Jack. What a fuckin’ character. He was just great. I think I met Jack at a press party for Buffalo Springfield. I loved the Phil Spector records that he’d been a part of. Jack had a whole scene. He was a player. “Expecting to Fly” is the best thing we did.
Bruce Botnick played an important part in that record. He was an artist. He would set up the board and if he didn’t like it, he would just fuckin’ erase the whole thing—the Botnick sweep.
We worked on it really hard. It’s probably one of the best records that I ever made. It took thirty days. That’s a long time on one song. But with Jack we got the real shit. ’Cause Jack could bring it out—he wrestled it out of me line by line, word by word … he reinforced it. My believing in me.
—Did “Expecting to Fly” have anything to do with the Summer of Love?
Yeah, that must’ve been it. I remember the girls came up, I don’t know if it was Donna, Vicki, somebody came up and listened to “Expecting to Fly” over and over again on acid for hours. Got way into it. I don’t think I was there.
With “Expecting to Fly” in the can, Neil Young concocted a new plan of attack: Take England by storm. Neil was going to move to the land of the Beatles and the Stones, and he convinced Nitzsche and Denny Bruce to go with him. According to Bruce, Young had it all worked out, down to the costume: a black velvet suit with white patent-leather boots that matched his White Falcon guitar. Neil had heard they hadn’t seen Roadrunner cartoons in England, so he’d bring those, too. And they didn’t have Waterpiks yet, so, Bruce said, “Neil was gonna take one with him and squirt Mick with it just to blow his mind.”
Unbelievably, Nitzsche and Bruce went along with the plan and prepared to leave the country. They got passports; Nitzsche even sold his house. For a very brief period the three of them lived together at 7776 Torreyson Drive in a place called the Chemosphere House, aka “the bubble house”: a climate-controlled curiosity built into the side of Laurel Canyon that had been featured in Life magazine. “It lasted three days,” recalls Nitzsche. “There were two variations in the bubble—hot and hotter. You’d go to bed and the next day it was a hundred and twenty degrees.”
It was on that last day the trio had breakfast at the International House of Pancakes on Sunset Boulevard. Despite the bubble-house fiasco, spirits were high—after all, they’d be in England soon, squirting Mick with a Waterpik. They were driving home in Jack’s blue Cadillac convertible listening to the radio when B. Mitchell Reid played “Mr. Soul.” When it was over, the deejay dramatically intoned an epitaph: “When Neil was with ’em, baby.”
Young suddenly lurched over the front seat. “What did he just say?” Nitzsche repeated it blankly. “No, no, no—what was the exact tone in his voice?” Young insisted. “Now I’m doing it and Jack’s doing it,” said Bruce. “‘When Neil was with ’em, baby.’ That snapped something in his mind right there. You could see Neil thinking. And all of a sudden we’re not moving to England and he’s back in the fucking group.”
“I got the feeling back. I guess I really need you guys.” That’s how Dewey Martin remembers Young announcing his return when he came to sit in for a gig. “Neil was very humble,” said Martin. “Still Neil, but very humble. He was scruffy, hunched over—he looked like he’d been living in a cave for a couple of months.” Replacement Doug Hastings was ousted and Young was back in the band.
The Springfield had struggled without Neil. They had made a dismal appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival augmented by an ever egomaniacal David Crosby, who played with both the Byrds and the Buffalo, all the while providing preposterous onstage commentary on LSD and the assassination of JFK. In August the Springfield had toured the Midwest with the Monkees, then moved out to a Malibu beach house just down the road from Moby Grape. For a minute or so, Young moved into a room built underneath an outside deck.
The house had been rented by Stephen Stills, enjoying royalties from “For What It’s Worth” and becoming a bit of a rock star. “Stephen wore as much Saint-Tropez stuff as he possibly could,” said writer Eve Babitz. “He looked like a rich person. I just figured he was trying to be like Ahmet.” Stills had bonded with the biggest kahuna of the Los Angeles scene: David Crosby. “Stephen and I had a lot of the same attitude,” said Crosby. “Egotistical, punk young guys…. Neil was in general more intelligent than we were.”
