NEIL YOUNG Sugar Mountain REACTION- There's something special bout his voice when he sings like that

[@davesigmon8144]

It's a superb song of Neil's with his knowing he can never go back to that childhood innocence. His voice and his melodic flair are unsurpassable.

[@chrismillar6879]

The Story I heard , there was a Teen Club he used to hang out at, he had friends that were younger but once you turned 20 and were no longer a Teenager you were not allowed to enter the Venue. No more Sugar Mountain.

[@DENVEROUTDOORMAN]

Nope lame wimpy song stick with Neil s Electric ...too many top 40 wimp boys

[@supertrexandroidx]

@@DENVEROUTDOORMAN Wow, man, thanks for enlightening us. Very deep

[@supertrexandroidx]

@@chrismillar6879 I think it's both of those things. The club might have been the initial impetus for the song, but I think it also has the broader meaning the OP ascribes to it.

[@eugenesouza3819]

"Sugar Mountain" by Neil Young is a nostalgic lament for lost youth, written on his 19th birthday. It reminisces about childhood carefree days and expresses a bittersweet longing for a simpler time. The song's symbolic "sugar mountain" represents a lost utopia of innocence, a distant dream, or the fleeting nature of happiness. Some see it as a social critique of society's obsession with youth, while others interpret it as a universal experience of growing up and the inevitable loss of freedom and innocence.

[@dusty4835]

Joni Mitchell wrote a response to this, "The Circle Game'', hoping to convey to Neil that there's life after 21. This should be on your list, if for no other reason, to show how a 23 year old Mitchell could pen such a mature song.

[@bethcrumpton476]

Yes, Harri, PLEASE react to The Circle Game!!!

[@chrisbuckley1785]

I third this. It's a very different song but just as touching.

[@DocOfRock-p4j]

brings a tear to my eye every time. moving in on 71 years old now and this seems like yesterday. too damn fast

[@marybaillie8907]

From the 1968 album, "Live at The Riverboat", this song was composed on Neil's 🇨🇦 19th birthday and originally had 126 verses which he narrowed down to 4. His creaky voice conveys innocence but it also feels wise and nostalgic as if it's fault lines developed over centuries. Being in his mid 20s, he can get away singing like an old man which is a lament to his lost youth. The beautiful guitar is the perfect accompaniment to this story. Joni Mitchell's song, " The Circle Game" was inspired by this song. Great reaction Harri. Thanks Harri and Sharla. 👏👏 Cheers from Canada 🇨🇦

[@agnetesorensenelbom5085]

❤🥰💐🇩🇰💖🇨🇦🌻🎄

[@marybaillie8907]

​@@agnetesorensenelbom5085🌹🌹🎄🎄🥰🥰🇨🇦❤️🇩🇰⛄️⛄️❄️❄️🎁🎁

[@tommonk7651]

One of the greatest songwriters of the last 55 years....I love Neil's acoustic stuff. I saw him solo in the early 80s at college. Sooooo talented. He played acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, synthesizer, harmonica and even banjo, I think.... One of the greatest concerts I've ever seen. He has an unbelievable catalog to draw from. Go down that rabbit hole.... According to Joni Mitchell: "In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a rock'n'roll band (...) he had just newly turned 21, and that meant he was no longer allowed into his favorite haunt, which was kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you're over 21 you couldn't get back in there anymore; so he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it's one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn't play in this club anymore. 'Cause he was over the hill. (...) So he wrote this song that was called "Oh to live on sugar mountain" which was a lament for his lost youth. (...) And I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there's nothing after that, that's a pretty bleak future

[@i.marchand4655]

Isn't that when she wrote Circle Game, to provide a more optimistic look?

[@bradsense7431]

⁠@@i.marchand4655that is what I remember her saying in an interview.

[@tommonk7651]

@@i.marchand4655 Exactly!

[@johnbrowne2170]

Yes, It's about growing up and leaving childhood behind as much as you loved it at the time.

