Neil Young has provided the music world with more than a thousand songs during his six-decade-long career.
His discography is extremely diverse and as diverse as modern music itself. Although it contains some defining songs of countless generations, it also contains a series of missteps.
He was always striving for something new, pioneering folk harmonies in the 1960s before becoming the godfather of grunge in the following decade.
For some time, particularly in the 1960s, artists were often expected to cover the work of the founding composers who came before them.
The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones happily added numerous cover songs to their albums to help boost track counts and pump up full-length records.
Young has covered many artists including Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and others. However, there was one artist that he accidentally covered while composing one of his original songs, Ambulance Blues.
On that track, Young admitted to teasing folk guitar icon Bert Jansch by copying his early melody.
Young said of Jansch’s use: “I always feel bad that I stole that tune from Bert Jansch. Bullshit. Have you ever heard that song? needle of death? I liked that tune very much. I didn’t realize ambulance blues It starts exactly the same way. I knew it sounded like he did something, but when I went back and listened to that record again, I realized I broke his point… I felt really bad about it.
“And years later, further on the beachI wrote the tune of ambulance blues Perfectly stylizing the guitar part needle of death. I didn’t even know about it and someone else brought it to my attention,” Neil Young also concluded.
