strings of the London Symphony Orchestra and the penultimate verse of the song indicate that we're dealing with something beyond a chauvinistic 70s folk singer here.

“While ago somewhere I don’t know when

I was watching a movie with a friend

I fell in love with the actress

She was playing a part that I could understand”

As far as confessions of love go, this is up there. Neil pretty explicitly references watching Carrie in her breakout role as a belittled housewife in Dairy of a Mad Housewife (1970) and immediately falling heads over heels. It makes sense that she's imagined as the maid he needs, albeit not a maid that only vacuums and makes breakfast, but someone to live with and share a home with. As poorly as his choice of words may have aged, Neil makes plain that what grips him here is not a fear of laundry, but the fear of beginning a new relationship, underscored by the tentative outro of "When will I see you again?".

It is interesting also that Neil states her part to be one he could understand; it's hard to see many similarities between the bullied wife of a lawyer and a folk/country singer with a growing career. Perhaps what he is really getting at is the sense of being trapped, and the mirror desire for escape, a common theme throughout Neil's work and his relationship with fame.

Anyone who owns a radio will surely have heard 'Heart of Gold', considered by many (but not me) to be the best track on the album. Those of you unimpressed by Neil's harmonica playing, don't worry - Bob Dylan shares your views (to quote, I used to hate it when it came on the radio. I always liked Neil Young, but it bothered me every time I listened to "Heart of Gold." ...

I'd say, "Shit, that's me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me.''). It shouldn't surprise you to hear that on one reading, this song is also about Carrie; alternatively, however, it refers to Neil himself. As he says in verse 2,

‘I’ve been to Hollywood

I’ve been to Redwood

I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold’

Hollywood is clearly the domain of Carrie, but Redwood, where Broken Arrow Ranch is, is where Neil considered home for a large portion of his life. It is left unclear whether he is looking for a heart of gold, maybe Carrie's, maybe someone else's, or his own heart of gold. Either way, he wants a love as pure and valuable as gold and would go to any lengths in his quest for such. Coincidentally, Heart of Gold would go on to be certified Gold in both the UK and USA. Cha-ching. Thank Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor on backing vocals for that.

The last song on Harvest that I want to talk about, and the one that is undoubtedly my ta-vourite, is the title track. 'Harvest' (the song) doesn't seem to get a lot of popular acclaim today. My personal theory is that anyone trying to listen to it on Spotify gets distracted by Harvest Moon while trying to type it into the search bar (by the way, Jane Birkin's version is far superior - but that's a matter for another day). It opens with a little country dance tune, the kind that brings to mind lying in the grass with a piece of straw in your mouth outside a barn full of line-dancing. The lyrics are a little more obscure, with Neil throughout the song addressing an unknown character and her mother.

‘Did I see you walking with the boys

Though it was not hand in hand?

And was some black face in a lonely place

When you could understand?’

The second verse (above) is particularly in-teresting. Neil echoes the same sentiment telt when you see your crush in the Student Centre sat with an apparent potential rival lover, crooning 'Did I see you walking with the boys' with what is undeniable sheepish vulnerability. He's clearly concerned about his own position in his own relationship with Carrie, and it's not difficult to imagine the friction between the country boy with a pickup truck and the high-flying Hollywood actress. This vulnerability comes into the spotlight in verse 3, where Neil asks his lover:

‘Will I see you give more than I can take?

Will I only harvest some?

As the days fly past will we lose our grasp

Or fuse it in the sun?’

Aside from the quaint metaphor of a relationship as something you sow then harvest (we get it Neil, you like the countryside), Neil makes plain here both his apprehension and hope - will he be unable to harvest all his love has to offer? Will the relationship fall apart, or 'fuse in the sun' into something solid and enduring? This inner questioning and unease is made all the more powerful by Neil's constant return to the refrain in the chorus:

‘Dream up, dream up, let me fill you cup

With the promise of a man’

Under all this hesitation, Neil is prostrating himself before Carrie, plainly offering his devotion in the 'promise of a man', yet at the same time fearful of the longevity of their love. These concerns were somewhat prophetic: Neil and Carrie would live together for four years, having a child, Zeke, together, before eventually splitting in 1975. You can only imagine how Neil feels in concert when his fans keep requesting songs that he wrote for his ex back in the day. Nonetheless, 'Harvest' remains in my mind one of the best depictions of earnest affection, and the intrinsic vulnerability of beginning something new with someone new, in all music.

I know this article promised to only discuss Harvest, and you're all tiring of my attempt at pithy music criticism, but it feels wrong to end without discussing 'Motion Pictures (For Carrie)', from Neil’s 1974 album On the Beach. By then, Neil had endured the death of his bandmate Dan Whitten (who composed 'I Don't Want to Talk About It’) from a heroin overdose and was tiring of the fame brought on by success.

