This is one of my all-time favorite songs. I had no idea this is what it was about though.
Neil Young “Old Man”
This is one of my all-time favorite songs. I had no idea this is what it was about though.
From You tube discussion:
Neil Young
Old Man (1972)
“Old Man” is a song written and performed by Neil Young on his 1972 album Harvest.
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. In the movie 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, Louie, just real lucky.” And he said, “Well, that’s the darndest 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”).
Lyrics
Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.
Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don’t get lost.
Like a coin that won’t get tossed
Rolling home to you.
Old man take a look at my life
I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that’s true.
Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn’t mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.
I’ve been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I’m all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.
Old man take a look at my life
I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that’s true.
Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.
CSNY…haven’t heard anything close to them since….
All this time I thought it was about his father. When I was a kid I used to watch Scott Young on “Front Page Challenge.”
He tells the same story (though a slightly less detailed version) on Live from Massey Hall. Love that album.
I just looked it up and the Massey Hall performance was only about month before this one.
I’ve really like this song for a long time, but also had no idea of the backstory. Thanks for sharing that.
I’ll have to show my 8-year-old son this video. He just started playing acoustic guitar recently.
Yes, one of the best all-time classics. Harvest is going to be the second album I buy from the Pono Store. I don’t mind paying for it again after all these years.