Photographer Henry Diltz tells the story about the day he met the old man with Neil Young...
"Neil Young bought a ranch in Northern California which he named "Broken Arrow Ranch". I went up there a few times with Gary Burden in 1971 and
stayed a couple days taking pictures. Gary was my art director/ partner and still works with Neil. We used to walk around the ranch in the morning, smoking a fatty and checking things out around the property.
The Ranch came with a foreman named Louis Avila who had been there for years. This particular morning we stopped by the foreman's bungalow and he and Neil had a talk on the porch. This was in 1971, a year before his album Harvest came out and as the story goes, this is the "Old Man" that Neil sings about.
We later went on to look in a barn where Neil had some guitars. He pulled out a little old Martin guitar, sat on a hay bale, and played a tune. How great it was to be a fly on the wall and document everything that happened. Lots of those pictures got used in Neil Young Songbooks in the 70's." --Henry Diltz
See the photos Henry took the day of this story...