The solo tour was a tremendous success, with triumphant shows at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles and at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Joel Bernstein attended a handful of the California dates and remembers the Los Angeles show, and meeting Carrie Snodgress, vividly. “She was disarmingly down-to-earth—beautiful, elfin, slight. What they both had was that combination of frailty and strength. They were madly in love. That show was played for her.”
Bernstein found Young’s performance “riveting. You never took your eyes off him. He was on a whole other roll, he wasn’t the ‘Loner’ guy or the Crazy Horse guy or the After the Gold Rush guy. And when he was funny, you could hardly believe he was cracking a joke, because the last song had so much pathos. It startled you, he could be so wry.” The show would be widely bootlegged.
You can see exactly what Bernstein is talking about, watching a live concert shot by Stanley Dorfman for British television’s BBC2 in Concert on February 23. This is the great visual document of the Harvest period: Dressed in a flannel shirt, lace-up boots and a seen-better-days brown suede jacket Briggs had given him, Young looks half woodland creature and half nineteenth-century engraving. He belts out “Old Man” and “Heart of Gold” with a ragged intensity missing from the studio recordings, singing so jubilantly you fear he might hurt himself. He seems uncharacteristically relaxed throughout the performance, the mumbled between-song patter about cars and TV so offhand you miss it on the first viewing. “Forget it,” he says with a crooked grin after some particularly corny shtick. “That’s a line.” There is a feral, wounded quality about the Young of this period that is mesmerizing. No wonder an army of teenage girls fell under his spell. He seemed not unlike them.
In February, a Dutch documentary crew came to the ranch and filmed Young driving around in his Jeep, hanging out with Louie Avilla, lying around in his house looking very stoned and doing an impromptu performance of a new song he would soon cut in Nashville—“Out on the Weekend.” “Think I’ll pack it in and buy a pickup,” he sings, chuckling over the cornball lyrics.
“I feel more free now than I’ve ever felt before,” Young said during a short interview conducted by Elliot Roberts. “I don’t find it hard to sing for any one person anymore … last night I sat down at the piano and played three songs for Carrie—I’ve never been able to do that before.” Tellingly, the one new song Young couldn’t play for Snodgress was “A Man Needs a Maid.”
In the first week of February 1971, Young went to Nashville to appear on The Johnny Cash Show. That weekend he found himself in a Nashville studio, and it would be a watershed session for many reasons: It would yield Young’s only number-one hit, “Heart of Gold”; begin an association with a new producer, Elliot Mazer; and introduce him to a new band of professional musicians dubbed the Stray Gators.
Four years Young’s senior, Elliot Mazer was a self-described “longhaired Jew intellectual” who had worked with a variety of folk acts and Janis Joplin before battling his way into the very conservative Nashville music scene. Mazer was part owner of Quadrafonic Studios, where he had recorded such Nashville outsiders as Joan Baez and Tony Joe White, and it would be there that Young would start recording the Harvest album on February 7.
Mazer had a reputation as an excellent engineer who lacked a certain soulfulness in dealing with the players. Most musicians considered David Briggs a brother, even when they wanted to punch him out; Mazer got a more indifferent response. He was always the guy on the other side of the glass.
Like so many of the crucial events in Young’s career, everything about the session came together by accident, including the producer’s involvement. Mazer—who had no awareness of Young other than that of being driven crazy by a girlfriend who played After the Gold Rush incessantly—was a friend of Elliot Roberts and by chance ran into him with Young at a dinner party. Young mentioned that he had some new songs he wanted to cut, and a session was hastily arranged. Mazer had to bump another artist to get Young studio time, and since most of the studio musicians went fishing on the weekend, none of his first picks were available.
The Stray Gators “were the other side of Nashville,” said Mazer. “They were not part of the establishment.” They were also all characters Young could truly appreciate. On bass was Tim Drummond. The mention of Drummond’s name elicits a chuckle from even the most jaded, for everybody has something to say about T.D. Nicknamed “the jive midget” by drummer Kenny Buttrey, he’s called “The Moth” by detractors due to his propensity for the spotlight. “More balls than a tennis court,” said David Crosby. Percussionist Joe Lala fondly recalls Drummond out on the road in his red silk pajamas, ordering up two complete meals for breakfast. Why two breakfasts? asked Lala. “So I can walk around the table and not miss a bite,” Drummond said.
