Young's Prairie Wind Worry

Neil Young is anxious over the release of his new album PRAIRIE WIND, because he fears critics will link its quality to his brain aneurysm.

The 59-year-old recorded the album earlier this year (05) in the days leading up to his surgery, and he insists he'd have made Prairie Wind with or without the daunting diagnosis.

He says, "I was supposed to go to Nashville to do some recording, so I went down there (after I was diagnosed).

"(My neurologist) DR SUN said I'd been flying for 100 years with the thing. So I went into the studio on Thursday and recorded three songs. I wrote one on the way there and two more right away after I recorded the first one.

"The whole album's chronological - I wrote and recorded in the order it appears on the record. Then I went back up to New York on Monday for a pre-surgery thing, flew back to Nashville, wrote and recorded (songs) four, five, six, seven, eight and most of nine and 10. And then I got admitted, and they put me under...

"It's kind of too bad that people know about this, because it's like, 'The only way he could make a good album is if he had an aneurysm,' or something. I feel a little funny about it, because I know I would have made an album anyway, and I don't feel like I'm slowing down, but these things happen. Yeah, there's a lot of reflection. It affected all the songs."