[@tedcole9936]

My story… this track first appeared as a B side on a 45 RPM record (A side was Heart of Gold) but I must have heard it on radio, and I WANTED to find it. It wasn’t on any of Neil’s LP albums until “Decade” which was released 1977. My college roomie & I were both Neil fans, he born in ‘52, me in ‘53. And it was ca. 1972 or 1973 when we were both turning 20, when we wanted to get this then-rare Neil Young record. I finally found a used copy, but it was rather dirty, having some sticky gunk on it that made it skip sometimes. Well, our friend in the adjacent dorm room offered to use some chemical to clean it, but instead the chemical melted to vinyl, making it completely unplayable. He felt very bad about this, and promised to replace it, but he was unable to do so, and it was a ‘oh well, that’s life” experience… but a couple years ago, I got a strange package, and inside was the replacement copy, the 45 RPM “Heart of Gold/Sugar Mountain” neatly stored inside a soft deerskin sleeve he must have made. What a delight. I hadn’t heard from him in over 40 years (though I think he stayed in touch with my old roomie, who I am still close friends with.) As a return favor, I sent him a paper craft elephant that I’d recently made, with some note about elephants never forgetting. Life is long, but we remember the days of our youth with great fondness. And only as an older man did I come to realize that while young people have no idea what it’s like to be old, old people DO know what it’s like to be young. It’s a beautiful asymmetry. Yes, we go round and round in this circle game.

[@777petew]

I was on a once-in-lifetime visit to Australia, and was sunbathing on a beach in Jervis Bay NSW. I played Neil Young on a personal cd player and the song Forbidden Lake matched my idyllic environment.

[@debbiechang5781]

Wonderful selection Sharla! I absolutely love this song. Such wonderful memories are evoked. Thanks Harri and Sharla 🎄✌️

[@djknox2]

Harri I really enjoy your reactions. It's nice to see someone with a more mature perspective. Too many reaction videos are by Millennials who all too often are clueless about the subjects being sung about. Well done. In this case, he's simply singing about the innocence of childhood.

[@jeffmartin1026]

I read (at one time, very long ago now) that Sugar Mountain was the name of a local youth center in his hometown that you could no longer go to once you turned 18. Indeed it is a song about things/places you can no longer do as you grow up.

[@KennyRansom-l5k]

I've always looked at this song as if the 4 verses are about 4 stages of your young life , all about 5 years apart . You're 5 at the fair with you family & your friends , you're 10 & passing notes in class at school with that girl that thinks you're cute , you're 15 in high school hanging out with some of the bad boys , "smoking underneath the stairs" and finally on the cusp of 20 you're finally leaving home because you want to be alone . Neil was only 19 when he wrote this . Amazing .

[@andylawson87]

A beautiful song about childhood and your teens. Remember, you can't be 20 on Sugar Mountain..😢

[@dbcooper2261]

Way back in the day, 45 years of seeing Neil, he'd start is concerts with the one. Sometimes on a highchair.

[@vlcccapt]

Love Neil!!! Can't get enough. Please mention react to April Wine's frontman, Myles Goodman's passing on Dec. 3.

[@tpstrato2270]

I believe that Joni Mitchell (who knew neil back in canada to) once said that neil and his friends used to hang out at this place, club or something called sugar mountain. The agelimit was 20, so when he turned twenty he was out on the streets alone. Joni actually wrote her song "the circle game" about this song.

[@lefkytheshin]

I've heard that Neil was referring to an under 20 club he knew called Sugar Mountain, hence "you can't be 20..."

[@stephaniebaldwin7645]

I feel like Sugar Mountain is just a nostalgia for having fun at the county fair and being young, it's an experience that, you might try to get back to it when older, but it's unreachable, you can't go back...

