Songfacts®:

• This song, with the lyric "Ain't got no T-bone," refers to a common response to the waitresses at the Bella Vista Restaurant in Woodside, California, from the cook, Art Morris, when they asked about the T-Bone steak. On busy weekend nights some of the menu choices would become sell out and get 86ed.
  
  "Ain't got no T-bone" was a well-known rant when the restaurant was busy and the stress levels high. Mike Warner, who worked at the Bella Vista at the time, told Songfacts: "Art Morris could be rather grumpy and dismissive - 'gruff' would describe him well. Pegi Morton, Neil Young's love interest, was a waitress at the Bella Vista (and at Alex's down the road). Neil may have heard Art when he yelled this phrase to the waitresses - but more than likely, this is a story that Pegi relayed to him and he found inspiration in. I'll never forget walking into the meat locker and seeing the flat of T-bone steaks separated with waxed paper. The meat delivery was weekly and sometimes it just didn't last the whole week."
• Neil and Pegi had a son, Ben, who was born with cerebral palsy, the same condition that afflicted his first son, Zeke, who he had with Carrie Snodgress. When he wrote "T-Bone," Neil was going through a grueling program to treat Ben, which took 12-hour-days, 7-days-a-week, and involved the whole family. And that's what this song means: Sometimes you have a healthy kid, and sometimes you have a disabled one. Sometimes you get T-bone, and sometimes you don't.
• Pegi Young started making her own music when her son Ben got older. When Songfacts spoke with Pegi, she said of her time at the Bella Vista: "I remember Art yelling at me because I was a vegetarian and he was like, 'You're eating bunny food. You eat like a rabbit.'"
• Young gave a more comprehensive account of meeting Pegi in his 1992 song "Unknown Legend," where he sings:
  
  She used to work in a diner
  Never saw a woman look finer