Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  That was a depressing tour. Started out to be such a high point, by the end I was goin’, “Oh fuck.” I lost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It cost me seven hundred and fifty grand—and we sold out every show.

  It was just too big. Way too big. The plan was too big, the stage was too big, the schedule was too tight.

  Chip Monck—well, y’know—I hired him. People aren’t gonna blame me, they’re gonna blame somebody else. The reality is the shit didn’t work because the music wasn’t there, and if that doesn’t work, nothin’ else works. There were some real flaws in the concept of that tour, and they all emanated from me. That’s where the real problem was. It was blown way outta shape and shoulda been a small little tour, but I saw this big thing—the Rolling Stones tour—and it was stupid. I wasn’t that big of an artist.

  It was my fault the tour didn’t work right. I cut my own throat. My eyes were too big for my stomach.

  In the aftermath of the European Trans tour, David Cline found his position whittled down to nothing. “I was the fall guy,” he said. By the October 26, 1984, concert in Berkeley, Cline was reduced to preparing the guest list. “I watched that show in the audience, didn’t have a backstage pass. I was no longer a part of it—it wrenched me to pieces. I left in the middle of the show. I was crying so hard I couldn’t find the interstate.”

  Soon after that show, Cline headed over to Young’s house for a brief, emotional meeting in front of the fireplace. In a choked voice, he told Young, “‘It’s getting to the point where it’s no longer fun. I wanna get off while I still have a memory of it being fun. I’ve gotta quit.’ Neil was quiet for a second, kinda looked over at me and said, ‘R.D., can you afford to do this?’ I said, ‘No, but I have to.’ And I got up and left. It was the worst time in the world to resign—I was seven hundred thousand dollars in debt from a bad time in another business venture—but I still don’t regret it today.”

  When Cline was dragged into court in 1988 over a business venture, Young would testify on his behalf—against the advice of his counsel, said Cline, who was so moved by Neil’s appearance that he had to leave the courtroom.

  Some of Young’s friends felt that he treated Cline terribly—that he had encouraged R.D. to dive into every nook and cranny of his business affairs only to turn his back when it ruffled too many feathers. Others felt that Cline bit off more than he could chew. Said Bob Sterne, “Did Cline get a bum rap? You know what—when you put the fuckin’ hat on, when you accept the responsibility, at the end of the day you gotta take the heat if it’s fucked up. David Cline just didn’t have the chops, the experience to understand the problems and the personalities—and how really fucked up it can get out there in a hurry.”

  Cline would be missed. For many, he was a much more sensitive liaison than the rest of Young’s handlers. And, said Bob Sterne, Cline “had Neil’s best interests at heart—which you couldn’t say about a lot of people who had come and gone.”

  NEIL YOUNG’S NIGHTMARE

  You’d go out and—there’d be nothing there. That’d be it. Gettin’ ready to practice with the band. The band isn’t there yet, and the show’s tonight. Why? They just couldn’t make it. But they’re comin’ in. Couple of ’em aren’t gonna make it, but they sent other guys that they think are really good. They’re quick studies, they’ll learn the stuff this afternoon. They’ll be here pretty soon. Then I go out and I’m practicing in the sound check, still one of the guys isn’t there yet. Fuckin’ people are startin’ to come in. And they stand around for a while, yelling out a few things—“C’mon, Neil!” Then pretty soon they’re drifting in and out, and then they’re mostly gone. Only a few people are left. It’s a funny dream. It’s happened a couple of times.

  I’m scared every time I go onstage my shit isn’t gonna be there. That people aren’t gonna be there.

  Back in America, Young embarked on a solo tour in January 1983. It started off as a no-frills affair, but the one thing everyone remembers is Trans TV, a live video broadcast that blared onstage from a giant screen behind Young. Host Dan Clear—played by Newell Alexander, an actor capable of conveying unparalleled game-show smarminess—would roam backstage, interviewing concertgoers, crew members, offering his witless halftime commentary on the show itself. Interspersed were highlights from Young’s career, old TV shows, commercials and “video noise to irritate the shit outta the audience,” said Larry Johnson. “It was a riot every night. Woodstock pales by comparison.”

