NK: It's become something of a cliche to say that Rust Never Sleeps, the raucous follow-up to Comes A Time, was very influenced by the UK punk-rock scene at the time... No, I wasn't really influenced by that scene. Most of the songs on that album had been written well before the Sex Pistols were ever heard of. The Thrasher was pretty much me writing about me experiences with Crosby, Stills & Nash in the mid-'70s. Do you know Lynyrd Skynyrd almost ended up recording Powderfinger before my version came out? We sent them an early demo of it because they wanted to do one of my songs. Neil Young Mojo/Nick Kent December 1995

Here's a song I don't usually do because I don't know it that well. But you're ready for it, I can tell. [before playing Powderfinger live for the first time] Neil Young The Boarding House, San Francisco, California, USA May 26, 1978, Late Show

The album Zuma is the first album we made with Crazy Horse after Poncho joined the band. It’s one of my favorites. The cover is by Mazzeo and came out of a conversation we had on a day trip from the ranch to Zuma. We set up a Green Board control room in Briggs’s den. We played in the garage. One day Bob Dylan, who lived nearby, came along and sang a blues tune with us. On a break, Bob and I took a walk around the neighborhood, talking about the similarity in some of the paths we had each taken. It was the first time we had ever really talked. I liked him. Back at Briggs’s, we kept playing day after day and partying at night. We did the original “Powderfinger” and held it back. We did “Sedan Delivery” and held it back. My song “Born to Run” was recorded, left unfinished, and held back. “Ride My Llama” was completely finished and mixed and held back. We recorded a lot of tunes and held them back, but we released “Cortez,” “Don’t Cry No Tears,” “Stupid Girl,” and a bunch of other tracks on Zuma. It has a great feeling to it. Today I like listening to all of those tracks together in a compilation I call Dume that is in The Archives Volume 2. Those were some of the finest, most alive days of my life. I was getting past the lost relationship with Carrie, living the life with my best friends, making some good music, and starting to get a grip on something: an open future in my personal life and a new future with Crazy Horse after Danny. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012

I was rooted in the past, like I really was there: Neil Young Special Deluxe October 2014

Around the beginning of 1976 at Wally Heider Studios in Hollywood, we were trying to record “Powderfinger” with Crazy Horse. It was sounding really good to me and I was way into the song. Then I came completely unglued and yelled at Billy for what seemed like an endless time. We had been right in the middle of a great take and he had missed a bunch of changes. My nerves must have been totaled for some reason. I had to work on my temper with Crazy Horse and Buffalo Springfield, as I was mostly juvenile and had no patience. I’m still not completely past it now, just a little slower to react. When you open up to deliver in the studio, you have no self-control, no defenses, no point of view. That’s the place to be. You’re just a lightbulb with the filament exposed, no outer glass to protect you. The emotional and spiritual music comes along at just about the same time, so if something goes wrong right at that moment there is almost no way to predict what will happen. Usually I would just lose it. Today it is not very different when it happens; we just have recording more down now, and mistakes are easier to fix with technology. Neil Young Special Deluxe October 2014

Powderfinger: standard tuning key of G written between 1970 (first verse beginnings) and 1975 complete last three verses. (Zuma out-take). Where does it come from? Unexplainable. Neil Young NYA Song Of The Day August 12, 2019

[talking about the Hitchhiker recording session at Indigo Ranch on August 11, 1976] I started with Pocahontas, a song I had recently written. I previously tried it, recording with Crazy Horse for an album called Zuma, but that version did not make the cut. Then came another capo change for Powderfinger, which I had also tried for Zuma with The Horse and not captured well enough to use. Then, came Captain Kennedy, a complete (???) I had never played before, followed by Hawaii and Give Me Strength, two songs written around my recent breakup with Carrie Snodgress, mother of my first son Zeke. At this time, Briggs joined us in the playing room and we stopped the proceeding to do some more libations. That accomplished, Briggs returned to the control room; "Rolling!" he announced. We continued with Ride My Lama, another outtake from Zuma, followed by Hitchhicker. You may be able to hear the drugs kicking in here… Then came Campaigner, a song I had written about politics and Nixon. Human Highway was next. At that point we moved my vocal microphone to the piano outside in the main studio for the last song, The Old Country Waltz. Briggs did not want to change the mic, so we had to carry it out there. It was the same mic I had sung into; he wanted the songs to all be consistent without any unnecessary distractions or changes. He was mixing live as the songs went down, and my vocal mic was part of the sound. Neil Young KOTO FM radio Telluride CO September 1, 2017

GW: So many writers just throw away songs...and they're gone forever. NY: It's a unique thing when you start a song at one point and finish it years later. Something happens. You get an original idea and get it going, and something stops you. It could be anything-some distraction that happens and takes your mind away from it. You could be trying too hard. These things happen, and you don't finish the song. "Powderfinger" took a long time; I wrote the first line in 1967 and didn't finish the song until 1975. It was funny to pick up where I left off. Something blocks me once in awhile, and I don't try to force anything to an unnatural end. I just put it away and maybe come back to it later. GW: Is that a discipline you learned over years and years of writing? NY: Sure. I forced things a few times at the beginning, and I realized that if I was working I wasn't playing, so I learned to put things away. Neil Young Guitar World/Gary Graff June 1993