The Needle and the Damage Done Neil Young (cover)

There are about a thousand covers of this song on YT. Now there's about a thousand and one. This was recorded on my old open reel tape deck back in the '70s. I had just bought a new acoustic guitar made by a new company called Takamine. You may have heard of them. This song is from Neil's "Harvest" album, which I still have my vinyl copy of, very worn. This is a song about drugs and how they can kill you or your friends as was the case for Neil when he lost his band mate, Danny Whitten, from "Crazy Horse" to a heroin overdose. I also had a friend who got hooked on heroin. In the late '60s my brother and three of his friends enlisted in the Army because they heard that if you enlisted you would have a better chance to avoid being sent to Vietnam. Wrong. Although it worked for my brother, who was sent to Germany, his three friends were sent to Nam. One flew helicopters and saw a lot of action but thankfully returned home safe. One was in tanks and showed me pictures of what he saw that are still burned in my brain. The other was a Medic and after seeing all the horrors of war up close, began to use drugs to deal with his situation. The easy access to drugs in Vietnam made it too hard for him to resist. He came home a changed person and after seeing him continue his heavy drug use when he came back I had to avoid him or get caught up in that lifestyle. I lost track of him in the late '70s and haven't seen him since... Thanks Neil, for writing this song. I hope it makes people think twice before they ruin their life with drugs.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Neil
• Young
• Harvest
• Takamine
• Acoustic
• Guitar
• Folk
• Rock
• 70s
• music

[buniluvr]

Sweet! Always room for more! You sound great; love your vocals :) First-rate recording. You rocked it :)

cheers

julie

[jrsn2cars]

@buniluvr Thanks Julie! Means a lot coming from you! I love your version too! Thanks for checking this out!

John

[zemzamiimad]

this is the best rendition i've seen on youtube keep on rockin :)

[jrsn2cars]

@zemzamiimad You just made my day! Thanks for your  kind comment!

John

[jrsn2cars]

@stokedstang Well said Jim.

Thanks for watching and commenting!

John

[bigblockmustang]

Stopped by!

Les