I got one more song I'd like to sing for you. It's another new one. I know you haven't heard a lot of these songs. I haven't had a chance to sing them for people so. This is a song here, a song here I wrote in a motel room in Los Angeles ... [Neil describes Honey Slides] ... anyway back to the motel. We were just sitting around having a few Honey Slides. They slow you down quite a bit. There's nothing to really get fast for anyways. We were all sitting around playing these chords, playing with my friends, Rusty Kershaw, Ben Keith, sitting around the motel room, the TV was on. Hadn't been home in two months by then, trying to get my act together. Neil Young The Bottom Line, New York City, New York, USA May 16, 1974

"We didn’t work every day, we only worked when we felt really inspired,” said Kershaw, who describes how “Motion Pictures,” a below-sea-level downer dedicated to Carrie, oozed out on the spot. “Me and Ben and Neil were sittin’ in Ben’s room. Neil started hummin’ somethin’, and I started playin’ along with the melody on the steel. Ben started playin’ bass, it sounded so goddamn pretty. Neil picked up a pen and just wrote the words right then.” The players all squeezed into the Confidential, rolled into Sunset Sound “and put that motherfucker down while it was still smeared all over us." Rusty Kershaw/Jimmy McDonough "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough 2002

The sick situation between Young and Snodgress would spur one of the great periods in Young’s art, beginning in May 1974 and lasting through January 1975. The songs poured out of him like blood from a wound. “Homefires,” “Bad News,” “Love Is a Rose” (a top-ten hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1975), “Barefoot Floors,” “Love/Art Blues,” “Through My Sails,” “Old Homestead,” “Hawaii.” A little later came “Star of Bethlehem,” “Separate Ways,” “Kansas.” (“Motion Pictures,” Young said, was written “before I knew—when I could sense.”) Neil Young/Jimmy McDonough "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough 2002

Sometime in 1973 before I bought the Ragland, the touring and constant womanizing finally caught up with me. I was growing further and further from Carrie. During the recording of On the Beach I did a song called “Motion Pictures.” I did the recording with Ben Keith and Rusty Kershaw and we were all high on “honey slides,” a little concoction that Rusty’s wife, Julie, cooked up. Honey slides were made with grass and honey cooked together and stirred in a frying pan until a black gooey substance was left in the pan. A couple of spoonfuls of that and you would be laid-back into the middle of next week. The record was slow and dreamy, kind of underwater without bubbles. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012