Stills had also welded himself to Jimi Hendrix, the opening act on the tour with the Monkees. Stills followed him around like a puppy. “Jimi was my guru, man,” Stills told writer Dave Zimmer. “Some people thought we were fags or that I was a groupie. But hey, it wasn’t like that at all. It was like I was going to music school, learning how to play lead guitar.” *
The beach house was the location of numerous jam sessions, most notably an acid-infused get-together with Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Miles. For Young—who was so gone on his own trip he wouldn’t really get into Hendrix until years later—this kind of celebrity circle-jerk was more overblown rock-star bullshit that had little to do with making real music.
Stills went berserk. He had to play the fuckin’ guitar behind his head, play it with his teeth, all this shit—and he couldn’t do it. So he would do it anyway, and it sounded like shit. All of a sudden you’d hear this fuckin’ awful sound, and Stills is over there playin’ guitar behind his head. He was just goin’ through a phase, but to me it was real important—that was belittling to the Springfield as far as I was concerned.
I didn’t like this … social playing. I liked to really play. I didn’t like to hang out at parties and the Hollywood trip. And Stephen … it bothered me how he was so impressed with these fuckin’ people. I know Hendrix was great, but let him be great. What the fuck did we have to be like Hendrix for? That wasn’t us.
In addition to “Mr. Soul,” and “Expecting to Fly,” Neil Young contributed another heavy hitter to the Springfield’s second album, Buffalo Springfield Again—“Broken Arrow.” Recorded in the fall of 1967 at the peak of Pepper-mania, “Broken Arrow” stuffs the whole bag of tricks into its six-plus minutes.
Comparing “Broken Arrow” to “Expecting to Fly” gives a pretty fair picture of how Pepper affected pop music: a slide from narcotic dream-scapes to vaudeville, from Brian Wilson to Vanilla Fudge. The absence of Jack Nitzsche is sorely felt: Where the enigmatic “Expecting to Fly” is understated, elegant and spare, Young’s labored solo production on “Broken Arrow” displays all the subtlety of a William Castle exploitation movie. Sound effects, tempo changes, a clarinet—all that’s missing is a buzzer under your seat. Young’s as yet unreleased acoustic demo is a small treasure, but the song became something else in the studio.
Framing the sections of “Broken Arrow” are such amusements as Dewey Martin bellowing a self-referential snippet of “Mr. Soul,” complete with screams borrowed from the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl; a cheesy stadium-organ rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” that dissolves into an acid-distorto wash; and the big finale, a lite-jazz combo fading into an overamped heartbeat. As Charlie Greene would say, “Heavy.”
Of course, Ken Viola thinks I’m full of shit. The record changed his life. “‘Broken Arrow’ was the ultimate fragmentational history of the sixties encapsulated in one song,” he said. “It was so unlike anything I’d ever heard … I must’ve listened to it a thousand times. The first verse was a continuation of ‘Out of My Mind’ and ‘Mr. Soul,’ but the second verse is what pushed it over the top for me.
“For a vast majority of young people, ‘A Day in the Life’ was the turning point—‘I’d love to turn you on.’ Well, I was already turned on, and for me the turning point was ‘Broken Arrow,’ specifically the second verse, because it was a rallying cry to the youth to cast off the bullshit that their parents were handing them—and it was a validation that everything we’d been feeling was right.
“‘Eighteen years of the American Dream’—you were eligible for the draft, but you couldn’t buy a drink. You could get killed in the war, but you couldn’t
vote…. It was like eighteen years of bullshit and then you go, ‘Ma, I heard about trippin’,’ and she goes, ‘A trip is a fall and don’t mention babies at all.’ It’s everything that was happenin’ at the time—trips, free love, something alternative—and your mom’s goin’, ‘Forget about it. Don’t come home and tell me you got this girl pregnant.’ That verse was the whole essence of growin’ up, so simply put.
“And the third verse—how could I not help but feel it was about the Kennedy assassination? And I was not alone. However far-fetched the allusion was, it fit, which made it all the more relevant. Then the jazz refrain—truly American music. And it ends with the heartbeat—the lifeline—the very nature of our existence. It was life-affirming, exhilarating, and I got way into it.”
