Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  It was an innocent time. Koblun fondly recalls tooling around town in Rassy’s blue Standard Ensign. “Neil was driving, I was sitting in the passenger side, had my foot out the window. It was a beautiful spring day, playin’ hooky from school. ‘Duke of Earl’ was on the radio.” The Squires were happening.

  Harper. Bates. A character. We had a good time. He has a sense of humor, Bates. I love to go up to Canada and have a beer with Jack and Bates.

  I remember the outfits the Squires used to wear—off-banana shirts, vests with ascots. We were some cool-lookin’ dudes.

  Bluegrass Bob and the Bobcats—that was the name of one of the bands that used to play at Paterson’s Ranch House, where we used to play a dance party on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. One time we got a hundred people—that was our biggest crowd. We’d go there and play, and they’d advertise us on the radio and the guy charged people to get in. We’d get paid a percentage of the door, but then when you had to go talk to the guy, you felt like you were gonna get killed or somethin’ just for bein’ there. What a fuckin’ deal.

  I don’t even remember what the percentages ended up being or anything like that, but I know I always had the feeling like “Wow—that doesn’t seem right to me. But I’m not gonna say anything to that guy.” Big potbellied guy, I think he had a gun or somethin’ in his desk. I was fifteen or sixteen. Fuck.

  “You knew when you went out with Neil that you had to bring money,” Fran Gebhard told John Einarson. “And you had to carry his equipment, too.”

  Young had plenty of female friends in his early years—Susan Kelso, Jacolyne and Marilyne Nentwig, Fran Gebhard—but in matters of teen romance, he wasn’t exactly lucky. Edna Stabler, a friend of Scott Young’s, recalls Neil visiting for the weekend and taking the girl next door out for a walk. “She was a pretty little blonde, and he got a little bit fresh—not too bad, wanted to kiss her—and she slapped his face.” Neil was so flustered, said Stabler, “he forgot his gray flannel trousers.”

  One girl in Winnipeg would become his sweetheart: Pam Smith. A vivacious blonde—“Neil loved my hair very short. I used to cut it with a razor blade every day”—Pam and her twin sister, Pat, were spending the summer at their family’s cottage in Falcon Lake, a vacation spot east of Winnipeg. Neil and his buddies Jack Harper and Jim Atkin also headed out there late in the summer of 1963, and one day Neil moseyed into the drugstore where Pam was working.

  “Neil had a very nice smile,” said Smith. “He struck me as a very sincere person. Outwardly, he’d present an attitude of being very lighthearted, laugh a lot at things—he seemed like a leader with the group of friends he was with. But I think underneath it he had a much more serious side. I felt his mind was always working. He was a loner.

  “I liked Neil best on our own. When Neil told you certain things, you sort of felt privileged—you just knew he wasn’t telling everybody. He didn’t talk carelessly about certain things in his life.”

  Young confessed to Smith his anguish over not being athletic. “It was something Neil wasn’t capable of doing—he almost felt apologetic about it. Neil was insecure as a person—I think that’s why playing music was so good for him. He had all the confidence in the world in that role, whereas in the person role he had so many misgivings…. He wanted to be a regular guy, he wanted to fit in. He didn’t feel that he did, and even if you told him he did, he wouldn’t believe it. Neil knew he was different.”

  Young was particularly sensitive about the frail body that polio had left him with. “Neil wouldn’t swim. Part of that was he didn’t want anyone to see him without his clothes on. He was uncomfortable about his body being skinny.”

  Neil also discussed his parents’ breakup, telling Pam that when it happened, “He had to go to court. He was asked which parent he wanted to live with—it was just an awful situation for him.” More than once he would regale Pam with recollections of the pancake breakfasts he had with his dad. “He was wistful about it. Neil dwelled on those memories … he needed a father in his life.”

  Smith got a thrill jumping in Rassy’s broken-down car and accompanying Young to gigs at bohemian coffeehouses like the Fourth Dimension. “I just loved it—it was the kind of place my parents wouldn’t allow me to go to,” she said. She knew Neil was deep into the music when his leg buckled in and out. “It was almost a quirk, the old knee—you’d loosen the bolt and there it went. I found that endearing. Neil was so committed to his music. I was so proud, I could hardly stand it…. I always believed in him and I always encouraged him to go for it.”

