Neil Young has provided the music world with more than a thousand songs during his six-decade career.
His discography is packed to the brim and as diverse as any in modern music. While it contains some of the defining anthems of countless generations, it also contains a series of missteps.
Always striving for something new, he pioneered folk harmonies in the 1960s before becoming the Godfather of Grunge in the following decade.
For a time, especially in the 1960s, artists were often expected to cover the work of foundational musicians who came before them.
The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones have happily added a host of covers to their albums in an effort to boost track numbers and help them release full-length records.
Young has covered a range of artists, including Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and more. However, there was one artist he accidentally covered when composing one of his original songs, Ambulance blue.
On that song, Young admitted to ripping off folk guitar icon Bert Jansch by copying his opening melody.
Young said of using Jansch: “I always feel bad that I stole that melody from Bert Jansch. F**k. You ever heard that song The needle of death? I loved that melody. I didn’t know Ambulance blue starts exactly the same. I knew it sounded like something he did, but when I went back and heard that record again, I realized I had done his thing… I felt really bad about that.
‘And years later, still On the beachfor which I wrote the melody Ambulance blue by completely styling the guitar part Needle of death. I wasn’t even aware of it, and someone else called my attention to it,” concluded Neil Young.
