28. Neil Young, “Time Fades Away” (Time Fades Away, 1973)
Neil did fans a real disservice when he didn’t pull this and one or two more numbers from Time Fades Away for Decade, which would have rendered the patchy, long out-of-print album even less crucial a purchase than Everybody Knows or Harvest. Instead, he just included this immortal explanation of the time in Decade’s liners: “[“Heart Of Gold”] put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.” This song is where you stop hearing highway, as Neil trades a Maya Angelou quote for “hey hey hey, smoke weed every day.”
