“Expecting to Fly” by Buffalo Springfield

"Expecting to Fly" landed on Buffalo Springfield Again in 1967, but it's a Springfield record in name only: Neil Young cut it during one of his spells away from the band, figuring the session was for a solo project, and no other member plays on it. He wrote it and produced it with Jack Nitzsche, who wrapped the song in an orchestral arrangement of strings and English horn, with timpani and vibraphone underneath.

The hired hands include Carol Kaye on bass, Jim Gordon on drums, Don Randi on harpsichord and piano and Russ Titelman on guitar, with Nitzsche on electric piano and a choir that counts Merry Clayton and Gloria Jones among its voices; Bruce Botnick engineered. Young carried the song into his early solo shows, and the 2018 film Echo in the Canyon treats it as a marker of the late-'60s drift from group folk rock toward the lone voice.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.