Many people, I know, tell me they can't understand "Clancy." They can't figure out all the symbols and stuff. Well, I don"t think it's possible at all for them to know who he really is. For listeners, Clancy is just an image, a guy who gets come down on all the time. He was a strange cat, beautiful. Kids in school called him a "weirdo," cause he would whistle and sing "Valerie, Valera" in the halls. After a while, he got so self-conscious he couldn't do his thing anymore. When someone as beautiful as that and as different as that is actually killed by his fellow men—you know what I mean—like taken and sorta chopped down—all the other things are nothing compared to this. In the song I'm just trying to communicated a feeling. Like the main part of "Clancy" is about my hang-ups with an old girlfriend in Winnipeg. Now I don't really want people to know my whole scene with that girl and another guy in Winnipeg. Thanks not important, that just a story. You can read a story in Time magazine. I want them, to get a feeling like when you see something bad go down-when see a mother hit a kid for doing nothing. Or a frustration you see a girl at an airport watching her husband leave to go to war. Neil Young Los Angeles Times/Jeffrey C. Alexander September 17, 1967

BMR: Did you consider yourself a confident writer? NY: I didn't have any idea what I was at the time. I wrote the words in a corner. Wrote 'em all down so they looked ... I'd write twelve lines of poetry and then look at it ... I'd go, wow, what a trip that was ... Nowadays, Clancy Can't Even Sing. And then I sat down and wrote the second verse. And the third one ... so they looked the same, graphically on the paper. It was weird, just to get the shape of the paragraph. The I wrote a melody to it. You know, I don't write that anymore. I'm not nearly as analytical. Neil Young KMET radio interview with B. Mitchell Reed September 1973

Here's a song - we used to do - back here in Chicago - we came here in the Buffalo Springfield. Some of our first gigs were here. We used to do this song here, but I didn't get a chance to sing it in those days. I'll sing it for you now. Neil Young Poplar Creek Music Theater, Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA August 18, 1987

[regarding working at Coles Book store in Toronto in late 1965] NY: I was a stock boy. I wasn’t very together. I used to stay out late and come in in the morning … I wasn’t meant for that kind of life. NY: I remember sitting on the floor and writing “Clancy.” And for sure “Peggy Grover” and “Don’t Pity Me, Babe.” JM: Were you gaining an awareness that songs could be as complex as you wanted to make them? NY: Yeah. About the last eight months I was in Toronto. When I wrote “Clancy.” I thought it was pretty good. Because obviously there was so much to it. I knew it was long. JM: Did anything provoke “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing“? NY: I don’t know. It’s just a product of my life at that point. That’s all I can say. There was a lot on my mind. JM: What do you think you were trying to accomplish with that song? NY: I don’t know. Just writin’ a song. It’s so long ago. I don’t remember much about Clancy. I really don’t … except what he looked like, a little … He’s an incidental character who somehow had his name in it—no more important than all the characters that didn’t. Neil Young "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough 2002

I went down to New York for an audition at Elektra Records that Marty had set up, went to Greenwich Village, and met Richie Furay, who had been in a group with Stephen Stills before the Company and was living for a short time at the address Steve had given me on Thompson Street. Richie said Steve had gone to LA to start a band! I taught Richie “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing,” and then I did that demo session at Elektra Records that went badly. They had me set up in a tape storage room. I had my electric Gretsch to play and I ended up not using my amp because I had a bad guitar cord. (I had dragged my amp all the way to New York; I still remember lugging it through Port Authority Bus Terminal. I asked someone for a hand with it, and he replied, “You’re in the Big Apple now, kid—carry it yourself!”) Anyway, I ended up doing the demo without it. I sucked. I flunked the audition. They didn’t take me. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012