It was just a concept thing. It was gonna be a strong record, I’m tellin’ ya, but it was gonna be really really out. Synthesizer and acoustic New Age instrumentals. The beat would come and go, sounds would come and go. Very much like what I ended up doing on Arc, only soft. The titles were all really descriptive, and they would just either be sung over and over again or whispered at certain points. And that was it. Sound concepts, industrial noise.
And the cover would be me standing in a misty meadow wearing these baggy corduroy Dockers with a Ford Aerostar—sort of like a subtler On the Beach kinda thing. And it was gonna be called “Meadow Dusk.” Some guy with his Aerostar in the meadow, standing there. Probably woulda been put down by a lotta people. They woulda said what a piece of shit it was, how unmeaningful it was. Coulda been innaresting.
But everything ground to a halt that fall. Bryan Bell remembers the moment. “Neil walked in one day and said, ‘I’ve been dropped. Everything’s on hold.’”
Elliot Roberts had been meeting with David Geffen and Mo Ostin to get Young back on Reprise. “It took a long time—because Mo was upset with us because we left him, and now I was asking him to send a check over to David for four million dollars and then make my deal. And I wanted a good deal. Mo eventually relented. Mo is a nice man, but he is also very tough. Mo didn’t get to last with Frank [Sinatra] and the boys this long without being tough.
“I got David down a little, I got Mo up a little and we made a deal. We gave Geffen this greatest-hits album, Lucky Thirteen, for free. We got nothing for that. So we bought out of Geffen.”
When Young got the phone call from Elliot on October 7, 1987, the moment was almost too intense. “I had just smoked this big bomber and almost had a heart attack,” he told James Henke. “I was so happy, but I was too high to enjoy it.” Thanks to David Geffen, Young would quit smoking pot for a while.
The first album back at Reprise felt very much like a continuation of the Geffen period—another genre record, this time rhythm and blues-based with horns. Black shades and fedora, crappy sports jacket, Silvertone amp, bad attitude—Neil Young was reborn as Shakey Deal.
It all started out on the road with the Horse back in August and September 1987, where, in between the acoustic and electric sets, Young performed a trio of songs with Poncho on organ and guitar tech Larry Cragg on baritone sax.
“I was the horn section,” said Cragg. “All of a sudden Neil said, ‘Okay, you’re doin’ it.’ He didn’t give me any warning. I didn’t even have a part, so I wrote the part and practiced in one of the empty trucks ’cause I didn’t want anybody to hear me.” A little later, Cragg was offered big money to be Springsteen’s guitar tech. “Neil flipped out—‘So you’re not gonna be a Bluenote anymore, huh?’” Cragg stayed put.
When the Horse tour was over, Young built up the horn section to six pieces—one trombone, three saxes, two trumpets (one too many for anything pertaining to rock and roll, quipped a Village Voice critic). The bulk of the players—Steve Lawrence, Claude Cailliet, John Fumo and Tom Bray—came from a group Talbot was friendly with, the East L.A. Horns. Young reserved room for one other rank amateur to keep Cragg company in the sax section: Ben Keith.
In addition to new material, Young resurrected some songs from his teen years. After a one-night reunion of the Squires in June 1987, Ken Koblun had mailed him lyric sheets for “Ain’t It the Truth,” “Hello Lonely Woman” and “Find Another Shoulder.” Swaggering, stupid and lascivious, these songs would be among the most enjoyable of the period.
Christening his new band the Bluenotes (though he would be forced to drop the name after Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes sued), Young took the band out for a series of California club dates in October and November. For two minutes the band was managed by Mazzeo—“worst manager we ever had,” said Poncho proudly.
Enlisting Niko Bolas as coproducer, Young recorded ten of the shows for a projected album. “It was my life’s work to do a record with Keith Richards, and I had to turn him down because I’d told Neil yes. Then we go out on the road with Crazy Horse and it’s terrible, it’s falling apart, it’s garbage.
“You always have to be accepting of the fact that they’re creative geniuses. But they’re not. Anything besides two and four is beyond their comprehension. When you actually get it out of two speakers and listen to it, they can’t play their way out of a paper bag half the time. They were just completely fuckin’ up, wastin’ Neil’s money, and it was pissin’ me off.”
