HEART OF GOLD (SONG)

"'Heart of Gold'" from the 1972 album ''Harvest'' is Neil Young's only number one hit single in his long musical career. Rolling Stone ranked it #297 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It features the back-up vocals of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.
The song is one of a series of soft, acoustic pieces which were written partly as a result of a back injury. Unable to stand for long periods of time, he could not play his electric guitar and so returned to his acoustic, which he could play sitting down.
The song received huge publicity when Young performed it on a variety show taped in Nashville, Tennessee and hosted by Johnny Cash. Ronstadt and Taylor were in Nashville at the time and sang backup for Young on the program.
Originally, this song was meant to segue with the song "A Man Needs a Maid", and was therefore played on piano. It was played in this manner during Young's solo shows in 1971, but he abandoned this approach midway through the tour and began to play it on guitar as it is now known. Additionally, one line that was cut when the two songs became separate entities was "Afraid/A man feels afraid" (''Shakey: Neil Young's Biography'', Jimmy McDonough). An example of the segued version appears on Young's 1971 Live at Massey Hall release.
Young wrote in the liner notes of his compilation album ''Decade'': "This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch". This statement was in response to the mainstream popularity that he gained as a result of "Heart of Gold"'s number-one status.
The song has been covered by Matchbox Twenty, Tori Amos, Free Dominguez, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Richard Lloyd, Sheryl Crow, Bettye Lavette, Zakk Wylde (with Black Label Society), Boney M, Carla Cook, Lawrence Gowan, Stereophonics, Rockapella, Roxette, Backburner, Hanah, Ossifar, the James Last Orchestra, Five for Five, Sally Dworsky, Channeling Owen, Dave Matthews and Jimmy Buffett (with the Coral Reefer Band), and as a Karaoke backing track.
In 2005, "Heart of Gold" was named the third greatest Canadian song of all time on the CBC Radio One series ''. It ranked behind only Barenaked Ladies' "If I Had $1000000" and Ian and Sylvia's "Four Strong Winds".