Now inducting into the event tonight - Rick and Chad - our loving rhythm section - two beautiful guys who've never played this song before. We're gonna see how great they're gonna do because none of us have heard this song before except me. I don't even know the words. It's not Bad Fog - no. It's Rockin' In The Free World. It's the first time anywhere. You might hear a few mistakes, but that's not really very different from other of our songs. I just have to remember it myself - I guess that's too fast. What's gonna happen now - at first it's gonna be like no one knows what's going on. And then it's gonna take form - this is like an art thing. It's gonna take form. By the end - we're all going to be Rockin' In The Free World here. Neil Young Paramount Theatre, Seattle, Washington, USA February 21, 1989

[talking about the September 20, 1989 performance on Saturday Night Live] JM: With the September 30 appearance on Saturday Night Live, Young arrested any signs of rust - at least for the moment. Backed by Charlie Drayton, Steve Jordan, and longtime sideman Frank "Poncho" Samperdro - a new band Young's tentatively calling Young, CS&P - he was all over the stage, jumping on the drum stand, lunging out of camera range, whipping off earsplitting solos that sounded like falling power lines. It was the loudest thing I've ever heard on TV, the lyrics to "Rockin' in the Free World" barely audible. This is easily his best band since Crazy Horse. Just the look on his face was enough. He really seemed insane. I don't like TV. Never have. It always sucks and there's nothing you can do about it. You can't just walk on and do "Rockin' in the Free World," or you'll look like a fuckin' idiot. To perform that song the way it's supposed to be performed you have to be at peak blood level, everything has to be up, the machine has to be stoked. To do that I had to ignore Saturday Night Live completely. I had to pretend I wasn't there. JM: So Young developed "a brand new technique for doing TV" - a half-hour before going on he worked out with his trainer, lifting weights and doing calisthenics to get himself wired. Neil Young The Village Voice/Jimmy McDonough December 1989

AG: Tell me the story of how you coined the phrase "Rockin' in the Free World." We were on the road with the Los Dogs in 1989. I was riding on Neil's bus at the time. I was his cook on the bus, so we were hanging out 24/7. All this stuff was going down with the Ayatollah. I don't know if you remember that footage of them passing the casket along over the heads of thousand and thousands of people. There was a lot of "Hate America" demonstrations and we were supposed to do this exchange. We were going to Russia for the first time. It was a cultural exchange. They were getting us in exchange for the Russian Ballet. [Laughs] And it just fell through. Neil was like, "Damn, I really wanted to go." I said, "Me too. I guess we'll have to keep on rockin' in the free world." He was like, "Wow, that's a cool line." Then I said it again later and he said, "That's a really good phrase. I wanna use it." He told me he was going to use it. We were checking into our hotel and the manager was like, "That's stuff going on with the Ayatollah and alI this turmoil in the world." I said, "There's a song there, man. Come on, get to it." [Laughs] The next day he came up to me and told me to check out this lyric sheet. I only questioned one of them. I think it was "Keep Hope Alive" or something. He said, "No, no, no. That's a good one." We just started signing it and he taught me the harmony part. That night we played it in Seattle. It was this cool theater. We didn't even rehearse it with the band. I was telling the chords to [bassist] Rick Rosas as we went along. Poncho Sampedro Rolling Stone/Andy Greene April 17, 2013