  Neil was a gentleman. One night when the pair stayed out too late, Young accompanied her to her door rather than dropping her at the curb. “It was so great … my mum came out right away, and he apologized for having me home late and the reason why. I didn’t get in heck at all. Neil was always a responsible person.”

  But after five months, Young abruptly broke off the relationship. “He came over one night and asked for his ring back,” she said. “I was kind of dismayed by it.” A few months later, Young tried to rekindle the relationship. The always broke musician took Pam out to the local Dairy Queen. “This was a big deal—Neil was buying ice-cream cones. He touched my hand and looked at me and told me he loved me, simple as that, out of the blue. I didn’t know how to handle it, didn’t know what to say … I said, ‘You love me and I love ice cream!’ Isn’t that awful?”

  The pair wouldn’t get back together, but Pam Smith would linger in Young’s mind for a long time to come. Aside from that relationship, his ability to connect with the opposite sex remained dismal. Future Squire Terry Crosby recalls one night out on the road when things were so dire that another Squire-to-be, Doug Campbell, “offered his girlfriend to Neil because Neil didn’t have a girlfriend. I think Neil was driven by a lot of problems he had in his life—the polio, his parental breakup. Things just didn’t seem to work out. He was hung up on girls, scared of them.”

  The one woman looming large in Neil Young’s life—Rassy—had little desire to discuss the subject. “Neil didn’t have any girlfriends,” she said tersely. “He was too busy playing music.”

  I was living on another world. A music world. Everybody else’s life centered around girls and dances and sports. My life centered around music. If I was gonna go to a school dance, it was because I had a gig. I was gonna make fuckin’ seven-fifty that night, or the band was gonna make twenty-five bucks. That’s why I went to the dances—to play. So the social part of it I missed.

  After we finished playing, that’s one of the first things you started workin’ on! But we didn’t have all night to get practiced at the art like everyone else who was out there hustling. It was an innaresting way to grow up. Went from not knowing anything about girls and not really knowing how to relate to them to havin’ them all throwin’ themselves at you when you’re startin’ to get famous. I didn’t know what to think of it, but that was life.

  —Was it easy for you to deal with women?

  No it wasn’t. I dunno where that came from—but it definitely wasn’t easy. It had somethin’ to do with my mother.

  —How was Rassy about girlfriends?

  She wasn’t very supportive of that side of life … I dunno. I don’t remember any big advice coming from her about any of that.

  —Rassy was a very strong personality.

  Very dominating—just like all the women I’ve known in my life. From Pam on. I like them like that. And strong personalities, I think, especially at a young age—I think they would do things and wouldn’t realize the damage they were doing—they wouldn’t realize what they were dealing with. I didn’t really have any guidance to what a guy was supposed to be like—what you could take and what you couldn’t … I’m still learning.

  Girls would feel so incomplete when they’d go with me to play music—it kinda leaves a void. It’s like, I’m gone. What the fuck happened to Neil? And that’s very disturbing.

  —“I Wonder,” a Squires song, has to do with your girl ending
up with another guy. Was that inspired by a real event? Pam remembers you coming over once and she had another boy there.

  Maybe that had somethin’ to do with Pam.

  —There’s a weird undercurrent of betrayal that runs through a few of your songs.

  Yeah, well, that’s true … I don’t think it’s Pam—although it may have been something that I buried. Something about it is unsettled, because I feel emotions when I talk about it.

  —Is this a policy with you—anything unpleasant, cut loose from your mind?

  It’s not a policy—I think it’s the way my subliminal mind works. I just remember all the good stuff. Maybe in my subconscious are these things that I don’t even wanna think about, I don’t even remember—because I’ve kept ’em so behind closed doors inside my own mind. And that might be the feed for a certain feeling that comes out of my music.

  —Pam remembers reuniting with you at the Dairy Queen where you professed your love and she responded, “You love me—and I love ice cream.”

  Yeah. I’m sure I thought about that for a couple of weeks.

  —Pam thought you had.

