Back to 10 Great Psychedelic Neil Young Moments

The Bookstore Rap

SimonP, Wikipedia

In an extended intro to the song "The Loner" from Sugar Mountain: Live At Canterbury House 1968, Young explains how he worked for two weeks at a Coles Bookstore location in Toronto before he got fired.

Young starts by asking the audience, "Everybody here's OK, right? There's no cops?" before further asking "everybody knows about pills, right?"

From there Young explains how he "got fired for 'irregularities' because he 'couldn't be depended on to be consistent.'"

The reason why? "Every once in awhile this girl that I knew... would lay one of these little red pills on me.

"She said they were diet pills. But they were really great diet pills. I didn't eat anything all day."

Young would then embark on a manic 'n' speedy book-sorting session that was matched by a bedraggled work performance the next day. Hence the "irregularity."