Doing “Don’t Cry” and “Heavy Love,” every night in Australia and Japan, I blew myself out. Those songs are incredibly intense. I felt the effects. I damaged my throat doing those songs. See, people don’t realize how fuckin’ physical my music is. Every fuckin’ note is my last as far as I’m concerned, so it better be fuckin’ good. It better be there. So that takes a lot out of ya. And there’s no way to breathe deep and sing “Heavy Love.” You can’t do that. Have “good technique”—get the fuckin’ technique out. Get rid of it. Those shows were very loud. That’s when I was using Marshalls. I would cut in with the octave divider, the whole thing would just go to shit … There’s a breakdown in the middle of “Heavy Love” where everything just starts distorting and getting more mangled-sounding… When I wanted the big loud explosion, we had to go there—turn everything up. It was incredible. I had a thing where I could change from one amp to another—where I could play along real quiet and then just hit one button and it was the loudest fuckin’ thing you ever heard. On “Don’t Cry,” that just kicked in, like, two more amps at full volume, all on one note. It was just big and bad. Neil Young Shakey by Jimmy McDonough 2002