[@benfadely9583]

My take on sugar mountain is just his childhood and adolescence and like you say reckless abandon but the long and short of it is hey it's time to grow up... That was definitely my take on it when I first heard it in my late teens. It was telling me live it up because it's just about over😮😅😊

[@rabooey]

This song brings back such sweet, joyful memories of my city's annual July fair which happened to take place at the end of the street I grew up on. The rides and games and snacks were always just a one minute walk up the street during those warm summer nights, and every time I hear this song I'm immediately transported right back in them. Thank you, Sharla and Harri, for putting me on this little time machine once again.☺

[@TZ61]

Such a sweet tender remembrance of his boyhood, and of any childhood.

[@davebzen795]

Sharla - First, a belated welcome to this wonderful community that Harri has cultivated. On a personal level, this specific composition by Neil Young enlightened me to live in the moment and appreciate each and every year as they go by in one's life. This was a superb submission choice, Sharla. Harri, your review was very insightful and captured the essence of this iconic song. Bravo to both of you!👏👏

[@gergsar]

childhood innocence...

[@The5thGen]

I used to do this song a long time ago when I played a lot. Always loved this song.

[@powers.cj.80]

Life gets a lot harder after a safe childhood....the barkers and colored balloons, candy floss at the fair w mom and dad. It's a lamentation of innocence lost.

[@roevega9902]

Ive always loved this song.. innocent but a reality check on life

[@jeffreyedwards1811]

You're spot on! Neil said it was about his lost youth and after 20 he couldn't play at teeny bopper places any longer

[@Richy-hs6zc]

Sugar mountain he's talking about where he grew up and there was a fair like a carnival that they had every year and you listen to the verses the first one is kind of talking about when he was little he had candies with his mom and dad and then the other versus he's like talking about and he's like teenager and he had his first cigarette all the different times good times he had their in the last verse is in the 3rd person probably his parents but they so you say you're leaving home because you want to be alone and then the last line is in a funny how you feel when you're finding out it's real which pretty much means growing up. I'm a musician myself and that's one of my favorite songs to play it's got its so emotional of a song ,he's an amazing songwriter

[@j.b.hawkins2991]

It's about growing up. You can't be a kid forever. The time flies by. The balloons are just balloons, and they aren't as exciting at twenty as they were at five or six, but you wish they were.

[@flamencoprof]

You (well, I) can hear elements of "Tell Me Why" from After the Gold Rush in this. "When you're old enough to repaint, but young enough to sell". I also think this song has an echo of the old Big Rock Candy Mountain song, but he has altered the emphasis from a hobo's fantasy of a paradise to a young adult's realisation that youthful fantasies can't come true.

[@gregrenn2138]

I learned a lot about drugs listening to this album in the military, 1982. This was a coming of age album and I loved your reaction.

[@14gilbertst]

Most of the song takes place at 'The Fair.'

[@janeschmalfeld4307]

I saw him perform this song several times. Twice, he did this little talking blues session. 💙 both times hilarious.....

[@charlesrubio7650]

