Everytime I think about back home, it’s cool and breezy. I wish that I could be there right now just passing time.

Everybody seems to wonder what it’s like down here. [But] I gotta get away from this day-to-day running around – everybody knows this is nowhere.

I see country music, I see people who take care of their own. You got 75 year-old guys on the road. That’s what I was put here to do, y’know, so I wanna make sure I surround myself with people who are gonna take care of me. ‘Cause I’m in it for the long run. Willie Nelson’s 54 years-old* and he’s a happy man, doing what he loves to do. I can’t think of one rock and roller like that. So what am I gonna do?

- Neil Young in “Legend of a Loner”, an interview with Adam Swetting in Melody Maker; 7th September 1985 [source]

* this age was true in 1985. Willie Nelson’s date of birth is 29th April 1933 – so get that calculator out!

I was chopping down a palm tree, when a friend dropped by to ask if I would feel less lonely if he helped me swing the axe. I said “No, it’s not a case of being lonely we have here – I’ve been working on this palm tree for eighty-seven years!”

He said “Go get lost!” – and walked towards his Cadillac; I chopped down the palm tree, and it landed on his back.

The Wayward Wind by Gogi Grant. Way out there. It’s just real simple. Straight ahead. I just have this one image that keeps coming to mind with that song – where I used to live in Pickering, there’s the Brock Road Public School. Just a two-room school and it’s still there. I’d walk there every day from our house, and that song was on the radio at that time. [...] I always remember that same stretch of road, the railroad tracks, the whole thing – every time I hear that song, it comes right back. That feeling when you’re young and open, you have all these ideas. Real wide view.

- Neil Young in an interview with Jimmy McDonough; specific date unknown

Reference: McDonough, J. (2002). Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography. UK: Vintage Press. “Mr. Blue and Mr. Red”, p.52.

Omemee’s a nice little town. Sleepy little place. I remember this one guy, Reel. Skinny Reel used to have this great little shop – it’s still there – and there used to be all these pansies out in these wooden boxes. The sidewalk was pretty wide and you’d go walkin’ along and there’d be all these boxes of pansies, the colors were so great… walkin’ through, y’know, and it’s all happening. Life was real basic and simple in that town. Walk to school, walk back. Everybody knew who you were. Everybody knew everybody.

- Neil Young in an interview with Jimmy McDonough; specific date unknown

Reference: McDonough, J. (2002). Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography. UK: Vintage Press. “Mr. Blue and Mr. Red”, p.42.

See also: “I really don’t have a yearning to return to Canada…” ; “I feel a kind of pulling from the area where I remember things as a kid…”

In the mountains [and] in the cities, you can see the dream. Look around you: has it found you? Is it what it seems?

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.

There’s a place that I know we could go get away for a while. I can bring her the peace that she needs; give her reason to smile.

While people planning trips to stars allow another boulevard to claim a quiet country lane. It’s insane.