Squat, balding and bearded, Drummond sports a mug straight off a post-office wanted poster and speaks in a wry, froglike croak. The only man who’s managed to snag cowriter credits out of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and J. J. Cale, Drummond reminds me of a carny huckster at the game of chance—first he steals your money, then your girlfriend. There’s frequently some shadowy, amusing activity on the side with Drummond, and he has a sometime reputation as a shit-stirrer. If there’s a band uprising, Drummond usually isn’t far from the action.
Born in Bloomington, Illinois, on April 20, 1940, Drummond conned his way into Conway Twitty’s group before joining the Daps (allegedly short for Dapicetic, a sleeping pill popular with the band), famous for backing James Brown on his mind-blowing two-sided single “I Can’t Stand Myself”/“Licking Stick.” Drummond was the token white in Brown’s touring band, which is where Young copped the name the Stray Gators: Drummond and Brown’s legendary guitar player, Jimmy Nolan, would amuse themselves by watching some of the more stoned members of the band staring into space. “They’d be flashin’, seein’ stuff in the sky,” recalls Drummond with a laugh. “We’d say, ‘Lookit him—he’s lookin’ at some gators, and here comes a stray.’”
Young chose to use pedal steel guitar for the first time on record, and tall, rangy Ben Keith answered the call. It is hard to find a musician more loved or respected. “Buddy Emmons may be the best steel player,” said J. J. Cale, “but Ben’s my favorite.” Drummond put it this way: “Y’know how when you’re in San Francisco and the fingertips of fog crawl in from the ocean and cover the city? That’s the way Ben Keith plays.”
Aka Long-Grain, aka King, Ben Keith was born March 6, 1937, in Fort Riley, Kansas, but raised in Kentucky. As a teenager he practiced guitar so much that one of his fingers had to undergo surgery. Switching to laptop steel, Keith soon made a name for himself with the likes of Faron Young and Patsy Cline—Cline’s immortal “I Fall to Pieces” would be Ben’s recording debut. There are few Neil Young albums Keith doesn’t appear on, and it is hard to come up with a musician more perfect for that universe—steeped in tradition, but open and soulful enough to get down with the Horse. As Young said in 1973 introducing Keith onstage, “I swear to God, I love every sound he makes—no matter what the fuck it is.”
Keith’s quiet personality matches Young’s to a tee, and he steers clear of band squabbles and other controversies. “I don’t remember Neil ever sayin’ one cross word to Ben,” said Kenny Buttrey. “They’re like brothers joined at the hip.”
Kenny Buttrey’s sparse, rock-solid drumming would be the cement that held Harvest together. As Mazer said, “He made the song sound like one person.” Buttrey loved & and drummers like Memphis legend Al Jackson; he’d also been the metronomic bedrock of Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. Mazer describes him as “a hundred-percent asshole character—a guy living in Nashville who hated country music.” Buttrey smoked cigarettes with his name embossed on them in gold and wore “jeans that were pressed,” said Jack Nitzsche, who felt that Buttrey was a little too much of a southern man for Young.
“Basically every drum part that I ever did with Neil are his drum parts, not mine,” said Buttrey. “He said, ‘I don’t want any righ
t hand’—no cymbals—which was really tough for me, because I was havin’ to think about what I was playin’ instead of lettin’ it come natural. ‘Less is more’ is the phrase he used over and over. Only lick I ever came up with on my own is the high-hat on the ‘Heart of Gold’ verse … Neil tells everybody what to play, note for note. If you play somethin’ he doesn’t like, boy, he’ll put a look on you you’ll never forget. Neil hires some of the best musicians in the world and has ’em play as stupid as they possibly can.”
Although Young’s minimalism drove Buttrey crazy, the drummer was impressed by the way he kept time. “It’s just ultra-, ultra-simple, a laidback kinda thing nobody but Neil does, and if you’re right with him it sounds great, and it sounds awful if you’re not. If I can’t see Neil’s right hand when he’s playin’ guitar, then I’m not playing. His rhythm playing is just perfect—it’ll feel like he’s slowing down, but it’s just the Neil Young feel. No drummer should ever hold Neil to a certain tempo, because if you put a metronome on it, you kill the Neil Young feel.”