So into it that when Viola was called upon to choose a classic poem to explain to his tenth-grade English class, he mimeographed the lyrics to “Broken Arrow,” stuck Robert Frost’s name at the bottom and proceeded into a very manic rap on the song for his peers. “It was like ‘Stump the teacher.’ He couldn’t get what the song was about or what I was saying. It was great.”
We did “Broken Arrow” in sections. Each verse, one at a time. A hundred takes of all of the pieces—they were all crossfaded. Could’ve been better. Well, maybe I’m not bein’ fair when I say that. Could’ve been more of a group record. The only reason Jack and I didn’t do it is I got back in the group. Too bad. It woulda been fuckin’ great.
—Why did you dedicate the song to Ken Koblun?
He tried to make it, but it didn’t work out. He didn’t fit into the Buffalo Springfield like Bruce did. Very tough—tough for all of us—but that’s growin’ up. That’s what it’s all about. You find out a lotta things. Nothing is forever.
To me, “Broken Arrow” was the end of something—and the beginning. Transition. From one struggle to another. Some kind of milestone. The sign of peace at the end of an Indian war. “Now we can talk.” Arafat and Rabin—they could’ve broken the arrow. See, I wrote “Broken Arrow” right after I quit Buffalo Springfield, right? So there’s the end of something right there.
—What did you think of Sgt. Pepper?
It was great—at the time it was way out there.
—It had a strange effect on rock and roll.
Well, it made people take it real seriously. Everybody started doing these overblown, gigantic—everybody had their version. In the long run it had a negative effect, ’cause it made us all into record producers and geniuses and we really should’ve just been in the band playing.
—What’s your deal with Indians?
I like all kinds of Indians. Good ones and bad ones. I relate to them. I don’t know why.
—Not in your blood?
There’s nothing of any consequence to make you assume that I have any Indian blood—a chance? Yes. Concrete evidence? No. So I don’t know.
But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is for some reason I love native peoples. How they used to live. What did they do before civilization and organization came to a point where things got so convenient that the real essence of life was being destroyed? Innaresting …
Released in October 1967, Buffalo Springfield Again would be the band’s greatest recorded achievement, an ambitious but naïve southern California folk-rock take on Pepper. * The band produced much of Again themselves, and had control down to the delicate Eve Babitz collage cover. On the back was a list, hand-lettered by Henry Diltz, thanking all their friends, influences and groupies. The record was dedicated to their forgotten first mentor, Barry Friedman.
On just his second outing, the twenty-two-year-old Stills had already mastered his particular brand of folk-pop concoction in “Rock & Roll Woman” and “Bluebird.” “Hung Upside Down” is one of Stills’s finest moments: a guitar-laden blues reverie about one helpless to overcome selfdestruction that in retrospect seems to foretell his own tortured future.
Overdub beyond perfection might have been the modus operandi of Stephen Stills, but for Young it was an exercise in frustration. And while he dwelled on the failures outside of his collaboration with Nitzsche, “Mr. Soul,” “Expecting to Fly” and “Broken Arrow” hint at the many directions Young would take in the years to come. “Those three songs on that record represented the whole sixties,” said Ken Viola. “Neil Young did it all in just three songs. If I ever had a shred of doubt about him—which I didn’t—that record told me I was right about this guy. I knew this guy was gonna be the one.”
Viola was so convinced that he hitchhiked to California, determined to meet his favorite artist. After a handful of gigs, Richie Furay befriended him, and Viola eventually found out where Young was staying. Summoning up all his courage, the fan knocked on the door of the man who had written “Mr. Soul,” and Young “just about slammed the door in my face. He was very high-strung, paranoid and not really a nice guy … it was very devastating at the time.”
In November, the Springfield toured with the Beach Boys and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Bruce Palmer was back in the band and more unwieldy than ever. Dewey Martin recalls Palmer—dressed in a full-length monk’s robe and beret—walking offstage in the middle of a show.