To add to this, it had become apparent that his relationship with Carrie was on its last legs. The two would split a year after On the Beach when Neil discovered Carrie's affair, but doubts are hinted at as early as 1972 in the closing track of Harvest, 'Words'. Talking in his memoir, Neil makes clear that concerns had arose over cracks in the relationship caused by the constant company brought by Carrie's circle and his own taciturn personality. When On the Beach released, these cracks had become all too apparent and are directly addressed in 'Motion Pictures (For Carrie)'.

'Motion Pictures (For Carrie)' from its onset has a eulogy-feel to it, heard in the tentative chord strumming and weary, aching electric guitar. The song was composed whilst Neil was high on 'honey slides' - a kind of sauteed marijuana with honey that would put you 'laid back into the middle of next week' - and this shows itself not only in the mellowness of the instruments but the pensiveness of the lyrics.

‘Motion pictures

On my TV screen,

A home away from home,

Livin’ in beween’

Verse 1 kicks off with Neil's feelings of restlessness and lack of belonging along with a passivity as if sat on the couch whilst life passes like late-night ITV. The level, steady delivery of the lyrics shows he's somewhat resigned to this lite, yet it's not all doom and gloom, as Neil goes onto sing:

‘But I hear some people

Have got their dream.

I’ve got mine.’

What exactly is Neil's dream, you may ask? He makes this clear enough in the second verse, where he describes a scene in the mountains, where…

‘Mornin’ glory is on the vine,

And the dew is fallin’,

The ducks are callin’.’

I know we've made plenty of reference to the ranch in Northern California, but the imagery here is undoubtedly Neil reminiscing on a cosy morning, looking out the foggedup window, the sun rising over the wilderness, a low fire keeping him warm. It's not hard to imagine Carrie next to him, doing the same. He continues by voicing his suspicion of LA and the Hollywood crowd.

‘Well, all those people,

They think

They got it made

But I wouldn’t buy,

Sell, borrow or trade

Anything I have

To be like one of them

I’d rather start all over again.’

Neil sticks to his guns here, making clear his preference for a life on the ranch to whatever alternatives have been offered to him. Yet this verse hints also his growing resentment for the fruits of his own labour - he would rather 'start all over again' then grow to be like the people he meets on tour, whether that be money-grabbing record labels, corporate managers, or blindly-enthusiastic groupies.

‘Well, all those headlines,

They just bore me now

I’m deep inside myself,

But I’ll get out somehow’

Any doubts about the objects of his melancholy are cleared up in the third verse. Neil is bored. He's tired. He's withdrawn back into him-self, reflecting on what it is exactly he desires and what is central and key both to him and his music. Much like many of us at UCL, the hustle and bustle of life (or term 1 formatives) have gotten to him and worn him down. His sole reprieve is nature and living a quiet existence authentic to himself; something which the ranch he dreams of is representative not only literally, but on a deeper level. But it's important to keep in mind that Broken Arrow Ranch alone isn't what Neil dreams of.

‘And I’ll stand before you,

And I’ll bring

A smile to you eyes.

Motion pictures,

Motion pictures.’

For a song with Carrie in its title, she's been conspicuously missing until now, in the final half of the third verse. Yet lit is implicit, if not from the song title, or the constant mention of 'motion pictures', then in the tenderness of Neil's voice, that she is essential to his dream. Despite the cracks in his relationship, his lack of fulfilment with his career, and his loss of direction, Neil blurts out at the end of his song that he nonetheless remains the same person as the Neil in Harvest - he still presents himself before her, offering a promise of a man who can bring a smile to eyes from which a smile has long been absent.

I often wonder what Neil Young was thinking of, having his first child with a Hollywood actress in the midst of stardom whilst he himself was always a quiet, private individual who struggled with fame. On a surface level, it was unavoidable that it would end as it did. Yet just as it is filled with dolefulness, Motion Pictures is a song also full of love, laid bare and naked in its last verse.

It's vogue in this day and age to talk of yearning, whether on Tiktok or Instagram or Spotify. We don't say we love, or miss, or adore - we yearn instead. You can feel a sense of yearning in 'Harvest', or in 'A Man Needs a Maid', but 'Motion Pictures (For Carrie)' isn't a song about yearning - it's a song about confronting the inherent instability of love, and of standing before someone as naked and exposed as the day you were born. Perhaps we all need Neil Young to remind us that as unavoidable it is to be helpless in the face of dying romance, but we should be brave enough to endeavour regardless. As great as this review may have been, nothing can capture the sheer emotion that Neil puts into his voice like listening to his songs themselves, and I urge anyone who felt their heartstrings being tugged at whilst reading to listen to Harvest in full, and if feeling particularly strong, to follow it with 'Motion Pictures (For Carrie)'.