856. The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young) – Nick Benzie

This song from the album “Harvest” (1972) is about the way some of Neil Young’s musician friends became heroin addicts, in particular his Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, who later died of an overdose. The same theme came up again in “Tonight’s the Night”, a song about the heroin overdose and death of Bruce Berry, a roadie for Crazy Horse. On the handwritten liner notes included in the compilation album, “Decade”, Young said of the song, “I am not a preacher, but drugs killed a lot of great men.” It has been covered by various bands, including Duran Duran, Simple Minds, and The Pretenders, who lost members to drug-related deaths. English folk singer Laura Marling covered it on her August 2008 tour of Australia. It is sung here by Nick Benzie at a session of the Hong Kong Folk Society at the Canny Man in Wan Chai.