Song Analysis: "Old Man" by Neil Young

Doesn't everyone say they listen to "all kinds of music"? I suppose I like a variety of music, but I have a definite type that I like. My husband sometimes calls me "music Nazi" because I can be very opinionated about what I'm in the mood to hear. A lot of the contemporary music I like is moody British rock or singer-songwriter stuff. I really like classic rock; growing up, I would listen to anything my dad liked, which was mainly 60s and 70s rock. These days, I'm trying to do a better job of keeping up with contemporary music. Probably my favorite band at the moment is Muse, a British rock group. I went to a concert of theirs a couple months ago, and it was epic. With all music, vocals are really important to me; I was in choir for many years and always have to pick apart the singing. I tend toward real epic belt-it-out songs, not those ones where it seems like the singer is mumbling with no purpose.

The stuff that really gets to me are songs that seem to have some history behind them, a timeless sound. "Old Man" by Neil Young is one of my all-time favorite songs; it's no wonder I've been accused of having the musical tastes of a 60-year-old man. I think this song is incredibly profound. I'm not really sure what it's "about," but I love it anyway.

Old man, look at my life
I'm a lot like you were

Old man look at my life
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two

Love lost, such a cost
Give me things
that don't get lost
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man, take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes
Run around the same old town
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
But I'm all alone at last
Rolling home to you

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true

Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were

I looked around online and found this quote, which is how Neil Young explained this song in live performance:

About that time when I wrote "Heart of Gold" and I was touring, I had also -- just, you know, being a rich hippie for the first time -- I had purchased a ranch, and I still live there today. And there was a couple living on it that were the caretakers, an old gentleman named Louis Avala and his wife Clara. And there was this old blue Jeep there, and Louis took me for a ride in this blue Jeep. He gets me up there on the top side of the place, and there's this lake up there that fed all the pastures, and he says, "Well, tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?" And I said, "Well, just lucky, Louie, just real lucky." And he said, "Well, that's the darndest thing I ever heard." And I wrote this song for him.

I had always gotten the feeling that through this song, Young was talking to a particular man; I thought maybe it was his father. The song sounds almost bitter in parts: "Twenty four and there's so much more"--given that Young found wealth and fame at an early age, it suggests he still needed other things ("someone to love me") to make his life meaningful. That is one thing that a young person and an old person would have in common.

I definitely have a thing for the singer-songwriter genre; this song is part country, part folk. It was written in the 70s, and although this song isn't really political, I'm fascinated by the music of the 60s and 70s and the anti-war songs. When I taught English 11 two years ago, the required text was The Things They Carried (one of my absolute favorites), and I did a short protest-music unit with it. One song I used was "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, a song about the shooting of college students by the National Guard during a war protest. I also used "Fortunate Son" by CCR and a few others. If I teach English 11 again, I'll definitely expand upon this mini-unit. Students could find a song that protests something and share it with the class: what is being protested and why, and how is the message being delivered.