Neil Young Plays Rare Gem for the First Time “In Like 100 Years”

Neil Young has no shortage of gems in his extensive musical catalog. The Godfather of Grunge railed against social injustice in songs like “Southern Man” and “Pocahontas.” However, a thriving six-decade music career means that many of those gems rarely see the light of day onstage. Recently, the multi Grammy-winning artist dusted off one such song for only the third time ever.

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Watch Neil Young Play “Ambulance Blues” During Netherlands Show

In 1974, Neil Young released his fifth studio album, On the Beach. Despite underperforming on the charts, the album is widely regarded among the Canadian legend’s most heartbreaking works. This is particularly true of its closer, “Ambulance Blues.”

The nine-minute epic is hard to pin down, with even Young admitting in the third verse, It’s hard to say the meaning of this song. With Toronto’s fading counterculture as the backdrop, “Ambulance Blues” touches on “everything from from political corruption to fading friendships.”

While Young regularly performed “Ambulance Blues” at solo acoustic shows in the late ’90s and early 2000s, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had only played it with a live band twice before Tuesday’s (July 1) show at Drafbaan Stadspark in Groningen, The Netherlands.

For some reason, Young decided to dust it off for that particular set, warning the audience, “I haven’t played this in like 100 years. We’ll see what happens.”

Tuesday’s show marked the “Harvest Moon” singer’s first time to play the rare track with the Chrome Hearts. He last performed “Ambulance Blues” in 2016, at a private show in Paris for Carmignac CEO Édouard Carmignac.

[RELATED: “Oh, We Screwed Up”: Neil Young Reveals Biggest Regret About Iconic CSNY Track “Woodstock”]

What Young Regrets About “Ambulance Blues”

While it certainly seems like a quintessential Neil Young track, the now 79-year-old folk-rock icon has admitted the melody for “Ambulance Blues” isn’t exactly original.

In a 1992 interview with the French Guitare & Claviers magazine, Young confessed that he unwittingly borrowed the guitar riff in “Ambulance Blues” from Bert Jansch’s’s 1965 song “Needle of Death.”

He admitted to feeling “really bad” about this in his 2002 biography Shakey, writing, “I loved that melody. I didn’t realize ‘Ambulance Blues’ starts exactly the same. I knew that it sounded like something that he did, but when I went back and heard that record again, I realized that I copped his thing.”

Featured image by Jim Dyson/Redferns