  Heh heh. I can’t think of anything about Pam that ever happened that wasn’t a good thing. For instance, I know we must’ve broken up, but I can’t remember that. I prefer to remember the feeling of those times without having to try to be specific, ’cause it seems like the more specific you get, the less the feeling …

  Pam’s just a real nice girl. Good person. We really had fun together. She was lighthearted, she was just fun to talk to, fun to be with—and beautiful.

  She never ever did turn on me, heh heh. That’s what I like about her the best, ’cause I remember she always had a kind word for me.

  I’m too intense. I made Pam nervous. All I remember now is that I know she loved me as much as I loved her. She may not have been able to say it, but I know.

  “I was playin’ tennis, and Neil came over and said, ‘I just heard these guys—they wear their hair way down on their forehead, they’re called the Beatles,’” recalls Allen Bates. “He was all fired up.”

  The British Invasion took Winnipeg by storm in early 1964, and as usual, first to pick up on the trend were the Reflections, who began doing Beatles tunes in their set, turning the Squires on to the new sound in the process. Young’s hero, Randy Bachman, went as far as trading in his beloved Gretsch for the mop-top instrument of choice: a Rickenbacker. Beatlemania would force another major change besides bowl haircuts and boots, for the Squires’ instrumental-only sound was no longer enough to make it on the Winnipeg scene—you had to have a singer. In the era of Paul McCartney, Cliff Richard and Roy Orbison, Young’s high-pitched warble definitely stood out. As Ken Smythe recalls, Neil’s first attempts at vocalizing during rehearsals in his basement didn’t exactly set the world on fire. “My mother was a music teacher, and she used to think we sounded pretty good down there … then Neil started singing.”

  “Neil wasn’t sure he could sing,” said Koblun. “I think it was the economics of the situation that actually drove him to sing, because if we got a singer, that would cut down the share of each person in the band.” Neil’s first memory of singing in public is doing Beatles covers in the cafeteria at Kelvin High. Somewhat later, at the Squires’ next CKRC recording session on April 2, 1964, the band recorded a batch of Young’s originals, among them a vocal entitled “I Wonder.”

  After the session, engineer Harry Taylor bluntly told Young, “You’re a good guitar player, kid—but you’ll never make it as a singer.”

  I just wanna tell ya, Harry—you’re absolutely right! But unfortunately, for monetary reasons, I’m gonna have to sing. That was a major factor—when you consider we were makin’ twenty dollars a night for four guys, to add another guy would cost you a buck. I figured, well, I’ll try to do it and see what happens. It wasn’t because I really wanted to be the singer that I thought, “Oh wow, I can’t wait to get out there and sing.”

  —What reaction did you get to your singing?

  Well, it couldn’t have been overwhelmingly great, okay? The first time I actually stood up and sang in front of everybody, that was a fuckin’ trip. I still remember the day. I was scared shitless. We played at a school—set up our shit and played right there in the cafeteria. I think we did “It Won’t Be Long” and “Money.” And went to class.

  —Did you feel less scared shitless after you sang?

  Uh-huh. After exposing myself in that way, I think I heard the odd cry of “Boy, don’t do that anymore.” Heh heh. I don’t really remember the reaction, though—I remember more how I felt. I felt great, ’cause I’d sung.

  —And you were gonna sing more.

  Yeah. I wouldn’t characterize it as a test—that I was gonna sing, and if it worked I would do more, heh heh. When you start singin’—unless everybody yells at ya, “Don’t ever do that again”—I think you keep singing. I kept trying to sing. I was trying to sing, heh heh. My own voice is a fuckin’ mystery to me. I don’t know where it is. It sounds so different all the time. I can sing soft and it sounds like one guy, I can sing loud and screamin’ and it sounds like another completely different guy. I got several different voices in me. And the looser I get, the more I sing—the better I get.

  Canada was pretty musically aware. You got a lot of off-the-wall records in Canada that didn’t even make it in the States. For instance, the early Beatles records. We were into them way before they did the Sullivan Show. The Beatles were number one across Canada before the States. All the real early ones, “From Me to You”—“She Loves You” was number one, and it never made number one in the States. So we got all the English stuff immediately.

