JJ: How did Americana emerge as a theme for the music? As I was writing this book [Waging Heavy Peace], I wrote about a time in the mid ’60s. I was in a place called Thunder Bay, Ontario, playing with a group called the Squires. I had just recently left home and this was really my first big trip out of Winnipeg. We had our own vehicle and were making our way in the world. We were working in a club called the Fourth Dimension. A band came through called the Thorns, which featured their leader Tim Rose. He’s a seminal figure in music who has gone largely unnoticed. While he didn’t write “Hey Joe,” the huge hit that Hendrix had, he was the one who defined how to do it. But he also had this thing called folk rock. It was the movement of the day, and defined mainly by the Thorns’ version of “Oh Susannah.” I heard that version and it blew my mind. I taught the Squires that version, but then I enlarged upon it and started arranging all kinds of folk songs, taking the same liberties and having the same freedoms. In doing that, we found ourselves with a pretty solid repertoire of that kind of song. Neil Young Wall Street Journal/John Jurgensen June 8, 2012