TG: Well, I want to play one of the songs from "Greendale," and this is called "Bandit." And do you want to describe what's happening in this song? NY: Well, this song is a song about Earl Green again, the fellow we were talking about, and he's a Vietnam vet. He returned to the States in the late '60s, and he was shell-shocked and stayed in his house for a long time, couldn't handle looking at the bright colors and seeing the cars moving so fast on the freeway and things that he thought he was going to - looking forward to seeing, he couldn't handle them when he got back. And so he became very reclusive, and he also had a lot of hallucinations and was hearing voices. And the memories of his wartime experience were very heavy in his mind. And he found that by painting - he'd never painted before, but he found that by painting, that he could - that his mind cleared, and he was at peace with himself. And so this led to these paintings that he painted, and then the paintings were alive with sound. When his daughter looked at the paintings, she heard voices and she heard things that were like, you know, gunfire and, you know, bare feet running through the mud and people talking in a funny language, and then screaming and then gunfire and then American voices and people yelling and helicopters. And then sounds of people relaxing, lovers relaxing on the beach and talking to one another and the sound of the wind blowing and the sea gulls and the waves breaking. And this all happened when Sun Green, Earl Green's daughter, would come by the studio to look at these paintings, and she would come by every day and check out his paintings. And she thought her dad was, like, a genius and like a Picasso or something, that how - what fantastic works of art these were, these things that talked to you while you were looking at them. And - but Earl Green could never sell his paintings because to an art dealer or a gallery owner, they just looked like psychedelic art from the '60s and they really didn't have much else going for them. So he was unable to sell any paintings and unable to support the family on his own. And he was very down about not being able to hold his own, and he had to use his grandfather's money to support the family and everything. And so the song is set where he is in a motel room, he's been driving around in his Winnebago full of paintings, trying to sell his paintings. And he's stopped for a while in a motel room and he's just sitting there watching TV and using his little laptop computer and trying to come to grips with his situation, and he's pretty depressed. And the song is his thoughts going through his head. Neil Young Fresh Air/Terry Gross March 25, 2004