2. Neil YoungHarvest
I found this when I was about 14. My next door neighbour was Don Letts, and we’re all very close, we’ve got like adjoining gardens. And his brother Desmond Letts came round one day and said, “George, I’ve got something to give you, listen to this,” and it was Neil Young’s Harvest. Because he knew that I was, already by that point, really interested in music, and I would always play the guitar in the garden and stuff like that. And he was like, “You need to learn this”. It was a very formative time for me, being 14, 15 and listening to lots of the classic singer-songwriter records and trying to sort of learn them. I bought a guitar, an old Gibson Jr. 1964 mahogany guitar, and I was in love with it, and I felt like I could have been in the era of Nick Drake, Neil Young, John Martyn. I went through a period of just listening to that era of music, and I was just obsessed with Harvest for about a year trying to learn the songs. I still stick on Harvest, particularly if there’s a long car journey, it’s a great album to listen to in the car. I also listened to it a lot whilst I was living in America, because I just felt like, “Oh my god, I’m living in America, and I’m listening to Neil Young.” It felt very romantic.
