What are Your Favourite Neil Young Lyrics?

I have a friend I've never seen
He hides his head inside a dream
Someone should call him and see
If he can come out
Try to lose the down that he's found

AND

To give a love, you've got to live a love
To live a love, you got to be part of
When will I see you again

 

Divine in its simplicity, probably my favorite lyric of all by Neil:

 

It's too dark to put the keys in my ignition,
And the morning sun is yet to climb my hood ornament.

 

Shelter me from the powder and the finger
Cover me with the thought that pulled the trigger
Think of me as one you'd never figured
Would fade away so young
With so much left undone
Remember me to my love,
I know I'll miss her.

 

At night when the sky is clear and the moon is shining down
My heart goes running back to you
I love the way you open up and let me in
So I go running back to you,
Over and over again.

Remember the nights of love and that moment on the beach
That wasn't really too long ago
But we paid the price of time, and now it's out of reach
And so the broken circle goes,
Over and over again

Somewhere in a fire of love, our dreams went up in smoke
We danced beneath silver rain
Upon the fields of green, where time was just a joke
And now the feeling's just the same,
Over and over again.

Over and over again my love
Over and over again with you
Over and over again my love
Over and over again with you.

 

When you see me fly away without you, shadow on the things you know. Feathers fall around you and show you the way to go.

He's the unforeseen danger, the keeper of the key to the lock.

And the world on a string doesn't mean a thing.

So I'll stop when I can; find some fried eggs and country ham. I'll find somewhere where they don't care who I am.

 

or

 

Lyrics from:
Through My Sails
Midnight On The Bay
Goin' Back
Love In Mind

 

Hate was just a legend
War was never known
People worked together
And they lifted many stones

And they carried them to the flatlands
But they died along the way
And they built up with their bare hands
What we still can't do today

 

This set of lyrics from the wonderful 'Ramada Inn' are to the point and powerful. In light of Neil's subsequent divorce this song takes on greater power and emotional heft. It certainly ranks in my top ten all time Neil Young songs, probably the only song post Ragged Glory to do so.

"Seem like lately things are changing
Seems like lately things are going south
A few drinks now and she hardly knows him
He just looks away and he checks out

And when she says "it's time for him to do something,
Maybe talk to his old friends who gave it up."
He just pours himself another tall one
Closes his eyes and says "that's enough"

 

Plenty of more poignant ones to choose and many greats have been mentioned up-thread, particularly from On the Beach & Thrasher but this one always puts a smile on my face.

It's too dark to put the keys in my ignition,
And the mornin' sun is yet to climb my hood ornament.
But before too long I might see those flashing red lights
Look out, mama, 'cause I'm comin' home tonight.

Think I'll roll another number for the road,
I feel able to get under any load.
Though my feet aren't on the ground,
I been standin' on the sound
Of some open-hearted people goin' down.


Total surprise that he played it as an encore on the Psychedelic Pill tour at the O2 in London.

 

There are tons of lyrics by Neil I love. I'll mention one of my favorites:

I used to build these buildings
I used to walk next to you
Their shadows tore us apart
And now we do what we do
Driven to the mountains high
Sunken in the cities deep
Livin' in our sleep.

I feel like goin' back
Back where there's nowhere to stay.

 

It's only a dream
just a memory without anywhere to stay

 

Am I missing some kind of sexual innuendo?

 

After all the sin we've had
I was hopin' that we'd turn bad

 

I love this part from Days That Used to Be (Ragged Glory album)

Talk to me, my long lost friend, tell me how you are
Are you happy with your circumstance, are you driving a new car
Does it get you where you wanna go, with a seven year warranty
Or just another hundred thousand miles away
From days that used to be.

 

In 1970 the poet Tom Clark published a little chapbook titled Neil Young that appropriated brief excerpts of Neil's lyrics and arranged them into short poems. My copy disappeared into the void long ago but I remember how beautiful many of them were. I recall (possibly imperfectly) one of them:

Silver rain on the mountain clover
Washes away until the music is over

 

I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away,
and she's gone to get a hit
She hates her life,
and what she's done to it
There's one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool.

 

Well, it wasn't supposed to go down that way
But they burned his brother, you know...

(O.k., maybe not my favorite lyrics, but dayum that's a stark album!)

 

All these years I thought it was "Answer in his hands"; suppose it's the same thing ;p

 

Workin' on that great Alaska pipeline
Many men were lost in the pipe
They went to fuelin' cars
How smog might turn to stars
Someday
Smog might turn to stars
Someday.

 

Don't know what happened to the guy, but he could write some really deep lyrics. Hope he resurfaces one day, there's still time.

 

So you'd like Time Fades Away
On a round CD at last?
I will sort that out today,
along with Journey Through The Past.

 

Campaigner

I am a lonely visitor.
I came too late to cause a stir,
Though I campaigned all my life
towards that goal.

The podium rocks in the crowded waves.
The speaker talks of the beautiful saves
That went down long before
he played this role
For the hotel queens and the magazines,
Test tube genes and slot machines

Hospitals have made him cry,
But there's always a freeway in his eye,
Though his beach just got
too crowded for his stroll.
Roads stretch out like healthy veins,
And wild gift horses strain the reins

 

Now that you found yourself
losing your mind
Are you here again?
Finding that what you once
thought was real
Is gone, and changing?