[speaking about giving Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth a copy of the unreleased 1987 film Muddy Track during the Ragged Glory tour] There were shots of the road, moving back and forth, and then this distorted sound. That was the first time I really isolated it and took all those things out. I really enjoyed that and I think that, in some way, it is the essence of what the song is about, those things we do at the beginning and the end. Thurston came back and said, "Wow, you guys ought to make a whole record of that stuff." There is an order to it. I took 57 pieces that we called "sparks". We took them out, numbered them and disassociated them from the concerts that they came from. Of those 57 pieces, I chose 37. I had them all on a data base and I had all the keys and the lyrics that were in each piece all written down, and the location of the piece so I could tell what hall it was from, so that I could move from one hall to another so the sound wouldn't change so radically. If you listen to it a few times, you will see that it's almost like a song. Things come and go, hooks come back, it all cycles around. But it seems to degenerate also. By the time you get to the end, it's a little more frantic, a little more out of touch. It's starting to lose its mind a little Take that jazz bit in "Tonight's The Night". The video of that is cool because I'm not even playing. I'm holding my guitar up, the groove is playing, and every once in a while I blow at the strings. The wind going through the strings vibrates them and you get this "wuuuuuuwooooow sound". There are points in the video where the strings must have broken on my guitar seven or eight times. And then you get the sound of the broken strings crashing down on the pickups, which have octave dividers and tape repeat and all kinds of shit on the sound of my amp, which is way too loud anyway. The sound of that, man-it's like an explosion. If you play "Arc" loud, if you really crank it up in your car or something, it's very cool. "Arc" is the essence of "Weld". This is what's new about it. If you look at my music over the last 30 years and want to see where I'm at now, this is it. And it happens as soon as we lose the beat. We break it down, and then we're gone. Nothing else matters. It's like jazz or something. Where I'd really like to hear this played is in clubs - between records. Just put "Arc" on, play a record, fade "Arc" up for awhile, fade it down, play another record. Have it on between bands. It's refreshing. It clears the palate. Because of the fact that there's no beat. It's not an insult to your sensitivity in what kind of a groove you dig. There is no groove. Fuck that. Neil Young Melody Maker interview November 30, 1991