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In Are You Passionate? he falls again into his obsessions: the anguish regarding the passing of time, love and the country as shelters from all evil of this world, and women healers.

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Taken individually, the records are examples of Young's distractions and preoccupations over a 40-year career. Together, the albums show an almost mercurial need for independence. It's not a career strategy but a personal necessity. There he is, always working, but as deliberately obscure as he wants to be.

I find him, in 2002, still running from his place in musical history as if it points to an early grave. He declines most interview requests, preferring instead to keep doing what he has done for most of the past 40 years: touring ('I love my bus and I love those small two-lane roads') and recording with new musicians ('Every day is a clean slate').

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'Well, I don't know much about being a typical triple Scorpio,' he said, solemnly. 'But I must be intense. I'm pretty sure I am. As a person I have this huge baggage, this huge coat I have to wear all the time. I can take it anywhere. And unless you don't recognise me or know nothing about me, I'm wearing this coat. It's my history, or whatever other people think about me before I open my mouth. It's not good or bad: I just wish it wasn't there. It muddies the water.'

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Are You Passionate? is his most bruised collection of songs since 1994's Sleeps With Angels, his eulogy to the late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain. Recorded almost entirely with the world-class accompaniment of Booker T and the MGs - previously the house band for Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin - Are You Passionate? shows a velvety restraint that has been missing from recent excursions.

More specifically, the 11-track collection demonstrates a set of anxieties unique to men of his age. In Young's case, the panicky realisation of his daughter's coming of age. And his admissions of emotionally failing his wife, Pegi.

The record's opener, 'You're My Girl', sets the lamenting tone for the album. Over a square blues riff, Young mourns the impending loss of his daughter, Amber - she is off to college this November. 'Well I lit a candle on the fourth of July/ But it didn't bring you back to me.' Later, on the meditative soul of 'Mr Disappointment', Young offers an apology to his wife for a lifetime of long absences: 'I'm taking the blame myself/ For living my life in a shell/ And now I'm breaking out/ But will you still be there?'

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'It's just real life - it's real,' he told me. 'And sometimes music is the best way to express things for me. So if I have a lot of things on my mind, or things I need to say, music works well for that. A lot of the things on there are not things you think about all the time. I mean, they're not on the surface. They're going on inside.'

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Like much of his previous work, the new album deifies the natural world. 'I've always felt better away from the city,' he says. 'Nature is a retreat, an enigma.' In Young's songs, love falls victim to raging storms; his protagonists search for the truth amid an ocean of lies; and spiritual clarity often arrives in the form of clear skies.

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He tells me he still feels uncomfortable giving interviews. Even socialising is an agonising process. Carrie Snodgress, the softly-spoken actress who dated Young from 1969 to 1975 and lived with him at Broken Arrow, says: 'I remember most nights I would go out and invite down the folks from the local mountain to supper'. One night, Young came back from a walk. The house guests immediately stood up to attention. 'And I'll never forget what Neil did,' says Snodgress. 'He just walked right past them all in the living room and jumped out of the window. I mean, he did it to be funny. But on another level it horrified him to be thought of as a presidential figure.'

Young laughed fondly as he listened to the tale. 'It might be shyness, I guess,' he said, eventually. 'I guess I'm just uncomfortable. I'm not really very sociable when it comes down to it.' He winked: 'That may come as a huge surprise. But just hangin' out with a bunch of people? I can't do that. All those voices - which one do you listen to first? If I'm on the phone and the other line goes, I have big problems. I can't just switch between conversations like that.'

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In 1991, Young invited discordant art-rockers Sonic Youth to tour with him.

One night, Gordon (the group's bass player) offered to cook chicken stew for Young on his tour bus, named after his song 'Pocahontas'. As she cooked, Young sat adjusting a toy train set, another of his long-term obsessions. He has 750ft of track laid out at Broken Arrow and in 1995 he bought a toy company, Lionel Trains, to help him communicate his passion to his son, Ben, who has cerebral palsy.

'Part of the train set was a model cow that made moo-ing noises,' laughed Gordon. 'And Neil wasn't happy with the cow sound. He didn't think it was realistic enough. So he kept fiddling with the electronics. He'd then get the cow to moo, and he'd ask us what we thought. Was it realistic enough? Did it need some more work? What was wrong? He was at it for an hour or so. It was amazing how a toy cow could maintain his interest for so long.'

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After the interview, Young went back to sit with his manager, Elliot Roberts, who has been with him since the Sixties. He ordered a mixed leaf salad, and inspected a test record pressing of Are You Passionate? His label will this year start to re-issue his entire body of work, liner notes intact, on vinyl. 'I'm really getting into it,' he said, then, shaking my hand: 'Stay safe on your travels. Always stay safe.' And he left. For Oakland, for Broken Arrow, for those backwoods two-lane roads and yonder. Still racing to flee all those expectations. Trying, as he once put it, to leave the Top 40 behind.

May 7th, 2002.

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