JD: Neil, thank you so much for joining us for this Prairie Wind Companion. Prairie Wind seems a definitive snapshot of where you're at today as you approach 60 and it's a beautiful piece. But in the hundreds of songs you've written it's been rare that you've sung directly about God. What were the circumstances of you composing Prairie Wind's final song, When God Made Me?
NY: First of all I didn't know what I was doing. There was a little room with a piano in it. And the piano is locked in the room. It'll never leave the room unless they destroy the room. It can't leave because the room was built around it. And the room is in a church. The studio is in a church. So the ceiling of this studio has got a few little vents in it. And if you stand on top of a ladder with a flashlight and look up through the holes you can see the church windows.
And this old huge roof and everything, and it's closed off, because to get the right sound and everything they, they made a lower roof. But when you see that, it really gets you. And then I just started playing this hymn. And Spooner Oldham is one of the most beautiful, beautiful gospel players on the organ ... it's just great. I mean he's just alive with it.
So I've learned a lot from him over the years, just listening to him. So all the passing chords and the blending of things together ... but all hymns seem to have these little passages on the piano between them that sets up the next verse, kind of gets everybody in the key and kicks it around and gets ready to go. So I found myself just playing this and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Still don't.
Neil Young
Prairie Wind Companion CD - Interview with Jody Denberg
October 2005