When he was just 24—and newly very rich and very famous—Neil Young bought Broken Arrow Ranch, the sprawling Northern California property purchased in 1970 for $350,000 “from two lawyers.” As he explained during his 1971 Massey Hall performance, his classic humber “Old Man” is about the foreman who lived there with his wife – “he came with the place when I bought it.”

In Jonathan Demme’s 2006 documentary Heart of Gold, Young said this about the inspiration for the song’s famous lyrics:

“About that time when I wrote (“Heart of Gold”), and I was touring, I had also – just, you know, being a rich hippie for the first time – I had purchased a ranch, and I still live there today. And there was a couple living on it that were the caretakers, an old gentleman named Louis Avila and his wife Clara. And there was this old blue Jeep there, and Louis took me for a ride in this blue Jeep. He gets me up there on the top side of the place, and there’s this lake up there that fed all the pastures, and he says, “Well, tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?” And I said, “Well, just lucky, Louie, just real lucky.” And he said, “Well, that’s the darndest thing I ever heard.”

Young performing “Old Man” at Toronto’s Massey Hall. You catch a glimpse of Mr. Avila at the beginning of the clip.