I wrote this song in Detroit about four years ago. This is an old song. At the White Tower restaurant at about four o'clock in the morning at the corner of Livernois and something. The Chess Mate Club was there. We had come out of the Chess Mate Club and found out that someone had left with part of our car and we had to wait for a while in this restaurant. We had to wait for almost a day. It was out-of-sight. Guys propositioning me at four o'clock in the morning. I wrote it out on a napkin in true folk tradition. Sounds very good. And then I went home and put it in D-modal tuning which was very hip. At the time, everything was in D-modal. You know what D-model tuning is? You tune the E strings on each end down to D. Leave the other ones where they are. And play as if nothing ever happened. And you get D-modal. Everything sounds different because it's tuned different Neil Young The Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA November 10, 1968

Jack Nitzsche & I did this one together. Gracie Nitzsche and the girls can be heard singing. It was a first take overdub vocal for me. Singing in the studio was starting to get easier. It was at this time that Jack told me everything was temporary. Neil Young Decade liner notes 1977

I couldn’t get into Detroit once because I couldn’t get across the bridge with my guitar. Tried to sneak across, take the bus across. I think on my way back I went and visited my uncle Bob who lived in Windsor. Stayed there a couple of days, then I did a show there. Pretty big place. Those were like my first solo shows. I had a series of gigs—maybe Joni and Chuck Mitchell might’ve gotten these gigs in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area—solo acoustic, before the Mynah Birds. Chess Mate coffeehouse, an old folk club in Detroit, Livernois and One-eleventh. Very near there is where the White Tower is. “The Old Laughing Lady”—I was having some coffee and wrote it on napkins. I don’t know what prompted it. It came out on a napkin, no guitar. Hangin’ out in a coffee shop. Neil Young "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough 2002

Once I went down to Detroit to the Chessmate Club and tried to get a job, but that didn’t happen. I did write a song on a napkin in the White Castle across the street called “The Old Laughing Lady.” I stayed at Joni Mitchell’s house with her and her husband, Chuck, in Detroit while I was there. Eventually they left, and after one night sleeping in some girl’s basement, to the amazement of her parents, I left one morning in a snowstorm and returned to Toronto. It was cold and I didn’t have any warm clothes. That was a long trip. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace 2012

It took me and Jack Nitzsche a month to put down the tracks for the "Old Laughing Lady". Neil Young CSNY: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young by Peter Doggett 2019