Neil Young’s classic written on a piece of newspaper

Neil Young he often acted on impulse, using his heart and guts more than reason and planning. One of his classics, “Like a Hurricane”was written this way, straight away. It so happened that in the summer of 1975, he and some friends were bar-hopping in La Honda, California, when the group stopped at a scenic spot to snort some cocaine.

As the Canadian musician himself told Uncut: “We were all high, completely stoned. We were out partying. I wrote it when I couldn’t sing. I was on vocal rest. It was crazy, I was whistling it. I wrote a lot of songs when I couldn’t talk.”

Young wrote the lyrics on a piece of newspaper in the back seat of a car 1950 DeSoto Suburbana huge car belonging to the road manager and video producer of CSNY, Taylor Phelps. When he returned home, he arranged the chords on a keyboard mounted in an old pump organ in his living room. “There was nothing left of the original internal components. But it looked amazing and sounded divine with this psychedelic Univox Stringman in it… I played the damn thing all night. I finished the tune in five minutes, but I was so excited I couldn’t stop playing.”

Neil Young
he was unable to sing due to a vocal cord problem, he improvised it with i
Crazy Horse
on his ranch, that’s where
“Like a hurricane”
took shape. It was recorded in November 1975. The song appeared on several bootlegs and on Young’s unreleased album,
“Chrome Dreams”
before finally appearing on
“American Stars ‘N Bars”

1977, his eighth album.