Old Man (song)
| Old Man | |
|---|---|
| Neil Young | |
| publication | 1972 |
| length | 3:24 |
| Genre (s) | Folk music |
| Author (s) | Neil Young |
| Label | Reprise Records |
| album | Harvest |
Old Man is a song by Neil Young released on his 1972 album Harvest . It was released as a single in the spring of 1972 and reached number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
background
The song was written for the property manager of Young's Broken Arrow Ranch in Northern California, which Young bought for $ 350,000 in 1970. The song compares the life of a young man with that of an old man and shows that the young man has to some extent the same needs as the old man. James Taylor played the banjo and added back vocals with Linda Ronstadt .
In the film Heart of Gold , Young introduces the song as follows:
“Around the time I wrote Heart of Gold and was on tour, I bought a ranch - as you know, I was a rich hippie for the first time - and I still live there today. And there lived a couple of caretakers, an old man named Louis Avila and his wife Clara. And there was that old blue jeep and Louis took me for a ride in that blue jeep. It takes me to the upper part of the village, and up there this lake has fed all the pastures. He says, "Well tell me, how does a young man like you have enough money to buy a place like this?" And I said, "Well, just lucky Louis, just real luck." And he said, "Well, that's the damn thing I've ever heard." And I wrote this song for him. "
Young's father Scott Young wrote how proud he was when he heard the song because he believed Neil had written it about him. He was disappointed when he discovered in Neil Young's notes on Decade that it was about the caretaker of his ranch.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neil Young, Harvest. Retrieved August 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Old Man - Stray Gators, Neil Young | Song info. Retrieved August 18, 2019 (American English).