The first track Young suggested was ‘Four Strong Winds’ by ’60s folk duo Ian and Sylvia.
“I loved it so much I would put nickles and dimes in the jukebox to play it over and over and over again until I didn’t have any change,” he told O’Brien.
“I’d just stand there and listen to it. It was a beautiful song. For some reason, it really got to me, and I could feel the magic of the music.”
Young would have been around 11 or 12 at this time and living in Winnipeg. “I heard the song before, but I was at Falcon lake, a place that’s near Winnipeg,” he said. “It’s just a lake – you can pitch tents around it and stuff. So we had our tent, me and my friend Jack, who played drums in The Squiers, my first band And we were out there, and I found this thing on the jukebox.”
Young also spoke about Johnny Cash’s ‘Ballad of a Teenage Queen’, which appeared on his 1958 album with the Tenessee Two on backing vocals.
Young appears to have heard multiple versions of the song, but it’s this Tennesse Two rendition he heard on analogue radio all those years ago.
Discussing how one’s introduction to a song colours the way you listen to it thereafter, Young said: “When it’s way back there in your life, and you have this memory, it’s vivid. Who knows what you do with it for all those years? You may have enhanced it. It may be exactly the way it was.
It may just be different in some way, because when you have a thought for so long, and you remember a memory, it becomes more than just that over time. So that’s why, sometimes when you go back, it’s not like you thought it was gonna be.” (Source - Faroutmagazine)
Related: The Led Zeppelin song inspired by Neil Young
Neil Young and Led Zeppelin have a hefty amount of shared history. In 1995, for one night only, Young became an honorary member of the legendary band at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a dream come true for the Canadian.
Neil Young updates movies and video on his online archive section “Lost for years, but not forgotten”. Here's some of his latest.
Barn's fifth episode, and 'Don't be denied', (directed by Hal Ashby, 5 min.) was added in his Hearse Teather as well as 'Are there any more real cowboys?'; 'Cry,Cry,Cry' and the film 'Live at Massey Hall'.
You can watch the film 'Live at Massey Hall' HERE
and Hearse Teather HERE or browse yourself to NYA