The only Horse to bond with Bolas was Poncho, who saw him as “a real positive guy. He’ll come right up to you and cut through the bullshit—‘Hey, you’re playin’ like shit. Find a new part or change strings or get another guitar. Do whatever you gotta do, but change it!’ Billy and Ralph can’t handle that. It crushed them.”
One night after the tour, Bolas put together a tape of the performances Young had picked and played it for a bunch of guests at the ranch. “It sucked,” said Poncho. Bolas made his move. “We were up at Fantasy. I said, ‘Listen, man, am I really producing this record, or is this just a title you’re giving me so I won’t go somewhere else?’ Neil said, ‘A little of both.’ I said, ‘You need another rhythm section—this bike’s broken. Afford yourself the luxury of riding a few other bikes.’”
Begrudgingly, Young agreed. “It was very difficult for Neil. He’s loyal.” Bolas sensed other factors at work. “Neil is an artist—he’s insecure, too. He doesn’t wanna play with really good musicians because they’ll bust him. Because he’s not an amazing musician—he’s just an amazing force. So it’s always safe with guys that are less than you—you just tell ’em what to do and you know they’ll do it.”
Billy Talbot was fired, replaced momentarily by Rockets guitarist George Whitsell. “It was kinda cold. They all told me I was in. We broke for Christmas and nobody ever called.”
Next to fall was Ralph Molina. He and Young got into a heated argument over the use of the hi-hat on “This Note’s for You.” “That’s when I noticed what a fucking tyrant Neil had become. When you have a real band, it’s like a baseball team. You can make suggestions, it’s okay—but not fuckin’ act like you’re God and these are your slaves.”
Others maintain Ralph just couldn’t handle the blues. Bolas said the last straw came when the drummer mangled the tempo for “I’m Goin’”: “I finally had to have the drum roadie show Ralph how to play a shuffle.” Young would issue the recording as a B-side. Compared to the live version, it was a dud. “I think Neil put that out just in case people wanted to know why Ralph wasn’t there,” said Poncho. “Listen to that, you’ll know why.
“That night Neil came to my room with Ben Keith and said, ‘This started out as Crazy Horse, but tomorrow it might just be me and you.’” Poncho would thrive in Young’s next couple of bands without Billy and Ralph. “I wasn’t as timid. I’ve learned enough about music that when I hear something that’s my fault, I know it’s my fault. Billy had me convinced everything we did was cosmic or not cosmic.”
Young continued to try out musicians for the band, but his reliance on the past drove Bolas crazy. “Neil wouldn’t use any of the guys I recommended. He kept going with guys he knew.” The Buffalo Springfield rhythm section—Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin—bombed next. “Super terrible,” said Poncho. “They couldn’t play one song without stopping.”
Finally Young relented, hiring the rhythm section from Joe Walsh’s band, whom he had encountered at Farm Aid Three in September. Chad Cromwell pounded the skins like an animal; bassist Rick Rosas was, said Young, “a great player—and he’s a crazy Indian, too. Rick brought an element of craziness back to the music that was missing.” The lineup clicked immediately. “The whole LP was recorded in maybe two weeks,” said Poncho. “I was like ‘What’s the drummer’s name?’ We were done by then.”
This Note’s for You was released by Reprise in April 1988. Young and Bolas, now christened “The Volume Dealers” for Niko’s propensity for blowing up speakers, crea
ted a sound reminiscent of Everybody’s Rockin’—a hyper-digital mess overdosed with crappy-sounding reverb. Live, the Bluenotes could sound as big as a building falling; on the record, they were flat and annoying. The material would turn out to be far from the best of the Bluenotes period. “Life in the City” recycled lyrics from “Depression Blues” to no improvement, while songs like “Hey, Hey” and “Sunny Inside” were vapid. The world yawned. “A Dud for You,” warned the Village Voice, echoing the sentiments of many by criticizing Young’s seemingly endless genre leaps: “What’s next? Rap? The Nelson Riddle Orchestra?”
People write in magazines that I make different kinds of records just to draw attention to myself. If I ever saw the little wimps that were saying that, then I’m sure that I’d have to fucking kill them … There’s many better ways to draw attention to myself. I could kill music critics if I wanted to … I could burn down Geffen Records … I could burn myself down in public if I wanted to—that would get a lot of attention, right?
