The song that Neil Young said is one of his favorites

Born in Toronto, Canada back in 1945, Neil Young started his musical career in 1963 and became in the following decades one of the most prolific and successful songwriters of all time.

Besides being a praised solo artist he was also a member of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Only as a solo artist, he simply released, until 2024, 44 studio albums and 22 live albums. So it’s really hard for him to answer which are some of his favorite songs but he once revealed which is one of them and explained why.

The song that Neil Young said is one of his favorites

In an interview with Dan Rather back in 2013 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage), the Canadian musician was asked which were some of his favorites from his career. Young explained that they were actually all the same to him and always left that to the audience to choose. However, when Dan Rather asked him about “Harvest Moon”, the musician revealed that the song was actually one of his favorites.

“That’s one of my favorite songs because it’s a real song about real feelings I kind of remember when I first started writing the melody and everything I was on my boat in the Caribbean. I started writing this melody and then finally the whole thing came to me (and) then I had the words. What really touched me about that song, even more than singing the song, even though it was fun to do it and make the record. Linda Ronstadt came in and put these beautiful vocals on and it blew my mind how well it all turned out.”

He continued:

“But the thing was that people come up to me now and they say we played that at our wedding, we played that song when we first met, things like that. A romantic atmosphere of the song, there’s something about it that brings that out on people. So it’s interesting, it’s nice to see it’s like if you’re a farmer and you’re out there and you’re throwing these seeds out and everything. Then you reach in this other bag and throw out the seeds.”

“Suddenly there’s like eight or ten cows out there just all checking out those seeds. Now, what’s the difference between that one and the other ones? I don’t know but there they are. They’re all beautiful, blue-eyed, big eyelashes, cows, looking at you, you know. It’s all good, it’s perfect. They’re so happy to have the food. I mean, what happened? I don’t know what happened. But that’s the same thing that happened with that song,” Neil Young said.

“Harvest Moon” is the title track of the 1992 album released by the musician, which he co-produced with Ben Keith. Other famous tracks from that record are “Unknown Legend” and “From Hank to Hendrix“.

The song “Harvest Moon” was also released as a single at the time, peaking at number 5 on Canadian charts. Although he co-produced the album with Ben Keith, this track was produced by only Neil himself.

He said “Harvest Moon” was a sequel to “Harvest” (1972)

20 years before releasing “Harvest Moon”, Young had released one of the most important albums of his career: “Harvest” (1972). That record had songs like “Heart of Gold”, “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done”.

In an interview with Q magazine in 1992, the musician said that he felt that “Harvest Moon” was a sequel to “Harvest”.

“Now that it’s created, it seems to be related to Harvest. But when I started work on it, I had no idea that it was gonna be like that. The first thing I did was to finish a song called You And Me, which I’d started writing in 1975. Then I wrote a few more songs until I had enough to start thinking about doing a session.”

“I began to figure out which musicians to use. Once I’d written down the various names and started calling them, I realized, this is the same band I used on Harvest. So it was the songs which dictated who I played with. Luckily, there was no problem getting the guys together again. Everybody was available; it all happened real easy,” Neil Young said.