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.
If Presley stirred Young’s early passion, it was Roy Orbison who inspired him to take things seriously and go professional. Speaking to Nick Kent in 1990, Young reflected on the recent death of Orbison, revealing the ‘Pretty Woman’ singer as an inspiration both as a vocalist and as a strong character. “I always loved Roy,” he said. “I looked up to the way he was, admired the way he handled himself. That aloofness he had influenced me profoundly. It was the way he carried himself, you know, with this benign dignity.”
“I’ve always put a piece of Roy Orbison on every album I’ve made. His influence is on so many of my songs,” Young added. “There’s a big Orbison tribute song on Eldorado called ‘Don’t Cry’. That’s totally me under the Roy Orbison spell. When I wrote it and recorded it, I was thinking, ‘Roy Orbison meets trash metal.'”
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
