The Needle and the Damage Done

I bought my first guitar (above front) for a hundred bucks in 1972 at age twenty. It is a pretty little six-string from Tijuana and I immediately set about to learn how to play and so practiced every day. That same year, Neil Young put out his Harvest album with a song that I have never been able to get out of my head – The Needle and the Damage Done. Sometime early on I sat down and figured out how to pick out the notes so that I could play it just as Neil does on the album. In the nearly 50 years since I first heard him pick out that tune, I have played it so many times that it seems now that it must be etched into my very soul.

It may seem like a tough song to play, but it's really not – it's just syncopated and you have to learn how to just flow with it. I don't really know why it means so much to me. I never fell into abusing drugs when I was a kid or lost any close friends to overdose, but I grew up in an era where a lot of that was going on. I guess it is a sad song. It's about damaged people and misfits, and like Neil sings, there's “a little part of it in everyone” that each of us can relate to. Maybe sometimes I feel I should be a hero and save others, rescuing them from their sorrow and loss. Or maybe it is just a song that takes me to a place in a long ago time that I like to go from time to time – back to my hippy youth –  an era that formed the foundation of who I am today.