All One Song - “Ambulance Blues” with Zachary Cale

All One Song - “Ambulance Blues” with Zachary CaleWelcome back to All One Song, a Neil Young podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. What are we doing here? We’re talking to some of our favorite musicians and writers about their favorite Neil Young songs. And we have got a doozy of a Neil Young song to talk about today — “Ambulance Blues”! First appearing as the closing track on Neil’s 1974 masterpiece On the Beach, this is one of the man’s major works, a long, dark dirge that surveys the surreal mid-1970s landscape, from Patty Hearst to Richard Nixon, all accompanied by a brilliantly skeletal musical backdrop from Ben Keith, Rusty Kershaw, Ralph Molina and the mysterious Joe Yankee. It’s a towering tune, haunting and haunted, but also with a glimmer of hope shining through.“Ambulance Blues” culminates with that cautious hope, with lines that Neil likely wrote with Nixon in mind:I never knew a man could tell so many liesHe had a different story for every set of eyesHow…