This band would cut “Heart of Gold,” “Old Man” and an as yet unreleased version of “Bad Fog of Loneliness.” Young was ready; as Mazer said, “More than any artist I’ve worked with, you could sense when it was gonna be the take. Neil’ll teach the band the song, but he’ll hold back until he knows everything is together.” With the Stray Gators, the songs fell together quickly. Ben Keith would tell deejay Redbeard there was “no runnin’ ’em down—I didn’t know ’em till we recorded.”
Equally impromptu were the vocal contributions of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, also in town for the Cash show. “We wound up on our knees around this microphone,” Ronstadt recalls. “I was just shrieking this high harmony, singing a part that was just higher than God.”
A queen of the layered California seventies-rock sound, Ronstadt was amazed by Young’s approach in the studio. “The way Neil makes records, oh my gosh. I have a very, very meticulous way of working. I’m an oil painter—I take a long time to get all the parts real in tune, get ’em right with multiple tracking, doing it over and over. With Neil you don’t get the chance—you’re lucky if you’ve figured the part out, he does things so fast. Neil’s a sketch artist. He just washes the color over it, it’s done and it’s brilliant. He’s really got an uncanny instinct to go for the throat.”
Taylor also laid down the jaunty six-string banjo picking on “Old Man.” “I don’t think I played on one before or since,” said Taylor, who was untroubled by Young’s rough-draft methods. “Neil likes to be present in his own life, as in-the-moment as he can be. And that’s how he plays, that’s how he writes, that’s how he sings. He’s present. You don’t get the feeling he’s mapped out this area of music that he wants to learn everything about … he just does it.”
The crew worked all weekend, and by the wee hours of Monday morning the session was complete. “It was snowing in Nashville, which was very unusual,” recalls Mazer. “Ben’s windshield wipers weren’t working, so he had to drive his Triumph home backwards.” Mazer was excited; he was certain “Heart of Gold” was a smash hit.
“We all knew there was something very special going on,” he said of the session, and yet like so many others, Mazer didn’t think he got that close to Young. “Looking back, I don’t really think I felt at ease with him, even though we spent hours and hours in the studio. The serious amount of pain he was in and his mood shifts—greatly controlled by drugs—kept everybody at a distance.”
Harvest was just easy. I liked it because it happened fast, kind of an accidental thing—I wasn’t looking for the Nashville Sound, they were the musicians that were there. They got my stuff down and we did it. Just come in, go out—that’s the way they do it in Nashville. There were no preconceptions. Elliot Mazer was in the right place at the right time. He let me do my music and recorded it. He’s really good at what he does, but he doesn’t work with me like David.
—Buttrey said you came up with all his parts.
I wouldn’t say that. I don’t like musicians playin’ licks. Buttrey’s got a real good feel—he can get a pocket goin’, he’s very organized and he does take direction really well. He’s an incredible drummer. He and Ralph * are the best drummers I ever played with.
I wrote “A Man Needs a Maid / Heart of Gold” on the road. Piano. It was like a medley, the two went together. You should see the video with the London Symphony Orchestra live. There’s a take of it that’s great. It’s not the one we used. It’s not quite as together. “There’s a World” is overblown. “A Man Needs a Maid” is overblown, but it’s great. There’s a difference.
Harvest and Comes a Time are probably as much me as anything I’ve done with the Horse. “Harvest” is one of my best songs. That’s the best thing on Harvest.
I was in love when I first made Harvest. With Carrie. So that was it. I was an in-love and on-top-of-the-world-type guy.
—All those relationship songs—it’s “I want to, but I can’t.”
Right. Good thing I got past that stage.
—How did you do it?
Time, I guess. Gettin’ the right woman. That was a good thing.
