by Neil Young
This situation couldn’t last forever, so soon I sold Abraham to a happy new owner rather than leave it parked at the bottom of the hill all the time. A couple of years later, Tom Wilkes created the cover for Harvest, one of my most successful recordings.
1964 Mini Cooper S “The Norge”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
n 1967, near the end of Buffalo Springfield’s short life, I purchased a Mini Cooper S, a car that was speedy, popular, and trendy. This marked the first time that I owned two cars at once: Abraham, the big Continental, and my new Mini Cooper. While I was on the road with the Buffalo, I had the Mini painted bright white and the windows blackened so you couldn’t see inside. I had a new black-vinyl interior installed, and when we returned from the road, my Mini was all ready!
It looked like a refrigerator and I referred to it as the Norge, a common brand of fridge. I felt very cool in the Norge, no pun intended. Buffalo Springfield was about as big as it ever got in those days. I was zipping around Hollywood in it, and it easily made it up the hill to my little Laurel Canyon cabin. I drove the Mini to many of our local gigs.
After the Buffalo broke up, I was getting ready to start my solo career and Elliot Roberts was my manager. He managed Joni Mitchell, and for a short time at the end of Buffalo Springfield, he was managing us. I had fired him from managing the Springfield because I thought he was not paying enough attention to us. It was very petty on my part. We were on the road. I was sick with the flu and needed something, and Elliot was out playing golf. It was a ridiculous reason to fire him. That didn’t stop me. I was pretty crazy and really self-centered at the time. Be that as it may, it happened. Then, when the group split, I tried to get Elliot to manage me right away. Elliot, it must be said, is one of the funniest people on the planet. He was able to spout one-liners at uncanny moments and blow anybody’s mind. He was so much fun! What a great friend and cohort he was then and still is today.
When I moved to Topanga Canyon to escape the city, my life was changing fast. So was the look of my car. I had the Mini’s wheel wells flared out and got big wide wheels and tires, and I painted it gray primer. It was not going to be the Norge anymore. It was to become a badass Mini.
One day, while I was having those changes made, I was walking down Topanga Canyon Boulevard, going for breakfast at a little café run by a pretty lady, Susan Acevedo. A couple of guys in an old military personnel carrier picked me up and gave me a ride. One of the guys in that giant vehicle was David Briggs, who was to become my friend for life and my unparalleled record producer.
Briggs was always vague about his upbringing. He had grown up in Wyoming with his aunt and left at a young age to seek his fortune in LA with his friend Kirby. He must have been in his teens. His talent for drawing music out of me was uncanny. He knew just what to say and when to say it. No one ever knew my muse the way Briggs did. We were brothers. His vocabulary was astounding. I don’t know where the hell he got it, but he was always coming up with the most eloquent descriptions of things, and yet he could be crass and crude at the same time. Sometimes he was downright rude to people, but he had a way of escaping at the last minute when he had pissed off someone twice his size. Briggs was a man of many, many talents and I was lucky to have known him and share so much of my life with him, making so many records.
Elliot had gotten me a great contract as a solo artist with Reprise Records, and I was living in my new Topanga house, purchased with my record company advance for signing as a solo artist. Briggs and I had been hanging out, going over my new songs, and were ready to start recording my first solo album. At that time, I had fallen in love with Susan Acevedo. We were married in a small service with some friends in the house, so it was a whole new era for me.
I had come into possession of a puppy named Winnipeg, a white German shepherd with little brown-gold tips on his ears. Winnipeg was from a pet shop on Topanga Canyon Boulevard about a mile below where I lived. He was a good dog, pictured on my Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere LP cover and on the inside as well. Originally, that cover picture had been taken for my first record by a photographer Reprise had hired. I liked a painting that local Topanga artist Roland Diehl had done for my self-titled solo debut better, so we waited to use the photo with Winnipeg. Inside the foldout are pictures of my beautiful wife Susan and I, Briggs, Crazy Horse with Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, and Danny Whitten, and Winnipeg. I really miss records with their big covers and inside sleeves.
Winnipeg was a friendly little guy when I got him, and I have a lasting image of him licking my nose to wake me up while I was asleep on the carpeted floor of my new house. Often I got very sleepy from Dilantin and phenobarbital, the medications I was taking to control seizures. Those two medications taken together were enough to knock me on my ass. So there I was, conked out on the carpet, waking up with this little puppy licking my nose and barking at me.
