I got to a point in my life where I had to make some big decisions about where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing and how to move forward without hurting myself and the music and everything. I just had to make some decisions and [they] were not easy decisions, but I made them and they have repercussions forever, you know? When I left, I knew that I was turning a page, and I could either keep reading the same page over and over again and get mired down in it. Or, I could just have a new page. I decided my kids were all old enough, everybody was moving along in their lives, and I was still in good contact with all of them. I felt really good. It didn't feel good to leave because obviously when a family breaks up it's not a good thing. You know, there was a divorce and all kinds of stuff and everything, but it's all in [the] song. Neil Young NPR/Kira Wakeam September 17, 2026

RR: Tell me about Out on the Foggy Edge. NY: Out on the Foggy Edge is the day I left the ranch. That was about somewhere 13 years ago or something. I'd been living there for many, many years, 35 or 40 years. It was a sad time. I was leaving and I just had to get out of there because things had just gone south like they do in some relationships, and we had just a huge disturbance in the flow that we had. But we had great kids and that was nice. So I just decided, hey, I'm either probably going to die here and it's not going to be fun, or I'm going to go somewhere else and we'll see what happens. I was almost 70 years old when I left, 68 or something. RR: It was your home for a long time and it really was your home. It wasn't just a house. It was a very particular place. NY: I loved that place and I built it. There was an old cabin there and I built my house on top of the cabin and we just kept going. I built a recording studio. I bought land around there. I built a place for my trains to be in, because I love electric trains. I put them there. NY: We had other houses that were part of it and the guys had come and stay in one of the houses called the White House. They stay in the White House and we record at the ranch and they had a nice analog situation happening there. It was a beautiful thing. I loved it. It was fantastic. But there just came a time. RR: It was time to leave. NY: Yeah. You know how life is. So I left. It was very difficult because I built this whole thing, everything there, and then I just left it. That was a trip. But I had to do that to keep moving forward because I was getting stuck and mired in things that I didn't want to spend all my time in. Neil Young Tetragrammaton podcast with Rick Rubin 2026-09-23