{"id":536808,"date":"2026-03-21T13:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536808\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T13:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:54:12","slug":"the-classic-song-neil-young-accidentally-plagiarised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536808\/","title":{"rendered":"The classic song Neil Young accidentally plagiarised"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neil<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 21 March 2026 8:53, UK <\/p>\n

He\u2019s one of the most prolific and respected songwriters of all time, but Neil Young<\/a> does have the odd skeleton in his musical closet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Having provided over one thousand songs over a six-decade-long career, Young\u2019s discography is packed to the rafters and as diverse as any in modern music. While it contains some of the defining anthems of countless generations, it also has a series of missteps, too. He\u2019s always striving for something new, pioneering folk harmonies in the 1960s before becoming the Godfather of Grunge in the very next decade. <\/p>\n

This artistic focus on \u2018the next thing\u2019 has meant that he usually avoids covers, repeated ideas, or any truly tangible threads of inspiration from a notable source. At the outset of his career, this move set him apart.<\/p>\n

For a while, in the 1960s especially, artists were often expected to cover the work of foundational musicians who had come before them. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones were all happy to add a host of cover songs to their albums in a bid to help boost the track numbers and help them to pump out full-length records. <\/p>\n

It also gave them a chance to pay tribute to the heroes who had come before them. Rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, after all, was still in its infancy, so this swapshop of ideas and songs helped to inject it with a certain degree of community and engagement \u2013 vital to the formation of the \u2018movement\u2019 as a whole. But, for Young, he usually reserved covers for special occasions.<\/p>\n

\"Neil<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Young has covered a whole host of artists, including Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and more. However, there was one artist whom he accidentally covered when composing one of his original songs, \u2018Ambulance Blues\u2019. On that track, Young admitted to ripping off folk guitar icon Bert Jansch by copying his opening melody.<\/p>\n

Taken from Young\u2019s legendary album On The Beach, \u2018Ambulance Blues\u2019 is said to have many inspirations, including an apparent bad review, a 1945 movie titled All Along the Navajo Trail and the overriding feeling of aligning the trauma of the past with the possibility of the future. <\/p>\n

But did Neil Young copy his defining anthem?<\/p>\n

For many, the nine-minute track that can sometimes feel like an internal diatribe put to music can be rightly considered one of Young\u2019s greatest works<\/a>. It exemplifies his anti-commercial approach and searing ability to capture emotion in amber. In short, it feels entirely \u2018Young\u2019. However, the delicate opening line was not only inspired by Jansch but stolen from him completely.<\/p>\n

As part of Shakey, Young said of the usage of Jansch: \u201cI always feel bad I stole that melody from Bert Jansch. F\u2013k. You ever heard that song \u2018The Needle of Death\u2019? I loved that melody. I didn\u2019t realise \u2018Ambulance Blues\u2019 starts exactly the same. I knew that it sounded like something that he did, but when I went back and heard that record again, I realised that I copped his thing\u2026 I felt really bad about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Needle of Death\u2019, written by the Scottish folk artist and released in 1965 on his self-titled debut LP,is often considered his finest work. A deeply personal look at the troubling amount of heroin addictions that were infiltrating the country at the time, Jansch attached the song\u2019s creation to the death of his friend Buck Polly and the speed with which heroin could take over, he said of the loss. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe [Jansch and Polly] went up to Goodge Street,\u201d he said, \u201ca pub there called Finch\u2019s. Buck scored from a dealer. And the next day, I\u2019d heard he\u2019d died.\u201d It was a shocking tragedy, but not an unfamiliar one for the period.<\/p>\n

Young had taken on a similar storyline for his song \u2018The Needle and the Damage Done\u2019 in 1972, two years before writing \u2018Ambulance Blues\u2019. That track would be written about his former Crazy Horse collaborator Danny Whitten, who also succumbed to heroin use.<\/p>\n

Jansch was a giant influence on Young, who claimed he was a pivotal guitarist in the industry. \u201cBert Jansch is on the same level as Jimi Hendrix<\/a>,\u201d shared Young in 1992. \u201cThat first record of his is epic. It came from England, and I was especially taken by \u2018The Needle of Death,\u2019 such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cAnd years later, on On the Beach, I wrote the melody of \u2018Ambulance Blues\u2019 by styling the guitar part completely on \u2018Needle of Death\u2019. I wasn\u2019t even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps in the ultimate tip of the hat from Young to Jansch, the former would cover \u2018Needle of Death\u2019 for his 2014 album A Letter Home, in the ultimate homage to both the song and the man behind it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 21 March 2026 8:53, UK He\u2019s one of the most prolific and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216,41987],"class_list":{"0":"post-536808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-neil-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}