Like a Hurricane

Young wrote the words on a piece of newspaper in the back of Taylor Phelps's 1950 DeSoto Suburban at Skeggs Point on Skyline Boulevard, then worked out the chords that night on a Univox Stringman built into an old pump-organ case that had come from Dean Stockwell. He was on voice rest at the time and whistled the tune. Crazy Horse cut it at the Broken Arrow ranch on 29 November 1975, with Poncho Sampedro on the Stringman. The master is the run-through in which Young was teaching the band the song, which is why it cuts in abruptly. He sang all the vocal parts later as a sketch with Ben Keith, and the sketch was kept.

Young called it probably the best example of the tone of Old Black, his guitar, and said its bridge borrows the chords of Del Shannon's Runaway. David Briggs said they held back the compilation Decade so the song could first appear on its own album, American Stars 'n Bars, in May 1977. An edited single reached 48 in Britain.

Live

First played on the Northern California bar tour in December 1975, it has been performed 581 times by Sugar Mountain's count, nearly always on electric guitar but sometimes on pump organ, as on Unplugged in 1993. The Weld version runs past thirteen minutes. Roxy Music, The Mission, Jeff Healey and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit have recorded it.

The upload in the hypersongs web is the same 1975 Broken Arrow recording as on American Stars 'n Bars, in the 2023 remaster issued on Chrome Dreams.