We were listening to Mansion On The Hill. This is after ... we recorded Mansion On The Hill the first couple days. We tracked for a couple of weeks. The first couple of days we recorded that somewhere - either the second or third day. And then we kept trying to do it. We thought, "Wow, this is a neat song. It should be great. It will really make a great record. So lets play it again and see if we could do it." So we would do it every day - once in the day and once at night. And we'd remember those versions and how we were. And we never could remember doing a good one.
Then we started listening back to all of the stuff. And finally we found this one take of Mansion On The Hill and I went, "That's it. It sounds great ... oh, we made a lotta mistakes... but it's still cool." We were trying to do a real cool version that doesn't work. It has a mistake in it that a musician could figure out. Actually, it sounds like Billy hits the wrong note, but it's me. Billy hits the right note. It's pretty weird - we all play a different chord at once - together. And David Briggs, who's producing, says. "Well, let's hear it in all its Ragged Glory then if it's all screwed up, Neil." And I said, "That's it. That's what we're going to call it." So it was David's idea. As usual, I was just in the right place at the right time to pick up someone else's good idea.
Neil Young
MTV Interview with Kurt Loder
November, 1990