  A smattering of Trans songs were inflicted on the audience, but Young was already performing new, country-inflected material, taking a break from the tour on January 27 through 29 to cut a record in Nashville: Old Ways. Elliot Mazer, who hadn’t worked with Young since Homegrown, co-produced. “I got a call totally out of the blue—‘Hey, man, let’s make a record.’ I was a little skeptical, because I had heard Trans and I thought, ‘This guy’s lost it.’”

  It was Mazer who introduced Young to digital recording. Young dove in headfirst, buying the first pair of twenty-four-track machines in America. “As a result of liking the sound, Neil buys three hundred thousand dollars of these machines from Sony,” said Mazer, shaking his head. Young sold most of his analog gear and, beginning with the Old Ways sessions that January, all of the music he would make for the next twelve years would be recorded digitally. It changed everything. Young would immerse himself in this new technology completely, becoming its biggest critic in the process. It was a great medium in terms of postrecording tasks such as editing, but the limited sampling rate of the early machines left much of the music behind. “Digital is a huge rip-off,” Young would say in 1992. “This is the darkest age of musical sound.”

  —When did you first become disillusioned with digital sound? About the same time I stopped listenin’ to my own records. Old Ways. First one.

  —You were initially excited?

  Yeah. Things you can do with digital, you can’t do with analog. Digital is very controlled. It’s wonderful how you can manipulate it. Unfortunately, you’re not manipulating a thing you want to listen to, you’re manipulating a simulation of it.

  —Why not still record analog?

  Why? Who would hear it? It’s all gone as soon as you copy it to digital … if I was gonna do that, I’d do it for my own enjoyment and I’d say, “Fuck everybody else in the world, they’ll never hear it as good as I do. At least I’ll hear it.”

  Once you go digital, you’re gone. That part of the whole thing is a disaster. Shit doesn’t sound right. The shit is never gonna be like the old shit, never.

  —How did digital get over if it sucks so bad?

  Promotion. Nobody realized digital wasn’t as good—because it wasn’t an obvious problem. It was more obvious after you listened awhile. The first time, “Hey—no hiss, wow, great!” You didn’t realize there was no sound until a little while later.

  —I notice I can’t listen to as much music on CD.

  Right. It hurts. Did you ever go in a shower and turn it on and have it come out tiny little ice cubes? That’s the difference between CDs and the real thing—water and ice. It’s like gettin’ hit with somethin’ instead of havin’ it flow over ya. It’s almost taking music and making a weapon out of it—do physical damage to people without touching them. If you wanted to make a weapon that would destroy people, digital could do it, okay?

  The Old Ways band was a roundup of the usual Harvest/Comes a Time suspects—Ben Keith, Tim Drummond, Rufus Thibodeaux, Spooner Oldham and Karl Himmel—plus a few new faces on background vocals: Denise Draper and a trio of Nashville singers Young had heard on a Tanya Tucker record, Larry Byrom, Rick Palombi and Anthony “Swee’ Pea” Crawford. He would dub them the Redwood City Boys.

  Old Ways would be Young’s most straightforward country record thus far, and Mazer felt it began with a promising omen. “Neil was sick when he started makin’ it—which is a big clue he’s gonna make a good record,” he said. The sessions went fast. “Neil couldn’t believe it,” said
Drummond. “He ran out of songs.”

  Lyric content hinted that Young shared an affinity with the Nashville ethos that went beyond musical style. The big pull in Old Ways was family values: “My Boy” was a loving tribute to Zeke, and the lilting “Silver and Gold” was an homage to his family that Young would attempt to record many times over the years, never to his satisfaction. For those focused on Young as the stoned Crazy Horse hippie, the lyrics of the title song signaled a surprising change of heart: “Almost off that grass, give up all this drinkin’ / Really gonna make it last, clean up my way of livin’.”

  With his own economic woes staring him in the face, Young looked out at the grim landscape of eighties America and saw disillusionment, resulting in one unqualified masterpiece from the sessions: “Depression Blues.” Young’s lonesome harmonica and even lonesomer vocal evoke a dusty nowheresville where the jobs have vanished and the funky downtown movie theater has been replaced by a faceless shopping-mall twelveplex: “All our old hangouts are boarded up and closed / Or bein’ bought by somebody nobody knows.”