My goodness Harri! You did it again! Another out of the blue reactions to a very personal song for me. Did you read my comment yesterday about your reaction the the Center of the Earth by the Amboy Dukes? You and one other reactor dig up some hidden gems from the past. That is one of several reasons I like your reactions. You Rock Harri!! Ok Hari you ask for our comments, feedback to Sugar Mountain and here goes. First Neil must have wrote this when he was a young teenager. He mention in one of his early live performances, wasn’t this one, that after he played it, he said it was an “oldie”. And I think it was in his 3 live Royce Hall performances, end of January of ‘71, when asking the audience to sing along with the chorus line he joked he wrote over 100 verses to Sugar Mountain! Actually I wrote 2 verses to it as well! Forgot one of the verses all I remember it had the word "transcendence" The other... "Now I see your blue eyed stars, and its happiness to me, its reflections of our Love and God's gift to make us One" Anyway it was the 2nd performance, 30th of January I heard him played Sugar Mountain, as part his concert there at UCLA. Come to think of it, I think not too long ago Harri, I suggested another song of Neil’s - “Nowadays Clancy Cant Even Sing” - performed by Fever Tree. Its on KZbin… hint, hint. Hope you do a reaction as its such a different take from Neil singing it The singer for Fever Tree had this really cool raspy, bluesy type of voice. I first heard the song during a concert of theirs in Houston, summer of ‘70. The way he sung it and the lyrics just blew me away. And I didn’t know it was a song Neil wrote until his Royce Hall concert(s) The concert was broadcast throughout the nation on at the time hippy type of rock n roll stations. Here in Houston on KLOL. I shared my very first apartment with a friend I grew up with. He was the one who wanted to play the concert as it was my birthday and invited friends to come over. When he told me we would be tuning into the concert, I said I never heard of Neil and he said trust me this guy, like the Beatles, he’s awesome!. So party going on, getting high, listening half ass to the concert, until Sugar Mountain came on. I think it was 6th or 7th song on his playlist that night. As soon as he hit that first note it literally went straight into my heart and deep into my soul. I kinda of abruptly, rudely told everyone to shut up while he played Sugar Mountain. It got real quiet and I turned up the volume. I almost broke down in tears. Everyone noticed how emotional I was getting, my girlfriend came over sat next to me and just laid her head on my shoulders, put her arm around me, as the song played out. After the song was over I excuse myself and went outside to collect my thoughts. One thing it did was completely wash away the high I was on! From that night on, I turned 19, I never smoked grass again or drank. Crazy huh! Neil has played a huge part in my life as far as music goes. Hari, I know this “comment” of mine is getting a little too long, and my apologies. But that night was in many ways a major game changer in my life, as for one thing I stopped using drugs. Whenever something comes up like this reaction of yours today and since you invited comments, I thought I would share. Ok… I'm halfway finished. Ha, Ha, just kidding. In closing Harri, the way I interpret Sugar Mountain… its about Heaven. I have this rather lengthy explanation of it, but time to stop. No big deal kinda of, sort of. The big deal is this song of Neil’s. Its a classic, a rare gem in his vast collection of great songs. Peace out….

[@RedSinter]

😂 I see The Funkadelcs over your left shoulder Still have that Album... Hugs Harri~ And yes, one of my favorites, don't sleep on John Barleycorn.

[@kevenbridges9433]

Great reaction to this classic song.Neil is one of those artist who's sound is so unique that he could never be mistaken for another artist. I would be honored if you would react to another unique artist Glen Hansard . The song I would love you to hear is Bird of Sorrow ( Godly performance at Dublin National Library ) It is a little known performance with only Glen a piano and his powerful and emotional voice . I can only find one reaction to this song and no reactions to this powerful version. Thank you Harri for your consideration.

[@daseguin]

Went through my teens listening to Live Rust on constant replay.... Kept waiting for the harmonica. That's definitely the best version.

[@freeforever6971]

I was very young when I first heard this great song

[@GibsonB4512]

Problem is watching those cold, Winnipeg scenes while residing in cold, Winnipeg atm! Neil. Master of the acoustic folk guitar.

[@nwlang75]

Just found your channel and I'm loving it. Seems like I'm just hanging out with a good old friend listening to music forgetting all my worries.

[@jimbrentar]

it's about growing up. a fairly straight-forward song from Neil. just don't ask what Powderfinger or After The Gold Rush are about.

[@charleybarley914]

for some of Neils best electic guitar check out All along the watchtower from the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary tribute concert, with no less than Booker T and the MG's as his backing band.

[@reallymysterious4520]

Please do yourself a favor Harri and find the live version of this song from the Live Rust album and enjoy. The entire album is amazing and is easily in my top 5 favorite live albums of all time, along with Neil Young - Unplugged, Scorpions - World Wide Live, Rush - Exit Stage Left, Frampton Comes Alive.