It’s a very stupid thing to assume that I’m making different kinds of music to draw attention to myself. I made Trans because I wanted to, I did the Shocking Pinks and the International Harvesters because I wanted to and I’m doing the Bluenotes because I want to, and if you don’t like that shit, fine. What are these guys saying? That the cool thing is just to do the same thing over and over again and not be a weirdo? Because if Neil Young did do the same thing over and over and over again and wasn’t a weirdo, then these guys would be going, “Oh, Neil Young, he’s so boring, coming out with the same thing over and over and over again.” You can’t win. You know, one week I’m a jerk and the next week I’m a genius, so how can I take these fucking music critics seriously? Let the people decide.
—Interview with Tom Hibbert, 1988
As with Everybody’s Rockin’, one song would emerge by way of video, but this time it would make a big noise: “This Note’s for You.”
Young had written the song on his wife’s guitar, out on the road with the Horse the previous fall. “For months I heard this line—‘I ain’t singin’ for Pepsi / I ain’t singin’ for Coke,’” he told Mark Rowland. “And I was riding along in the bus singing it to myself. Then when I thought of ‘This note’s for you,’ I laughed my ass off. For miles and miles.”
Corporate sponsorship had become rampant in rock and roll. The Rolling Stones were sponsored by Jovan perfume, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood were selling beer, Michael Jackson had been bought by Pepsi for $15 million. And Young, to the dismay of MTV and some of his peers, decided to poke fun at it.
The video was directed by Julien Temple, who would create Young’s slickest videos in the years to come. Temple matched the tone of the lyric perfectly. The spot opens with Young somberly walking the streets, mimicking Clapton’s beer commercial. As Young croons about having “the real thing,” ghoulish celebrity look-alikes prance about, with Whitney Houston using a brew to out a fire on Michael Jackson’s head. Then comes a devastating parody of Calvin Klein’s obtuse perfume ads: “Neil Young’s Concession for men.” Finally a sardonic Young peers into the camera, exhibiting a beer can labeled SPONSORED BY NOBODY.
Pretty funny stuff, and it got a whole lot funnier in July when MTV standards and practices banned the spot—allegedly because it made references to brand names. The fact that Young’s clip was an obvious parody made one wonder who was being protected: the audience or the advertisers. “We knew we were fucking with MTV’s wallet, which is worse than fucking with their hang-ups with sex and violence,” said Temple. “Their wallet is their most important asset.”
“What does the M in MTV stand for: music or money?” wrote Young in an open letter, dissing MTV as “spineless jerks.” The thrill of seeing MTV squirm on account of a forty-three-year-old rocker who wasn’t on their playlist was rich. MTV provided “This Note’s for You” the kind of publicity you can’t buy. “I still can’t believe that such a dumb little song helped resuscitate my career the way it did,” Young later told Nick Kent.
On August 21, the channel broadcast a special twenty-minute report in an attempt to explain themselves—and finally showed the video. Host Kurt Loder interviewed a grumpy Neil Young—looking absurdly cool in all white with huge sunglasses, a Cirque du Soleil T-shirt and a cap from Pink’s hot-dog stand.
“Your bosses or whatever, they really messed up,” Young said, going on to explain why he was even present for the interview. “You’re so big that if I don’t come down here, not only might I not get this video on, I might not get the next video on. How am I supposed to know? The last thing I want to do is rub it in your face…. I just want to get my video on the air so people can see it—they can judge for themselves.” Young declared MTV “should be called television music, not music television.”
Crazily enough, “This Note’s for You” would go on to win Music Video of the Year at the MTV music awards—although the sound feed mysteriously dropped when Young stepped up for his acceptance speech. In the long run, the victory would be meaningless, as MTV has remained almost completely Young-free.
Once again, Young’s music came alive out on the road. The further Young strayed from his concepts about whatever genre he seemed to be trying to duplicate—whether it be blues, country or fifties rock and roll—the more the natural eccentricities emanating from his plain weird self cooked up something original. The Bluenotes really stirred his songwriting juices. Larry Cragg recalls that Young would “show us a song once—he didn’t want to play it more than once—and we’d do it. That would be that.”