Although they would never marry, Young asked Snodgress to join him on the ranch sometime in 1971. As Carrie recalls, “I said, ‘I have a problem—I got my own family.’ Neil said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything that can’t be worked out.’” One wonders if Young knew what he was in for, because with Carrie came a small but growing army: what Nitzsche snidely refers to as “the Snodgress people.” At one time or another, living on the ranch were her parents; her brothers, John and Mel; Betsy Heimann and Gigi di Piazza, a couple of girlfriends from Chicago; and a Vietnam vet named Jim Love whom Carrie had taken under her wing. Perhaps most significantly for Neil, the Chicago gang also included Tim Mulligan, who would become an indispensable member of Young’s technical team.
Carrie’s family was a touchy-feely bunch, much to Young’s discomfort. He would complain to Jack Nitzsche that one Snodgress or another was continually hugging him. “The Snodgress people, they were everywhere, they just took over,” said Nitzsche. “Her family, they were all big. They scared us all. Neil and I used to goof about that one—‘They could take over.’ All of a sudden they could walk in and go, ‘Okay, little people over there, the big people are here now.’ Her brothers? Two of the scariest people I’ve ever met. Frightening.”
Rassy would be the first of Young’s parents to visit the ranch, and craftsman Morris Shepard recalls that it put Neil “on edge.” Rassy was “almost putting Neil down and making fun of him because he was a big star, and not in a kindly way. Neil tried his best to treat her respectfully and not to lose his temper, but it was real hard. He didn’t like having her around.”
According to Carrie, when Rassy arrived, Neil would immediately disappear, leaving Snodgress to fend for herself as Rassy bitched about his absence. “Rassy didn’t like me, never ever ever, from the beginning to the end. Her inference was that I had created this monster—that basically I had something to do with Neil turning against her.”
But on the whole, the early part of Young’s relationship with Carrie sounds like an idyllic time. After some Nashville sessions, the couple meandered back to the ranch, burning through old automobiles. Young would go “into a lot and buy a three-hundred-dollar car,” recalls Guillermo Giachetti. “And then when the car would break down he’d go to another lot. Neil went from lot to lot, buying old clunkers.” Carrie seemed unaffected by Young’s fortunes at the time. Friends recall her agonizing over spending $5 on a pair of salt shakers.
Snodgress left motion pictures behind when she went to Broken Arrow. She became pregnant and, much to the dismay of her agents, began turning down roles. Neil’s world viewed the Hollywood scene with disdain, which led to problems when Snodgress received an Oscar nomination for Diary and was expected to attend the ceremony. Young wasn’t thrilled with the prospect. Nitzsche remembers him grousing about having to wear a tux. Snodgres
s ended up staying home. “We were all anti-establishment and she had the guts to thumb her nose at Hollywood,” said neighbor Johanna Putnoy. “It was really considered very ballsy of her.” Whatever political points it earned Carrie at home, it sealed her fate in Los Angeles. Her days as a star were over. “I always felt for Carrie, giving up her career for the love of a man,” said Guillermo Giachetti.
Carrie was the hippie matriarch of Young’s scene and dressed the part. She recalls that it drove Elliot Roberts’s business partner crazy. “Geffen used to take me aside and say, ‘My God, you guys have money. Look how you dress—combat boots and Mexican minidresses! You look like a wreck—why are you doing this?’” Giachetti noticed a curious aspect to Snodgress’s attire. “Carrie looked like a guy—flannel shirts, Levi’s. She started lookin’ just like Neil.”
Young initiated many projects in the early days of Broken Arrow. He started building roads and populated the ranch with livestock as well as more exotic creatures. He constructed a studio. “Neil wanted to build a clone of Quadrafonic on his ranch,” said Mazer. “Same console, same feel.” Morris Shepard was enlisted to craft elaborate wood cases for the equipment in the control room, dubbed the Redwood Rocketship due to its meld of the high-tech and hand-carved. * Young also began to delve into film, acquiring both the very first Magna-tech high-speed dubbing system and one of the first KEM editing machines in the country. Broken Arrow was becoming a little empire unto itself.
“We had a closed world,” said Johanna Putnoy. “You live on two thousand acres and only the people you want to see come and go. Money means nothing.” Joel Bernstein, visiting the ranch for the first time in February 1972, declared it “a Ponderosa for sensitive people.” The center of this world was Neil, with everybody else vying for his attention in one way or another. “There was always someone who could replace you,” said Putnoy. “Someone waiting in the wings to kiss ass. There was enormous competition to be close to him.”
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