“Bruce liked his LSD,” said Martin. “So he walks up to the mike and said, really loud, ‘WILL YOU GUYS GET THOSE FUCKING GUITARS IN TUNE?’They still kept tuning. Bruce took his bass off and just threw it down on the stage really hard. Of course, the bass fed back, and Bruce just went into the wings and wouldn’t come back on. He just stood there, looking over those sunglasses with his finger in his mouth.” A livid Stephen Stills had to finish the last half of the set playing bass.
“Bluebird” would usually close the second set, “Mr. Soul” the first. “There were quite a few seizures during the end, and it was “Mr. Soul” that would do it,” said Davis. “It was a pretty violent end to the set. I used to literally see him startin’ to fall, and somebody would get him offstage. The audience would think it was some sort of strange finale.”
Armed with a tremendous second album, the Springfield should have reaped some rewards, but things disintegrated faster than ever before. Three singles were released, and none really hit.
On January 26, 1968, the tension between Stills and Young turned physical, and Dewey Martin had to break up a dressing-room scuffle between the two. Heading home from the gig, Palmer—driving his Camaro without a license and accompanied by an open bottle of booze plus an underage girl carrying pot—found himself in deep shit with the law once again. Out on bail, he immediately got busted a second time. Back to Canada he went, and Jim Messina, who had engineered parts of the second album, was brought in to substitute.
The band lost Richard Davis next. After a concert in Fresno, Davis got into an argument with Dewey Martin and quit. Enduring a succession of would-be managers, the Springfield stumbled ahead without any real guidance. Sessions began for a third album, but it was, as Young told Gary Kenton in 1970, “pieced together by Jim Messina because neither Stills nor I gave a shit.”
“It was very difficult,” said Messina. “I couldn’t get everybody in the same place at the same time. Stephen Stills would bring in Buddy Miles and they’d play, just the two of them. Then we’d have to lay a bass down and whatever else on top of it. It wasn’t like making music with everybody together.” In an effort to focus the band, Messina moved the sessions to New York. Young didn’t show.
In April 1968, the band embarked on another tour with the Beach Boys, this one far from successful. “We were touring the South and it was a nightmare,” said Messina. At the Veterans Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida, Rassy and Neil’s brother, Bob, were present for a major meltdown.
“It was really hot, and Dewey took off his shirt and jumped into the audience,” recalls Messina. “He was trying to be a good performer, but he was inebriated that night, and this big southern cop came over, grabbed him by the hair and said, ‘The concert is over.’ Then he turned to the rest of us and said, ‘Unless you boys wanna rot in my jail,
you’ll get your asses off this stage, into your cars and outta my county.’”
The band fled the stage—except for Young, in the throes of an epileptic fit. “I saw Neil laying there,” said Messina. “I went over to make sure he was still alive and I noticed this one tear in his eye. He was totally silent. And I thought to myself at the time, ‘I think we’ve embarrassed him. His family was there to see him and this happens.’ I felt bad. I bet that night was a deciding factor in Neil’s life to get away from the Springfield.” A few days later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and the tour was postponed, creating a deep pile of debt for the band.
On March 20 came another bust involving nearly the entire band. Stills had relocated to a ranch in the wilds of Topanga Canyon, and Eric Clapton showed up to jam. “They were partyin’,” remembers friend Linda Stevens. “The Marshall amps were stacked. Clapton and Stephen were playing so loud the mountains were ringing. One of the neighbors didn’t think it was so cool.”
The musicians were warned to crank down the volume, but didn’t. Late that afternoon, Dewey Martin started home to Encino. “As I’m driving down Old Topanga Boulevard, I see this patrol car comin’ up. It was too late to warn the band.” To ice the cake, recalls Chris Sarns, “These three or four girls came busting in the door and said, ‘The police are right behind us—here, hide this dope!’”
“They started pulling this shit out of their purses—like five containers of smoke—and I’m going, ‘Oh my God!’ Being the road manager, they handed it all to me. I tried to flush it down the toilet and the toilet backed up. The cops came running in the bathroom and I’m sitting there looking at this pot floating around. The sheriff came in and I just looked up at him and went, ‘Aaaah, shit!’ He said, ‘Why don’t you go sit in the other room?’”
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