Here's a song for you to sing to yourself while you're ... and you go home, and there's no jive left anywhere except in your immediate body.
Neil Young
Auditorium Theater, Chicago, Illinois, USA
November 20, 1973
I think this gets to the heart of the matter and as Danny Whitten once said, "I don't want to talk about it."
Neil Young
Decade liner notes
1977
Here's a song that sounds like all my other piano songs.
Neil Young
The Boarding House, San Francisco, California, USA
May 24, 1978, Early Show
BF: Sex and sin seem tied up in your songs. When you mention sex - in "Saddle Up the Palomino" (American Stars 'n Bars), "Love in Mind" (Time Fades Away), "Cowgirl in the Sand" (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere) - it's usually with a sense of guilt.
NY: I don't know. It keeps coming back, though, in all these songs...I think sex is an avenue I haven't explored deeply enough in my music. Maybe it is constant learning. Somehow it's made me feel I don't know enough about it to throw it around. "The Bridge" (Time Fades Away) really is like first discovery: "A river on your skin." "I Believe in You" (After the Goldrush) is another one.
Neil Young
Interview with Bill Flanagan
1985
See, the way I used to work then - this would be the summer of 1969 we're talking about now - I'd usually go in and record with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound Studios every morning. Then I'd go to CSN&Y rehearsal in the afternoon through to the evening. Then I'd go home, crash out, get up the next morning and do the same routine all over again. That's when "I Believe In You", "Oh Lonesome Me", "Wonderin'" ... a couple of others on After The Goldrush - all those songs were conceived there and recorded there. That's where I first cut "Helpless", by the way, and the only reason the Crazy Horse version didn't come out is because the engineer didn't record the perfect take, so ... bam, that was lost.
Neil Young
The Dark Stuff - Neil Young and The Haphazard Highway That Lead To Unconditional Love by Nick Kent
1993
[talking about his image in 1969-1970]
My only concern was to make the fuckin' records sound right. When I finally got the studio together and played, I think, Running Dry [on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere], that was my first live vocal. As was almost the whole of Goldrush after it... Things like I Believe In You - that's when I started recording live.
Neil Young
Mojo/Nick Kent
December 1995