This a song I wrote a long time ago and I'm ashamed at some of the lyrics in it. But nonetheless, some of the other lyrics aren't too bad, so it all balances out in the end. It's like everything else. I wrote it when I just turned twenty which seems an enormous length of time ago. And Joni Mitchell - as a matter of fact I think I was staying with Chuck and Joni Mitchell when I wrote it in Detroit. She wrote a song about this song and her song was called The Circle Game. And Tom Rush learned The Circle Game from Joni. Tom Rush once played golf with my brother. Which is how I met my brother. Neil Young The Riverboat, Toronto, Ontario, Canada February 7, 1969

BMR: See (Joni) told me one time, or I don't know if was part of a riff I heard her do live when she was doing the Circle Game, that she wrote it for you. Is that true? NY: Yeah, she wrote it for me. She heard Sugar Mountain ... a long time ago I wrote Sugar Mountain around the time when I first met Chuck and Joni. Chuck was her old man at the time and they were doing an act together in folk houses. I was writing that song at that time and she really liked it. So she wrote a sequel to it, which was The Circle Game. NY: If you listen to those two tunes back to back ... Out at The Corral, you should have been at The Corral - Joni and I sang Sugar Mountain with an electric band. Joni's into electric guitar now, which is kind of far out. Nobody's heard it yet, but she's been jamming with our band and with Graham's band. She's getting really funky - I think it's going to surprise a lot of people. BMR: She started getting funky on this last album of hers. NY: Sweet Fire and those things. That's clean compared to what she's into now. Neil Young KMET radio interview with B. Mitchell Reed September 1973

Wrote this on birthday 19 somewhere in Canada. Recorded on a home Sony at "Canterbury house" in Ann Arbor, Michigan during my first tour after Springfield breaking (up). Gotta send this one back to Chuck Roberts of the "Dirty Shames". Joni heard this song and wrote Circle Game. Oh to live on Sugar Mountain. Neil Young Decade liner notes 1977

[talking about the 1965 Elektra Records audition recordings] RB: ...That song would be one of the defining tunes of your career, but on this version you sound very unlike yourself, as if you're approximating what you believe a folksinger to be. NY: That was probably what was going on. I was just trying to find who I was. And it was very uncomfortable for me to hear some of this stuff. In the case of "Sugar Mountain," I could't listen to it. I knew what it was and I listened a little bit but I jus thought, God, that's terrible. Because I can tell I was very nervous. I was just trying to be...something . But I didn't know what it was. Neil Young Guitar World/Richard Bienstock October 2009

One night after hearing me at a hootenanny [in Toronto in 1965], Chick Roberts of the Dirty Shames told me he really liked my song “Sugar Mountain”—that made me feel like I was somebody. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012

Joni Mitchell also really loved my song “Sugar Mountain.” Later, she wrote “The Circle Game” about “Sugar Mountain.” It was a real feeling of recognition that Joni wrote her song to answer mine; I didn’t even hear it until she had already been singing it for a year. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012

When I first heard ‘Circle Game’ by Joni Mitchell, she told me ‘Sugar Mountain’ had inspired it. Both songs were less than a year old at the time. Chick Roberts, of the DIRTY SHAMES, a Canadian group I saw in Toronto’s Yorkville Village, the center of the Canadian folk scene, told me it was a very special song. That meant so much to me at 20 years old! Neil Young NYA - Now Playing In The Hearse Theater May 25, 2019

You can’t be twenty on Sugar Mountain. When I played this song in Toronto 1966, for Chick Roberts of “The Dirty Shames”, he told me it was going to be around for years. I knew that was a good thing for him to say and felt great about it, still remembering that moment to this day. It meant a lot to me. Neil Young NYA - Now Showing in the Hearse Theater November 12, 2019

ZS: Do you remember the first time you met Joni Mitchell? NY: I was twenty. She was about twenty two. Maybe one year older than me. I think we were in Winnipeg at the 4th Dimension club. ZS: Do you remember the conversation? NY: I was listening to her. I was local in Winnipeg and she was just passing through on the road with her husband Chuck. They were a duo playing. So we talked a little bit and I got to know her. I played her Sugar Mountain. I told her I'd just been in Canada in Toronto and I played that for a group called The Dirty Shames. There was this guy named Chick Roberts in The Dirty Shames who said, "That's a special song Neil. That song is going to be around for a while." And I'm saying to Joni, "this guy Chick Roberts, he told me that this was a special song, so I'll play it for you and see what you think." Then she wrote Circle Game after she heard Sugar Mountain because it got to her and she felt it. She felt it in her own unique way as well, obviously. ZS: That's incredible, but so special. Do you stay in touch today with her? NY: I just spoke to her the other day. ZS: That's a real friendship. NY: I love Joni. She's wonderful. She's one of the greatest artists of our generation - she may be the greatest artist of our generation. Neil Young The Zach Sang Show November 18, 2022