Old King is about my dog Elvis, a blue tick hound that Ben Keith found for me in Nashville. Ben and my wife Pegi gave Elvis to me for Christmas. I will never forget his face looking at me outside the top of a gift wrapped box. Elvis was a great dog. . . . got in a lot of trouble though. Neil Young NYA - Now Showing in the Hearse Theater March 10, 2020

My dog's name is really Elvis, so I changed the name to King to avoid confusion. Neil Young Harvest Moon press conference, Milano, Italy October 21, 1992

Here's a story 'bout my dog. You've probably heard a lot of stories about my dog. I'm going to tell you the story about how he died. My dog had a lot of things going on. He used to travel with me on my tour bus. His name was Elvis. He's driving around on Jimi Henrdix' bus now. But while he was with me he did a lot of interesting things. One Christmas, yeah one Christmas he bought cars for everyone in the family!! But no ... that's not true. One Christmas we went out to find a Christmas tree with Elvis. We took Elvis out, Elvis used to like riding in the back of the truck. A big pick-up truck, one of those, what do you call them? king cab or crew cab, four door. Cool truck, I like it. Anyway, we used to spend a lot of time in the truck. He had in the back a little bowl. It was against the law for him to be in the back there, but he liked it back there, so I let him go back there anyway. If he saw a police car he'd go through the window and got in the back seat!! So anyway, we were looking for trees and Elvis was out running around and going up these rows of trees you were supposed to chop down and put in the back of the truck, and there were a lot of trees and we didn't mind chopping them down. So anyway, we couldn't find a tree we liked, so we went home without a tree. Yeah, that's right, yeah we had to get the tree somewhere else. We couldn't decide. The family couldn't make up it's mind and so Elvis, you know, he was running all over the place, scaring everybody. So I got him back in the truck and we're heading back up the road, this country road, driving along, and Elvis was back in the back of the truck, and everything's fine. We stopped to get some ice cream for the kids, yeah we did. We got out and he was gone, looked in the back and Elvis was missing. A few minutes later, a friend of mine pulled up in a truck and said, "Man, did you see your dog??" "Well, no I've just realised he's not there now, what did he do? "Well, he jumped out of your truck at about fifty miles an hour, back there, on the pavement." "Oh, is he dead or what?" "No, no, he's fine", he told me, "No, I just saw him going by, his face kind of ... (makes expression), then he kinda gee'd up, and then he just gotta hold of everything and took off." "Oh wow, well let's go back and see if we can find him." So going back to look for him, we couldn't find him. Then, later that night I got a call and he was, he'd been found up near a quarry somewhere, and just kinda looked in there, and was hanging out, was on his way home, I think. He could find his way home from anywhere. So I went up he was kinda really ... So we put him in the truck and went back. I wrote a song about him. His name is King in the song. A hound, a hound dog. He changed colors all the time, especially in the late sixties. Neil Young Beacon Theater, New York City, New York, USA February 18, 1992 [Transcribed by Adrian Matthews in Broken Arrow 49]