Recorded with Crazy Horse in "ZUMA" 1975. Banned in Spain. Neil Young Decade liner notes 1977

When he’s on the boat, on his way over … I don’t think he knows what’s gonna happen yet—I’m not sure Cortez might’ve felt like he was doin’ the right thing at the end. Killing all those people. Might not have felt as good about it as he did when he was just dancing across the water in his boat. I have to think that changed his life, that experience. That he was not able to sleep well. Neil Young "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough 2002

Some of my best guitar playing ever, yeah! NK: Was being recorded and you had several other verses written and you were playing this one perfect take when... NY: ... When there was a power-cut in the recording studio, yeah. They missed a whole verse, a whole section! You can hear the splice on the recording where we stop and start again. It's a messy edit. But yeah that's true ... incredible! NK: What I'm asking is was the whole effect of that song its pacing, the lyric flow, everything - just an accident based around that powerfailure? NY: Yeah it was a total accident. But that's how I see my best art, as one magical accident after another. That's what is so incredible. You see, with lyrics I try not to edit anything. I just let it all come through. I actually believe that if it was meant to be written down in the first place, it has a place there. I only ever edit at all after I've actually performed a song live. And I like to record 'em fast. Record 'em quickly and move on to the next batch Neil Young The Vox/Nick Kent December 1990

NK: Let's move on to Zuma. After that dark stretch, it sounded like you'd suddenly been liberated. The most renowned composition on Zuma has to be Cortez The Killer. I've always been intrigued about your personal opinion of the great explorer. Where id you get your information from? NY: It was a combination of imagination and knowledge. What Cortez represented to me is the explorer with two sides, one benevolent, the other utterly ruthless. I mean, look at Columbus! Everyone now knows he was less than great. And he wasn't even there first (laughs). It always makes me question all these other so-called 'icons' (smiles). Neil Young Mojo/Nick Kent December 1995

Somebody asked me where these songs come from. A lot of people ask me that. I don't know where they come from. Neil Young Paramount Theatre, Oakland, California, USA March 20, 1999

There were songs that traveled around. I seemed to be in a lot of places at the same time. Neil Young Special Deluxe October 2014

One night I stayed up too late when I was goin’ to high school. I ate like six hamburgers or somethin’. I felt terrible - very bad - this is before McDonald’s. They were just real bad. I was studying history, and in the morning I woke up and I’d written this song. I never told anybody else that. Neil Young Nissan Pavilion, Bristow, Virginia, USA August 13, 1996

NY: I keep thinking that there is a song that I don't remember, that's right on the edge. When I start looking through my mind I can't find it. Daniel Lanois: That would fit in with ... NY: Like another one of those ones that I found the last time which just sort of showed up. There may be something around there - somewhere. Just trying to go through what I left off - of like forty albums from forty-five years. You get a little lost. If there is anything left - I've been doing a lot of mining. DL: Do you have a way of knowing your favorites from the orphanage? NY Well - I've been doing that. They get more obscure. Like Hitchhiker was pretty obscure. I wrote that around the same time I wrote Cortez. In the house - the same time - the same kind of drugs. Mark Howard: What was the drugs? NY: It was a combination. Neil Young Le Noise Sessions directed by Bernard Shakey 2010, broadcast August 2019 in the NYA Hearse Theater

When I wrote “Cortez the Killer” and “Hitchhiker,” I called for the Horse to come and record. We decided on Briggs’s Point Dume house with the Green Board as the ideal location. I lived a few miles north near Zuma Beach. Malibu, with the Crazy Horse Saloon, was a few miles south. It was a perfect situation for good times. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace 2012

I don't know what this next tour will be like. I'll be doing a lot of stuff that I'm recording now. A lot of long instrumental guitar things - progressive progresso supremo? It's about the Incas and the Aztecs. It takes on another personality. It's like being in another civilization. It's a lost sort of form, sort of a soul-form that switches from history scene to history scene trying to find itself, man, in this maze. Neil Young New Musical Express/Bud Scoppa June 1975

The power went out in the control room while we were recording ‘Cortez the Killer’. Briggs cranked it up as soon as control room power returned, 30 seconds or so later, and continued recording. We kept playing. We had power . . .so we lost a verse. We cut it together with the missing verse gone forever. Neil Young NYA - Album of the Week - Zuma September 4, 2019