“Helpless” by Neil Young

Neil Young wrote "Helpless" about a Canadian childhood, and this recording, released in 1978, is the one he sang with the Band at The Last Waltz, the group's farewell to its original lineup at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day 1976. The song was older than that: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young put it on Déjà Vu in 1970, and Young had already cut it with Crazy Horse early in 1969.

Here Young plays acoustic guitar and blows harmonica, and Joni Mitchell's harmony drifts in from offstage like a ghost in the wings. Robbie Robertson produced, with Rob Fraboni and John Simon co-producing. Under the prairie-wide melody sits Young's memory of catching polio at five in the 1951 epidemic, and of small Ontario towns like Omemee, where he went to primary school.

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