Patrick Brealey

I’ve always enjoyed this quote from Neil Young when he was asked by author Paul Zollo in the book “Song­writ­ers on Song­writ­ing” about how song­writ­ers should get in touch with their song­writ­ing spirit. Neil responds thusly:

“Stop try­ing. Let the force be with you. [Laughs] May the force be with you! I loved that movie when it came out and they said that. I said, ‘Yeah, right on. That’s exactly right.‘
You begin to rec­og­nize it after you’ve writ­ten a few songs. You start to rec­og­nize that when you have an idea for a song and you start hear­ing a melody over and over again with words in your head, that’s when you should write the song. If you don’t have an idea and you don’t hear any­thing going over and over in your head, don’t sit down and try to write a song. You know, go and mow the lawn.”

The thing is, when­ever I pic­ture Neil Young’s lawn I always imag­ine it to be lus­ciously overgrown.