Playing Old Black without a pick and paring his amp rig down to an old cheap Silvertone, Young used a spartan guitar attack—with the wall of horns serving as frantic exclamation points—to create a sound that was bombastic, lonesome and, during another small club tour in April, painfully loud. Young collectors cherish Bluenotes tapes, and a great audience tape from the Trocadero in Philadelphia from April 22, 1988, illustrates why: It captures the sound—and the songs—where the album failed.
The swaggering “Big Room” sports a tempo of sublime restraint, with lyrics describing a Vegas utopia: “Don’t allow no cameras in the big room / It’s too much for one lens to see.” “I’m Goin’” portrays a bleak descent into depression: “Don’t wanna change my mind, don’t wanna reel it in / Don’t wanna stop this slidin’, honey, that’s the shape I’m in.”
“Don’t Take Your Love Away from Me,” the song Geffen refused to let him record in 1983, is a smoldering blues that finally gets the heavy attack it deserves. “Put your chips down, baby, empty your pockets too / When I make a promise, you can bet that it’s true,” wails Young, the wall of horns blasting away behind him. Despite its protestations of undying love, the song still manages to convey something sinister about its creator.
Throughout this material, Young plays utterly vicious guitar. In “Big Room,” he lets rip with tones so piercing they could split a sequoia. The gut-wrenching “Bad News” is resurrected from the dreaded 1974 Hawaii period, and with its whispers of vengeance not to mention its big but sadbeyond-words sound, the song is a Sergio Leone Western in miniature. Fear and regret lurk beneath the hero’s skin, but he’s resigned to his fate: “A prizefighter can’t be sad.” *
Young murmurs the song’s lyrics like they’re a death sentence. The song evokes an emotion rare in the catalog of Neil Young—sheer desperation.
In August and September 1988, Young and the Bluenotes hit the bigger venues and, as Poncho said, something was lost in the process. “The small clubs were a lot of fun. We got spread out onstage in the sheds and couldn’t hear each other. Neil’s got to realize he’s a feel musician, not a chops musician—he’s at his best when the band’s close together.”
I attended a show in Jones Beach, New York, on August 27. Although the 1984 Catalyst Crazy Horse shows never left my mind, I figured Neil Young might’ve hung up his gloves. But tonight was a different story, and there were three new songs that you didn’t need a genre-decoder ring to
unscramble: “Days That Used to Be,” “Ordinary People” and “60 to 0.”
A wistful acoustic number to the tune of Dylan’s “My Back Pages,” “Days That Used to Be” was briefly called “Letter to Bob.” Imagine sixties rock aristocracy as a baseball team and the team’s all dead except for Young and Dylan. Ancient promoters in wheelchairs fight over broken bongs and ripped black-light posters that litter the field. A bored hot-dog vendor wanders the empty stands, and the lights are about to go off for the last time. Bob’s hobbling off the field with his walker, but the ever cantankerous Young isn’t quite ready to call it quits: “I wish that I could be with one whose thoughts still run free / ’Cause we never used to hit dead-ends in the days that used to be.”
Easily the most extreme Bluenotes song, “Ordinary People” is, depending on who you talk to, either one of Young’s most impassioned unreleased songs or a one-legged turkey. This long, twisted epic is a loopy paean to gunfights, hot rods, drug lords, arms dealers, prizefighters, homeless factory workers and out-of-work fashion models—climaxing at a train yard in what must be a heavenly vision for Young—the “ordinary people” (“some are saints and some are jerks”) nursing a wounded locomotive back to life. “I got faith in the regular kind,” shouts Young as the song sinks into a miasma of guitar and horn abuse. It’s as unsubtle and heavy-handed as “Nothing Is Perfect,” but you certainly can’t ignore it. *
“60 to 0,” aka “Crime in the City,” is a bullet to the head. That night at Jones Beach, after whipping through a perfunctory “After the Gold Rush” to the requisite howls from the crowd, Young muttered, “That was then,” strapped on Old Black and, with only Rick Rosas on bass and Chad Cromwell on drums, tore through the new number with the force of a freight train. Some of the best rock Young made in the eighties was angry—this number, particularly vitriolic. One of the bitterest, bleakest assemblages Young has ever concocted, “60 to 0” is unrelentingly pessimistic: Life in the eighties amounts to prison wardens shooting helpless animals for a thrill, cops on the take from drug-dealing ten-year-olds.
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