  Although Jesus was conspicuously absent from Young’s down-home landscape, the overall message of Old Ways was one that Ronald Reagan could have condoned: Take pride in America, keep your family together, leave the drugs behind. “Are There Any More Real Cowboys?”—a song Young had written, strangely enough, in the middle of the Re-ac-tor sessions—decries cocaine-snorting cowpokes, asking, “Are there any more country families still workin’ hand in hand / Tryin’ hard to stay together and make a stand?”

  After the Nashville sessions, Young resumed his solo tour. In comparison to the Trans debacle, it was a much needed financial success, grossing $5 million in five weeks, according to one source. But after two months, the tour ground to a halt during a March 4 appearance in Louisville, Kentucky, when Young passed out in the dressing room after the first set. A riot ensued when he didn’t return.

  I was lyin’ on the floor of the dressing room. I could see myself—and the coroner came in. He was the only medical guy there, so he came in, checked me out, said that I was in shock, that I couldn’t play and that we were gonna have to cancel the show. And I hadn’t been doin’ a lot of drugs or anything—I was sick.

  That was the most pressure I’ve ever been under—to be alone at Madison Square Garden, then Nassau Coliseum—and to be so fuckin’ sick that you could hardly see? I just made it on nerve. Elliot was at the doctor with me when I got the shot that almost put me out. I started gettin’ the shakes and everything—and he saw it all, but I don’t think it really registered.

  I was too tired, too sick. They just drove me into the ground. Nobody would stop me—I was sick through the whole fuckin’ New York leg, and they just kept on goin’. They figured if I thought I could do it, then I must be all right. I was so burnt I didn’t know what the fuck I was doin’. A lotta people die like that.

  The rest of the tour dates were canceled and Young took some time off, going on a boat trip with some of his cronies. On the train to Seattle, pal Alex Reid reminisced about seeing Alan Freed rock and roll shows back in the fifties, prodding some new songs—and yet another musical direction—out of Young. Back at the ranch, he cut a handful of songs on April Fool’s Day, 1983, that were retro-fifties, including a pair of Elvis covers, “That’s All Right, Mama” and “Mystery Train.” Some of these were combined with the Nashville material, and a tape was sent to Eddie Rosenblatt at Geffen. Elliot Mazer recalls the drastic turn of events that followed.

  “Eddie’s reaction was, ‘Interesting, but difficult to merchandise.’ Then the worst thing happened. Eddie called up Neil and said something about the album being ‘too country.’ Neil almost threw the phone through the window. I’ve never ever seen him get that angry. He was beside himself.

  “When I got home there were, like, eleven thousand phone calls from Eddie. He’s a nice man—we’re not talking about an asshole—and he said, ‘I guess I blew it.’ I said, ‘Fuckin’ understatement.’ Saying it was ‘too country’ was the end of their relationship. Those two words did it.”

  Since the ersatz rockabilly trio the Stray Cats was riding high on the charts, Mazer suggested they expand on the rock and roll numbers Young had recorded and said Rosenblatt was excited by the idea. Neil Young wasn’t happy about much of anything at the time.

  I almost vindictively gave Geffen Everybody’s Rockin’. Geffen wanted more rock and roll. That was the key phrase: “Well, you want some fuckin’ rock and roll, do ya? Okay, fine. I can do that. As a matter of fact, my uncle was a rocker, and I’ll be him.” I got way into that guy. I was that guy for months. He was outthere. It was a movie to me. Nobody saw it but me, but who gives a shit.

  It’s hard for anybody to believe me when I do those things because of who I am. For them to believe that I’m not just diddling around, that I must be bored, so I’m doing this or that. I can’t explain why I get so into what I do. I just do it. And I got so into all of these characters, starting with the first character—Tonight’s the Night.—But that was so personally connected to your life. Very, very connected. The eighties, I know in time, looking back on it when it’s not so hard to take, it’s gonna be really strong. I feel really good about what I’ve done in the eighties, although I took a lot of shit for it. Because I did feel everything that I was doing.

