Will To Love 🐟 Traditional Cache

Will To Love

on American Stars 'N Bars
by Neil Young

"This is a song that I wrote in the middle of the night in front of my fireplace at the ranch that I think stands alone in its form and consciousness. It is a fairly long song that is pretty ambitious in a few ways. It was 1976.

I recorded this song on a little Sony cassette player that had “Life is a shit sandwich. Eat it or starve” on a plastic strip label right below the Sony brand marking.

Sitting on the floor late at night, I recorded it with the cassette three feet from the fire, and you can hear the crackling and hissing of the fire as I played my old Martin guitar and sang “Will to Love,” the story of a salmon swimming upstream.

Laden with my own feelings of love and survival, the recording stands alone in my work for its audio vérité style, a live sketch of a massive production number with only the highlights presented, fragments of parts, the sound of the fire, the underwater sound created by vibrato."

Neil Young
Waging Heavy Peace
September 2012

I made it through once on the tape. I never have sung it except for that one time.

It was on a full moon. What a night it was, man, unbelievable. I ordered all of the instruments from Studio Instrument Rentals, the drums, the bass, the amps, the vibes, all the percussion stuff.

I just walked from one instrument to another and did them all, mostly in the first take. And then mixed it at the end of the night. It took us about eight hours to finish the whole thing and make it sound like it does now.

I think as a piece of music, and sound and lyric and spirit, it's one of the best. And that's why it's important for me as an artist to able to record a song when I want to. I will never stand for anybody trying to take that away from me.

Neil Young
Interview with Bill Flanagan 1986

This cache you on a short bush walk along a creek with a few waterfalls
that eventualy leads into and around Lake Parramatta.

If you linger in this intersection of creek and stream under the shade of the palm
you can often hear frogs and birds and the gurgling of the water. A very nice little spot.

Lyrics for Will To Love at Sugar Mountain website.