The lyrics characterize the narrator as someone who is in a state of experiencing incomplete love and is trying to find a way to the gateway of love which is a metaphorical representation of finding that place of completeness with someone. Interestingly, the instrument given a solo is a trumpet."Gateway of Love" by Neil Young & Crazy Horse is a song about longing for love and connection. 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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