What tune did Neil Young borrow for ‘Borrowed Tune’?
For Neil Young, the early 1970s was the most consequential chapter of his life and career. He might have come into his own in the late 1960s thanks to his first two solo albums and CSNY’s Déjà Vu, but it was in the ensuing decade that he became a global icon.
Following the success of 1969’s proto-alt-rock classic Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Young took a brief sojourn with CSNY to soundtrack the late countercultural era with March 1970’s Déjà Vu, before he returned with After the Gold Rush, his most musically accomplished body of work at that point.
Not wasting any time, he capitalised on this flow of creativity and, in 1972, released what is widely deemed his signature album, Harvest. Boasting songs such as ‘Heart of Gold’ and ‘Old Man’, it topped the Billboard 200, and produced the only number-one hit of the Canadian’s career in the former.
Young was on top of the world for a while, but then, his life crumbled. Despite becoming a household name with Harvest, the extensive tour for the album in early 1973 was a disaster, thanks to Young choosing to play primarily unheard and heavier material, drug use, and the band members not getting on. However, the most significant factor for Young was the death of his Crazy Horse bandmate, Danny Whitten, a close friend and creative partner, who died of an overdose in November 1972. This crushed him and sent him spiralling into what he called “the ditch”, a pit of depression and drugs that was reflected in his increasingly dark music and the trio of albums aptly known as ‘The Ditch Trilogy’.
Other tragedies would ensue over the rest of the decade’s first half. The other most momentous was the death of roadie Bruce Berry in June 1973, due to a heroin and cocaine overdose. Both catastrophes sent Young deeper into the darkest recesses of his psyche, which is reflected in 1975’s Tonight’s the Night, the final instalment of ‘The Ditch Trilogy’ that was recorded in August–September 1973, right in the aftermath of his friend’s passing.
Arguably, the most heartbreaking song on the album is ‘Borrowed Tune’, a dirge that touches on the absolutely crushing deaths of Young’s close friends. The track sees him confront mortality, with a tangible hit of nihilism emanating from the words. The opening verse is: “I’m climbin’ this ladder / My head in the clouds / I hope that it matters / I’m havin’ my doubts”.
What’s particularly interesting about the song is that the sadness is heightened by the fact Young openly borrowed the melody of ‘Lady Jane’ by The Rolling Stones. In what must be a first in popular music, he admits in the fourth verse: “I’m singin’ this borrowed tune / I took from the Rolling Stones”.
In the liner notes to the 1977 compilation, Decade, Young says of ‘Borrowed Tune’: “A song I had written at the beginning of the Time Fades Away tour reflecting on whether a big stadium tour was right for me.” Elsewhere, in 1975, when speaking to Rolling Stone, he explained how he used ‘Lady Jane’: “I played ‘Lady Jane’ and forgot the chords. I started playing my own chords. It started sounding better to me, so I kept playing that. It just turned into another song.”
It might be surprising that Young, an artist so celebrated for his originality, should explicitly take from The Rolling Stones. However, the emotive melody of ‘Lady Jane’ is so strong that it is fitting for a song and album coloured by immense heartbreak.
