The Needle and the Damage Done
Two minutes on addiction, taped live at UCLA's Royce Hall in January 1971 and placed unchanged on Harvest.
Two minutes on addiction, taped live at UCLA's Royce Hall in January 1971 and placed unchanged on Harvest.

Tinnitus from the Ragged Glory tour pushed Young back to acoustic guitars, and Ronstadt shadows him line for line.

James Taylor picked up a six-string banjo he had never played, Ronstadt harmonised, and Young's ranch caretaker got a song.
Piano and Bill Peterson's flugelhorn, cut at Young's Topanga home studio, written for a Dean Stockwell screenplay.
Young wrote it on doctor-ordered voice rest, whistling the melody, then chased Sampedro's Stringman chords for eight electric minutes.
Written in Topanga during a 103-degree fever, double drop D tuning, and a solo that stays on one note.

Young's tone in double drop D, a blown console that erased the last verse, and a Franco-era Spanish ban.
Young wrote it in bed with a 103-degree fever, and Crazy Horse stretched it to nine ragged minutes.

Recorded live at San Francisco's Boarding House in 1978, and Devo's Mothersbaugh handed Young the phrase that titled the album.

Sampedro joked about the free world after a Soviet tour collapsed, and Young debuted the song in Seattle unrehearsed.

A back injury kept Young seated with an acoustic guitar; Taylor and Ronstadt were in Nashville and sang behind him.