One day Winnipeg and I were on a little trip in Abraham, traveling on Saddle Peak, a narrow road above the coast in the mountains above Topanga Canyon. We had gone there to scope out a house that Briggs was renting. When we arrived at David’s new place, I left Winnipeg in the car because David’s dogs, Hannibal and Attila, a pair of German shorthairs, were not friendly with other dogs. After I visited with David for a while, I went back to the car and noticed that Winnipeg had eaten part of Abraham’s perfect Bedford cord interior. Bad dog. But what did he know? He was just a puppy. I was just learning about dogs and he was just learning about cars.
About six months later, when Crazy Horse had finished Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, I was practicing with CSN, just after the huge success of Crosby, Stills & Nash, their first album. Stills had come out to the house in Topanga and asked me if I wanted to join the group. CSN wanted to go on the road, and Stills, as well as Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun, wanted to get Stephen and I playing together again to make CSN a little more suited for live performances. Ahmet always enjoyed our interplay, recognizing it as a big part of the Springfield sound.
CSN had its own sound and I wondered how my singing would fit in with theirs. Three-part harmony is pretty basic, but four-part is more complex. We did find ways to do it, though. It was a real experience for me to sing with such good singers and they taught me a lot. David and Graham are pitch-perfect. Stephen and I are a bit looser. When we were on, it was real good, and we were on a lot. I loved singing with Stephen. It was fun singing with them all. What a sound.
Every day I would drive the Mini, with its superwide tires, blacked-out windows, and dust-covered gray-primer paint job, directly to CSNY rehearsal at Stephen’s house without one traffic light or freeway. I hardly ever saw another car. I had my own way of getting there. It was a dusty old ridge road that was rarely used by anyone and ran along the top of the mountains separating the San Fernando Valley from the beach cities. The view was incredible. There were no signs and no rules. I would fly along in my Mini, listening to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention blasting on my 8-track. That was a way cool outfit, the Mothers. The road went on for about twelve straight miles of dirt and dust before it became Mulholland Drive at the San Diego Freeway.
At that point I would hit the pavement and cross over the freeway, continuing on Mulholland, just flying along. It was a very exciting drive. For me, though, the best part was the twelve miles of dirt road coming out of Topanga. I never saw anybody on that road and I flew along, raising a cloud of dust that must have been visible from miles away. The road was just clay dust. In the winter, it was impassable. That was a great drive. The stealth road warrior Mini just tore that road up.
Some mornings I’d go in real early and record with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound from ten to one and then go to Stephen’s for practice with CSN. At those sessions with Crazy Horse, we cut “Oh, Lonesome Me” and “I Believe in You,” both tracks I used on my next album, After the Gold Rush.
Now that you’ve found yourself losin’ your mind,
Are you
here again,
Findin’ that what you once thought was real
Is gone and changin’?
—“I BELIEVE IN YOU”
At the Topanga house, Susan, her little daughter, Tia, and I had a next-door neighbor right below us on the hillside. All I could see of his house from my deck was the top of the roof. The owner was a large guy, very loud and excitable, a gay and exuberant character. One night, Susan’s company, Scuzzy Catering, was serving for a big party, as she often did. She had a bunch of pies ready to take down to the site of the party and had loaded them all carefully into the Mini, which was parked in our garage, at the bottom of a long flight of stairs. When she went back up the stairs into the house to get the last apple pies, she heard a giant crash under the house next door. The Mini had slipped out of gear and rolled down the hill, crashing directly into the supporting post for my neighbor’s house and knocking it down, causing his garage to collapse on the Mini and crush it.
He came running out and was screaming at Susan, arms flailing and overemphasizing like a bad actor in a Shakespearean play. Susan had a Sicilian moment and really came back at the guy, calling him every name she could think of and making up a few new names as well. He had no idea what he had gotten into. It was very dramatic. Alex, Susan’s girlfriend and partner in Scuzzy Catering, came to her aid, rescuing the pies from what was left of the Mini, right under the screaming neighbor’s nose. My rockin’ little Mini was totaled. Gone forever.
1934 Bentley Close-coupled Coupe Mulliner
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
fter the sale of Abraham, one of the first things I did was buy a black and silver 1934 Bentley close-coupled coupe, body by Mulliner, from an old gentleman in Glendale, who smiled happily as I drove away, seeing that I loved his fine old car so much. Everything about it was old; the seats were really old leather, the paint was cracked but original. It was really fine. It smelled aged and great, just like old leather should. This car was in exactly the kind of condition I looked for in later years when I began to appreciate the beauty and irreplaceable quality of originality.
