Campaigner

Walking to the store this morning to buy cat food for the hungry cats this morning, the Neil Young song 'Campaigner' popped into my head. I've been playing it with some frequency on the guitar lately because of terrific melody line and chord sequence. It's the kind of song that is an equal pleasure to play as to listen too. A good song to hear on a Wednesday after all the Michigan voting that was going on yesterday.

The story goes that Neil saw a news clip of a teary eyed Richard Nixon entering a hospital visiting his wife Pat, who was in for a serious illness. He then went on board his tour bus and wrote this elegy that seems to acknowledge the common human roots of two itinerant adversaries, the right-wing campaigning politician and a touring hippie superstar...'Roads stretch out like healthy veins' indeed.

The beginning section of 'Campaigner' serves as the chassis for the P. Westerberg 'Skyway', and sounds uncannily familiar to Replacements fans.

The track was only released on 'Decade':
Campaigner on iTunes.

An unreleased version with an extra verse can be found towards the bottom this relatively recent and still active blog post on among the 'bonus tracks' links:
That Tuncheon Thing.