Old Man (song)

"Old Man"
Single by Neil Young
from the album Harvest
B-side "The Needle and the Damage Done"
Released April 17, 1972
Format 7" 45 RPM
Recorded Quadraphonic Sound Studio, Nashville TN, February 6, 1971
Genre
Length 3:24
Label Reprise
Songwriter(s) Neil Young
Producer(s) Neil Young
Elliot Mazer[1]
Neil Young singles chronology
"Heart of Gold"
(1971)		 "Old Man"
(1972)		 "War Song"
(1972)

"Old Man" is a song written and performed by Neil Young on his 1972 album Harvest. "Old Man" was released as a single on Reprise Records in the spring of 1972, and reached #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for the week ending June 3.

Background

The song was written for the caretaker of the Northern California Broken Arrow Ranch, which Young purchased for $350,000 in 1970. The song compares a young man's life to an old man's and shows that the young man has, to some extent, the same needs as the old one. James Taylor played six-string banjo (tuned like a guitar) and sang on the song, and Linda Ronstadt also contributed vocals.[2]

In the film Heart of Gold, Young introduces the song as follows:

About that time when I wrote ("Heart of Gold"), and I was touring, I had also—just, you know, being a rich hippie for the first time—I had purchased a ranch, and I still live there today. And there was a couple living on it that were the caretakers, an old gentleman named Louis Avila and his wife Clara. And there was this old blue Jeep there, and Louis took me for a ride in this blue Jeep. He gets me up there on the top side of the place, and there's this lake up there that fed all the pastures, and he says, "Well, tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?" And I said, "Well, just lucky, Louis, just real lucky." And he said, "Well, that's the darnedest thing I ever heard." And I wrote this song for him.

He tells a similar story when introducing the song at a February 23, 1971 performance broadcast by the BBC (in which he says that he purchased the ranch from "two lawyers").

Personnel

References

  1. ↑ "Harvest". Discogs. Retrieved 2015-07-21.
  2. ↑ Jimmy McDonough. Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. New York: Anchor, 2003, p. 364.
  3. ↑ Leigh Creighton and wires (February 4, 2008). Heath Ledger's star-studded Hollywood memorial. Daily Telegraph. Accessed February 3, 2008.
  4. ↑ "Official Redlight King website". Redlight King. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  5. ↑ "Jimmy Fallon Sings With Neil Young As Another Neil Young". Huffington Post. February 4, 2015.
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