"Well we're drinkin' and we're dancin' and the band is really happenin'." The story of my wife's and my early years together. Your song became an anthem. It showed up on every mix-tape and then every mix-CD I made for years. It's still a go-to song when I want to feel young and crazy, even though you were my age when you recorded it. What I have always admired about this song and your songs in general is the way you can be both good-humoredly sarcastic and overtly spiritual at the same time. Something I have always aspired to. My wife will quickly tell you that I mostly fall short. I have here a poem of mine that gives, I think, a little sense of how my mind works. I apologize that your name is not in the title or the poem:

I WONDER WHAT NEIL YOUNG LISTENS TO IN HIS CAR

I am told Pythagoras believed that music could heal the soul and even
Align the soul with the cosmos itself so that the soul was in harmony
With the music of the spheres.
Whatever that means.
Today I will likely hear my lawn mower, the power washer,
Some wind chimes, the incessant low ringing
In my ears, the neighbors’ dogs, the distant rush
And hum of the interstate, a train or two blaring
On the next block. Bob Dylan in my car. Blah, blah, blah.
I doubt any of this is what Pythagoras meant. His is
A transcendent notion, and God knows there’s plenty of
Worldly noise I’d like to transcend, but I’m an earthbound
Knucklehead. I walk head-on into tree limbs, then listen
To the music of concussion.
And Frost, in “Birches” asks that
“. . . no fate willfully misunderstand me and half-grant
what I wish and snatch me away not to return.” I get that.
Yesterday I went up there on that blessed hill in Franklinville
And visited the graves of my brother and my father. My father,
My old man, had a decent run at life, just shy of 82 years.
But my brother Tom; what music was he hearing when
He jumped, just 29 and profoundly drunk, off of the
Golden Gate Bridge? The tape in his abandoned car played
“The Fine Young Cannibals.” Some will remember the song:
“She Drives Me Crazy.” That could be it I guess. Love.
Frost also says, “Earth is the place for love. I don’t know where
it’s likely to go better.”
So, “the music of the spheres.”
Is it the music of Love? Did my brother hear a few moments
Of joyful harmony before the great silence? Will I?

You have been in my head since the late 60's, Leonard, when my sister wore your SONGS OF album out on my dad's stereo. All these years later, my wife surprised me last year with tickets to your show in Kingston, Ontario. It was one of the finest concerts I have attended, second only, maybe, to the Neil Young Shocking Pinks show at the New York State Fair in 1983. That show, in a roundabout way, brought my wife and me together. Music keeps us together often when ". . . the whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it's once for the devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights
we're busted in the blinding lights. . . ."
Just so you know though, it isn't CLOSING TIME for me just yet, as you clearly understand.