  There was a huge abyss between me and everybody. And that’s why people say, “Well, y’know, he’s lost contact, he’s outthere,” whatever—’cause I was just in a whole other place. It made sense to me, everything I did, and yet everywhere I went, people were telling me, “What the fuck are you doing? Why are you doing this? I mean, you’re systematically dismantling your recording sales base.”

  After the Old Ways country material was deep-sixed, Young recorded additional rock and roll material with a pared-down version of the Nashville lineup—now dubbed the Shocking Pinks—and finished Everybody’s Rockin’ “in about two hours,” said Elliot Mazer.

  Young made every attempt to stay close to the minimal feel of early rock and roll. “I had eighteen tom-toms, twenty-seven cymbals set up,” said drummer Karl Himmel. “Neil said, ‘All you need is a hi-hat, snare and a bass drum.’” Tim Drummond played stand-up bass. Young, up to his old tricks, enlisted slide player Ben Keith to play lead guitar. “Neil said, ‘I want somebody who sounds like they can’t play,’” Keith recalls. “I said, ‘Well, I can’t play.’ He said, ‘Oh good—we’ll use you.’”

  Everybody’s Rockin’ does have its virtues. Young’s tribute to Alan Freed, “Payola Blues”—with its self-deprecating chorus of “No matter where I go, I never hear my record on the radio”—is the funniest song Young has ever written, and the shambling rhythms of “Cry, Cry, Cry” are irresistible. “Wonderin’,” from the Topanga days, proved impossible to ruin, even benefiting from the stark treatment given here. And Young’s singing throughout is as impassioned as ever, especially on a cover of Slim Harpo’s swamp classic, “Rainin’ in My Heart.”

  But the overblown backing vocals of the Redwood City Boys are hard to take, especially over a whole album. Their bopshoowaas are excruciating—a Mitch Miller version of the fifties. The Elvis/Sun Records “That’s All Right, Mama” and “Mystery Train” are two of the most thrilling performances in all of rock and roll, but Young neuters any intensity, rendering the songs innocuous. It’s like Billy Joel covering Tonight’s the Night. Weirdness isn’t very weird when it’s contrived, and Young’s take on the fifties just wasn’t impassioned enough.

  The sound was another problem. This was Young’s first release featuring his “Digitube” method of combining digital recorders with the old green Wally Heider tube console (“You take a $180,000 Sony machine and run it through a $39.95 board,” quipped Spooner Oldham). Karl Himmel was reportedly moved to tears the first time he heard his drums on digital playback. I was moved to tears, too—because it sounds butt-ugly awful, like somebody throwing a wet rag against a wall.

  The record is also buried deep in pla
stic reverb. The Sun Records reverb was an organic, mystical sound; to approximate it with digital delay is an insult. And although the cuts with Young’s rollicking piano add some much needed bottom end, the record sounds thin and tinny throughout—digicrap.

  Calling this music rockabilly was a mistake made by every reporter at the time, including me. I think Young was aiming for the weird hybrid of pop and rock and roll that entranced him and Comrie Smith back on Roe Avenue in Toronto. But Young encouraged the misnomer by making reverb the star and posing on the cover with a hollow-body Gretsch and slicked-back hair.

  Trans might have been greeted with indifference and mild derision, but Everybody’s Rockin’ was roundly panned when it was released in July 1983. One audio magazine voted it worst-sounding CD in the history of CDs—a bombastic claim, given that compact discs had been around only a year. The fact that the running time—five songs a side, total time less than twenty-five minutes—also harkened back to the fifties didn’t win Young any praise, either. “I was a little angry,” said Eddie Rosenblatt. “It seemed a little sparse.”

  Elliot Mazer felt that beginning with Trans, Young had ventured into territory that was style over content. “Old Ways was a more personal record, but it was still conceptual—‘I’m gonna be a cowboy, I’m gonna say that rock and roll is shit. It’s concept over art—which is not good. And when all you’re doing is blatantly putting the concept forward, and the concept comes up empty, you’re in danger.”