[@bobdelp2023]

HEY HARRI, SEASONS BEST TO YOU! 😊SO JUST SO YOU KNOW NEIL'S GOOD FRIEND ( JONI MITCHELL ) RESPONDED TO THIS GREAT SONG WITH HER OWN GR8 SONG THAT YOU'D LOVE ( THE CIRCLE GAME ) 😊IT'S THE LAST TRACK OF HER 70 ALBUM ( LADIES OF THE CANYON ) HAPPIEST OF HOLIDAYS AND MANY MANY BLESSINGS TO YOU & YOURS💯

[@rayr4320]

Its nostalgic reminiscence about the loss of innocence in America. You cant be 20 on SM. 20, You cant live as a child in what was once the beautiful Americas. You got to grow up and become a man and face the struggle of life.

[@vrvaughn]

I remember hearing this as his first solo recording after The Buffalo Springfield broke up.

[@bobdelp2023]

IT'S BASICALLY ABOUT ENDING YOUR CHILDHOOD AND GOING INTO OR ENTERING ADULTHOOD HARRI😊, HE'S TALKED ABOUT THIS SONG BEFORE: SO YOU SAY YOU'RE LEAVING HOME CAUSE YOU WANT TO BE ALONE, AIN'T IT FUNNY HOW YOU FEEL WHEN YOU'RE FINDING OUT IT'S REAL 😊 JONI'S RESPONSE TO THIS SONG IS ( THE CIRCLE GAME ) 👍

[@jaybo2023]

This is the second song that set me on the path of loving Neil. The first was This Old House, that a Dead Head played at work for a couple of years prior to me hearing it in 1985 in farm aid. Not the greatest singer, not the greatest writer, not the greatest guitarist... but where he ranks as a sum of those parts he is one of the greatest

[@smanticus]

Saddest song I ever heard.

[@powers.cj.80]

When my daughter was little she said "ohhhh, Neil's trying to sing pretty" - 😅

[@jimbrentar]

i used to know how to play this song

[@JB-Deadskins]

It's on Live Rust

[@McRick2000]

It's called childhood, dude.

[@kentclark6420]

I wonder if James Taylor and Neil Young have ever gotten together and had a jam? What an interesting combination of energies that would be.

[@kentclark6420]

I just thought of Arlo Guthrie, too. The three of them.

[@LarryNeie-lj7zc]

All 3 playing together? Holy hell that would be epic!

[@thomasmcconnellogue5405]

James Taylor plays the banjo on the studio version of Neil's "Old Man", and does backing vocals on Old Man and Heart of Gold. I think he is on some of the tracks on the Harvest Moon album also.

[@peterboissonnault8445]

I think it is a song about coming of age where you are leaving home to make a life on your own. And yes, you have more responsibility and less time for hanging out with old friends!

[@cosmiccowboy7764]

Hey Harri - Tell Miss Sharla Hulsey we share the same last name

[@jameszultowski6890]

You should be listening to Cortez the killer

[@howardhales6325]

Does anyone know if there's any truth to the story that he wrote this song in a hotel room at the St. Louis in Thunder Bay, Ontario? I've heard this rumour more than once.

[@cathy8964]

I wish I could meet Neil Young! He's a great writer but not as good as Dylan in my opinion. ❤❤❤❤

[@laurabryannan]

For decades I always heard the lyrics incorrectly. I heard "You can be 20 on Sugar Mountain" instead of "cant" which, of course, totally negates the point of the song. SMH

[@robertwinkler4719]

It's an anti war song, got draft notice for Nam, has to leave a girl, his people, and may not make it back, it's real.

[@deantait8326]

Harvest Moon is by far his best song …’ the others not for me

[@stevevasell429]

Drugs, drugs. Drugs, drugs,drugs. WTF harri! Yes everything is drugs! Drugs and more drugs. Thats all rock is about. DRUGS!!!! GROW UP HARRI