Songs
According to Young in his memoir Waging Heavy Peace, the songs on the album represent a variety of different themes. Some of the songs had been recently written, while others dated back to his time with Buffalo Springfield: "The songs were gathered from the past and the future, mostly dreams, nothing concrete; they were mostly created as vehicles for record-making, like 'Here We Are in the Years,' or personal expression and longing, such as 'I’ve Been Waiting for You.' Some of them were stream-of-consciousness, like 'The Last Trip to Tulsa,' with no preconceived thought behind them. They were just songs. There was no big pressure on me at that time to top anything I had already done. That came later. The sky was the limit. I had no idea what was coming my way."
"The Emperor of Wyoming" and "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" are both instrumentals. Young recorded many such instrumentals during his time with Buffalo Springfield. One such instrumental, "Falcon Lake (Ash on the Floor)" would be reworked into "Here We Are in the Years". "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" is a string quartet performance of an instrumental Young had previously recorded during his time with the band. He would later incorporate the song into the "Country Girl Suite" on CSNY's Déjà Vu. Young would also revisit the melody of "The Emperor of Wyoming" during his mid-1980s country era, recording the song with lyrics as "Leaving the Top 40 Behind". Musicians on "The Emperor of Wyoming" were Neil Young – guitar; Jim Messina – bass; George Grantham – drums; Also – strings. It was Recorded at Wally Heider Recording Studios, Hollywood, on August 23, 1968, with production by David Briggs and Neil Young. "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" was recorded at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, on October 17, 1968, with an unknown string quartet. It was produced by Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder, and Neil Young.
"The Loner" was released as a single. The guitar driven rock song employs D modal tuning, which Young learned alongside Stephen Stills, who used it on "Bluebird". Stills would later cover the song on his 1976 album Illegal Stills. The track's guitar sound presages Young's work on his next album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Young acknowledges this in a 1973 radio interview: "On my first album, I like "The Loner." I felt like I was getting into something different there, starting to." At the March 7, 1970 Fillmore concert with CSNY, Young remembers reading one early review of the song that wrote "this snappy little item should send Young rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of the Buffalo Springfield," which pleased Young and boosted his confidence in his solo career. The musicians on the track were Neil Young – guitar, pipe organ, vocal; Jim Messina – bass; and George Grantham – drums. It was recorded at TTG Recording Studios, Los Angeles, on September 28, 1968, with production by David Briggs & Neil Young.
"The Old Laughing Lady" is the oldest song on the album, having been written three years prior. Young wrote the song before his time in The Mynah Birds, while playing coffee houses in Michigan, across the border from Ontario. He remembers in Shakey: "I had a series of gigs; maybe Joni and Chuck Mitchell might’ve gotten these gigs in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area: solo acoustic, before the Mynah Birds. Chess Mate coffeehouse, an old folk club in Detroit, Livernois and One-eleventh. Very near there is where the White Tower is. 'The Old Laughing Lady' -- I was having some coffee and wrote it on napkins. I don’t know what prompted it. It came out on a napkin, no guitar. Hangin' out in a coffee shop." He explained further to a concert audience: "We had come out of the Chess Mate Club and found out that someone had left with part of our car and we had to wait for a while in this restaurant. We had to wait for almost a day. It was out of sight. Guys propositioning me at four o'clock in the morning. I wrote it out on a napkin in true folk tradition. Sounds very good. And then I went home and put it in D-modal tuning which was very hip. At the time, everything was in D-modal. You know what D-modal tuning is? You tune the E strings on each end down to D. Leave the other ones where they are. And play as if nothing ever happened. And you get D-modal. Everything sounds different because it's tuned different." Young first recorded the song while a member of Buffalo Springfield, and a demo of the song appears on the 2000 Buffalo Springfield box set. Young would frequently perform the song as part of his solo acoustic sets in subsequent years, notably during his 1976 tours with Crazy Horse, in which he appended an additional short song, "Guilty Train". In April 1976, Young hired Scottish filmmaker Murray Grigor to film video of Young performing the song while busking outside a Glasgow subway station.
"The Old Laughing Lady" was recorded in Hollywood, the same day and with the same musicians and string quartet as on "I've Loved Her So Long" and "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill". It was produced by Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder & Neil Young. Musicians were Neil Young – vocal; Ry Cooder – guitar; Jack Nitzsche – electric piano; Carol Kaye – bass; Earl Palmer – drums; Choir: Merry Clayton, Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Gloria Jones, Sherlie Matthews, and Gracia Nitzsche.
"I've Loved Her So Long", in addition to Young on vocals; Ry Cooder on guitar; Jack Nitzsche on electric piano; Jim Messina on bass; and Earl Palmer on drums; had Merry Clayton, Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Gloria Jones, Sherlie Matthews, and Gracia Nitzsche on backing choir, and the additional instruments of piano, trumpet, trombone, oboe, clarinet, strings and timpani. It was recorded at Sunwest Recording Studios, Hollywood, on October 7, 1968; and was produced by Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder, and Neil Young. The song would be included in setlists during Young's 1969 tour with CSNY, with Graham Nash providing harmony vocals. One such performance appears on the Neil Young Archives website.
"The Last Trip to Tulsa" was recorded at TTG Recording Studios, Los Angeles, on October 1, with production by David Briggs and Neil Young, who accompanies himself on guitar. It is a pot-inspired stream-of-consciousness narrative that Young intended to be humorous. He explains in a 1995 interview: "I always thought there was a funny side to my music. But see, my sense of humor hadn't really been appreciated at that point in my career, it hadn't even been noticed. I mean, 'Last Trip to Tulsa,' that's my idea of a really funny song and that's just one of 'em." Young thought of Tulsa as representative of the southern United States. "Tulsa really represents to me the United States...that feeling of being in the South. The song is sort of an adventure of me down there. The more you listen to it, depending on how much you've been through or what your experiences have been, you can take the verses...any way you want. But the thing is, when I wrote them, they all had a continuity to the way I thought. So I believe that if they had a continuity the way I put them together that they'll fit with any set of images and work all the way through." In an April 1970 Rolling Stone interview, Young expressed regrets about the song: "After the album came out that's the one I really didn't like, you know, and I still don't, but a lot of people really dug that better than anything else on that whole album. See, it's strange. Just because it doesn't happen to be my favorite part, and I know a lot of people really didn't like it, you know, and I can dig why. Because it sounds overdone." Young would later perform the song live with a full electric band in 1973 and release it as a B-side of the "Time Fades Away" single.
