Yeah, that is ironic, Big Tim. ;-) But after all, Bob knows himself far too well to have any illusions about the present day importance of his own boyhood home. In the case of Neil Young, though, there's some distance between him and Bob, and that distance allows Bob to have the same speculative flights of imagination about Neil's youth that you or I might have about Bob's youth, right?


Peter, I think that Bob's better lyrical works are a result of simply surrendering to the process and letting it happen. You don't write that kind of stuff in a calculated way with any conscious purpose, you do it by sheer instinct and without deliberate thought. This does not mean you end up with something devoid of meaning. Quite the contrary. You can end up with something absolutely marvelous, precisely because you surrendered to the process. (there's no guarantee you will...but you can)

I say this because it is how my own better material has usually been written...and the best songs happen very quickly when you write in that fashion. They usually involve a bit of editing and fine tuning afterward, but about 90% of the work is done in a very short time...like a half hour or so.