  But I think I was more into a lotta the funky music I liked. Wolfman Jack. Dick Biondi, he was the fuckin’ big deejay back then in Chicago. WLS. You’d pick it up in Winnipeg. American Bandstand … Shindig with Leon Russell, we had access to all of those things. I saw the Crickets after Buddy Holly died. Glen Hardin on piano, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison—they were great. They just didn’t have Buddy with ’em. They played in a roller rink at Winnipeg Beach. I remember watching them set up their own stuff. They had a Cadillac and a U-Haul. Those were the days.

  I saw a Dick Clark Caravan of Stars with Fabian as the MC. This is after he’d already come and gone. He kept comin’ out sayin’, “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna sing.” I saw Roy Orbison at the top of his fucking game in ’61, ’62. Winnipeg. Roy and the Candymen. They kicked ass.

  The Beatles were exciting because they were a group. They made bands popular—that’s how the Beatles affected me. I was really impressed with them at first, but they didn’t stay together for very long, so you kinda lost touch with what they were doin’. The Beatles made a real fast contribution. Heavy. A lotta stuff dumped.

  What did I think of John Lennon? I thought he was great. Innaresting character. So idealistic. Never did get to see him play live. I wish I could’ve gotten a chance to play with him. Probably would’ve been good.

  The Rolling Stones, now there was somethin’, because they kept goin’. They didn’t just last for five years. It took them longer to make a great contribution. The Beatles made their contribution in about five years, bang, gone—right? The Rolling Stones came out with “Miss You” way after, years after the Beatles broke up—and when you think of the Rolling Stones, that’s one of their best things, that Some Girls album—and that’s with Ron Wood, y’know. They’d gone through a lot of changes. I liked the fact that the Stones lasted so long and kept making vital music.

  What I really really liked about the Stones was Brian Jones and Keith Richards playin’ together. Even though Brian Jones was just kind of a bratty, sub-blues kind of guy, he still had the exuberance. Brian Jones was a very funky part of that band in the beginning, man—all the slide shit and everything? He was really wild, Jones. Too bad he was so crazy. A druggie. They were all young, goin’ through a lotta changes real fast. Brian didn’t make it.

  “Satisfaction” was a
great record. “Get Off My Cloud,” even better record. Looser, less of a hit. More of a reckless abandon. “Get Off My Cloud”—I know it’s not as good of a song, and I know that the performance is probably not as good as the “Satisfaction” performance, maybe it is—but the thing about it is it’s obviously just such a fuckin’ throw-together song that they came up with on the way to the studio or the night before, y’know? That’s what I liked about it. It really sounded like the Rolling Stones.

  I remember hearing one of the real early ones—“I’m a Man.” It was really rough and crude…. It was when yer learning how to play, checkin’ out songs, learnin’ songs. You kinda look at things different, not so much what the song’s saying as, is it hard or easy? If it is easy, does that mean they can’t play? Are they good or bad? You’re still working those things out. And then you can get so hung up playin’ a bunch of chords and changes that you lose the thing…. You don’t realize that the easy stuff is the hardest. To make the easy stuff be great.

  In the early days, when I was in high school, I was tryin’ to figure out what I was doin’ … I thought maybe I’d like to be one of those rockers that could bend the strings and get down on my knees and kinda make everybody go crazy. And then I wanted to be that other guy, too—just have a little acoustic guitar, kinda sing a few songs, sing about things that I really felt inside myself and things I saw goin’ on around me.

  And then I saw Bob Dylan, then I saw so many others, Phil Ochs, Tim Hardin, Pete Seeger, and it all started comin’ together for me—but I still couldn’t forget about that other guy with the guitar, jumpin’ around…. I saw what I wanted to do with my life.

  —From Neil Young’s speech inducting Woody Guthrie

  into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1988

  “Neil had just discovered Bob Dylan,” said Joni Mitchell. “He was going from rock and roll to a folkie direction. The concept of writing more poetic lyrics had just occurred to him, so he was checkin’ out the coffeehouse scene.” Joan Anderson was another aspiring folksinger making the rounds when she first encountered Neil Young at the Fourth Dimension in mid-1965. Way on the outskirts of Winnipeg near the university, the club was part of a chain, a “little circuit of three or four cities where you could go and play all the 4-Ds in a row,” said Randy Bachman. For a young Squire, the experience was pretty bohemian. “Low lights, lotsa candles and incense, lotsa chicks with no brassieres,” said Allen Bates.