The Needle and the Damage Done
| The Needle and the Damage Done | |
|---|---|
| Neil Young | |
| publication | 1972 |
| length | 2:03 |
| Genre (s) | Folk music |
| Author (s) | Neil Young |
| Label | Reprise Records |
| album | Harvest |
The Needle and the Damage Done is a Neil Young song released on the 1972 album Harvest . It is a live recording from January 1971 in which he sings to the acoustic guitar. It also appeared on the compilation album Decade and on Live Rust .
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The song deals with the destruction caused by heroin, which he had experienced in his musician friends. It was an anticipation of the Tonight's the Night (1975) album theme, reflecting Young's grief over the drug death of Danny Whitten (1943–1972) and Young's roadie Bruce Berry (1950–1973).
A few seconds after the last line Every Junkie is like a setting sun , the barely two minute long song ends abruptly. On the handwritten liner notes of the album Decade , Young wrote of the song:
"I'm not a preacher, but drugs have killed a lot of great men."
The song also appeared on the 2007 album Live at Massey Hall in 1971 . The album includes Young's introduction:
“Since I left Canada about five years ago and moved south, I've found out a lot of things that I didn't know when I left. Some of them are good and some of them are bad. I've seen a lot of great musicians before they performed ... before they got famous ... you know, when they were just playing. Five and six sets a night ... things like that. And I've seen a lot of great musicians that no one has ever seen. For one reason or another. But ... oddly enough, the really good guys ... you never got to see ... because of, uh, heroin. And it happened again and again. Then it happened to someone everyone knew. So I wrote a little song about it. "
References in popular culture
- The song was the inspiration for the first single, The Damage Done by The Sisters of Mercy (1980).
- The title was used as the album title for the second installment in the Nirvana Outcesticide Bootleg series (1995).
- The Rolling Stone cover story about Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley , a well-known heroin addict, bears the title (issue 727).
- A reference to the title can be found in the song Understanding in a Car Crash on Thursday's album Full Collapse (2001) .
- Song to Say Goodbye from the Placebo album Meds (2006) contains the reference "your needle and your damage done."
- A reference to the title appears in the song Genetic Design For Dying from Aiden's album Nightmare Anatomy (2005).
- In the New Girl episode Bully , Schmidt refers to the song and says, "Schmiddle and the damage done. Yo Neil Young. Yo Neil Young." to his lover.
- A 2002 episode of Will & Grace is titled The Needle and the Omelet's Done .
- A horror novel based on the lyrics of the song called Milk-Blood was published in 2014.
Individual evidence
- ↑ discogs.com: The Needle And The Damage Done
- ^ Tonight's The Night. Retrieved August 11, 2019 .
- ^ The Needle and the Omelet's Done. Retrieved August 11, 2019 .
- ↑ Elderlemon Design: Milk-Blood . Wicked Run Press, June 23, 2014 ( amazon.de [accessed August 11, 2019]).