Story

Neil Young passed through Australia in January 2009 and it was an opportunity I wasn’t going to miss out on. I waited for his arrival at the airport and spent some 5 hours and was beginning to feel something wasnt quite right, even more so after seeing his crew and band arrive but with no sighting of Neil. Towards the end of the evening myself and a coupe of other fans contemplated our next plan on how to find the missing Neil Young, at this point I received a call advising me that Neil was already sitting comfortably in a hotel somewhere in the city !, we’d spent all this time waiting only to find we’d wasted a lot of time….. Very disappointing.

  The next day would bring the night of Neils performance and so I set out to meet Neil at the hotel. After about 3 hours of Standing about a fleet of cars arrived as a bunch of musician type people began loitering about the hotel entry, we could feel that something was about to happen, however it turned out to be almost another hour before Neil finally stepped out. I revealed my painting and was waiting to pick my opportunity to approach, as a member of Neils entourage stood aside admiring my work, he kindly suggested to me that I approach Neil and ask for the autograph, this being something that doesn’t happen to often. I walked towards Neil calling his name as he was about to climb into his car, and he turned to me with a smile, looking at my work. I asked if he would like to autograph it for me and he implied that it could look like it was him that painted the portrait if he signed and he laughed, but was willing to sign, even asking me where to sign. I told him he could sign anywhere, in my mind I assumed he would sign across the work hence me offering a silver pen to make it stand out on the black, as he scoured a place to sign he chose to sign in the lower corner on the white. I got a feeling that he didn’t want to ruin the painting with his signature, but for me it would have made the artwork all the more exciting. Neil proved to be a very appreciative nice guy with a sense of humour.