David Briggs and I were making our first record together. It was my first solo LP. Two young guys on a mission, we were working on our masterpiece. Day in and day out, Briggs and I drove the old Bentley between Topanga and Hollywood—where Briggs was recording at Wally Heider Studios, T.T.G. Recording, Sunwest, Universal, United Audio, and Gold Star Recording—and always returned to Topanga late at night. Briggs and I drove on 101, flying through the night on our way back after a long session in the studio.
The car had right-hand drive, and on the driver’s side there was a lever in the door that you could pull back or push forward, instantly opening or closing the window at lightning speed. I mean really fast! Slam! This was a lethal weapon, capable of severing a finger very easily. If someone tried to reach in and get you in the driver’s seat, you had some real security and protection in that feature/weapon. But that was not the only feature this magnificent car possessed. It had an exhaust cutout lever on the floor as well. This feature was wild, to say the least. To save fuel and add power, it was possible to cut out the muffler completely by pulling the lever, thereby opening up the exhaust to run straight, without a muffler to impede the flow. When that was done, the car became very loud and went a bit faster. So that was exactly what Briggs and I experienced every night, cruising along the 101 freeway, talking about the record, what we would do tomorrow, what was good, what needed to be done again, everything, all while this spirited Bentley flew down the road, creating its amazing sound, faithfully carrying us to our destination. How throaty it was! What a sensation. Those were some of the best moments I can ever remember having in a car. The spirit of that automobile was undeniable. There was no problem getting this car up into my garage on Skyline Trail. It had a four-speed stick transmission on the floor and plenty of power to easily access the garage under complete control at a nice slow speed in first gear. That Bentley close-coupled Mulliner coupe was an incredible feat of engineering, flying down the road with the engine’s throttle wide open.
• • •
SOON AFTER we finished our first record, when I had not yet married Susan, I had to go on the road to do some solo gigs up in Canada to promote it. I was booked up there at some coffeehouses—Le Hibou in Ottawa and the Riverboat back on Yorkville Avenue in Toronto. I left Winnipeg at the Topanga house with a friend to care for him.
While I was in Toronto, I stayed in an apartment that was right across the road from Bob’s Hobby Shop, where I had bought my first Lionel train. I had a one-week stand at the Riverboat, and Bruce Palmer came by a couple of nights to see what I was doing. One night my dad came by, too, and visited with me for a while in the dressing room, catching up on how things were going. I think he was really starting to believe I was doing what I was meant to do, and he was curious. I played a lot of songs from my first LP that night, as well as some Buffalo Springfield songs.
When the dream came,
I held my breath with my eyes closed.
I went insane,
Like a smoke ring day when the wind blows.
Now I won’t be back ’til later on,
If I do come back at all,
But you know me,
And I miss you now.
—“ON THE WAY HOME”
I really looked forward to getting home and seeing Winnipeg, but that didn’t work out. When I returned to the house, there was no friend and no dog. I never did find out what happened. I was very young and made a lot of poor judgments about caring for things, particularly living things. Experience was not yet my friend.
While we were making the record Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, I was driving the Bentley up one of the steep Topanga hills, climbing toward my house, and as I entered a curve there was a pop in the rear end and I suddenly lost traction. The motor would turn but the wheels would not. I soon learned that a spider gear had failed in the rear end assembly. Fixing it would not be a problem.
At this time I made a very large mistake and decided that I should restore the car completely. I had it delivered to a place in Santa Monica called Prestige Motors. It sat there for a very long time. I figured I would go back in a few months and it would be restored, completely cherry. On my first visit back to check on the progress I knew I had made a big mistake. The car was pretty well dismantled. The interior was out and part of a new one that had none of the patina of the old one was in its place. The exterior paint had been damaged and stripped. Bumpers and magnificent headlights were out being re-chromed. Nothing was finished. The chrome had been fine and did not need any work at all and the new chrome that had been done was not nearly the same quality as the original.
Original. That is when it dawned on me that I had destroyed what I loved so much by trying to “make it better.” I had gone way too far and ruined a perfect car. That car was never the same. When I moved up north I had it shipped to the ranch, unfinished. I didn’t get to drive that 1934 Bentley close-coupled coupe again, but it was perhaps the finest car I had ever driven.
Forty years passed. The beauty and irreplaceable quality of originality lived on.
By 2010, album sales had really slowed down. Time had passed and the record business was plummeting. There was almost nothing left of what I used to feel, sitting with my friends, listening for hours to our favorite artists on analog vinyl (sometimes the same song ten times in a row), feeling the rush of emotions every time. Some people say one thing, some say another, but I think the terrible quality that record companies have settled for to sell music on the Internet effectively removed all that was good in the listening experience, except for the lyrics, beat, and melody. There was almost no way to feel the soul in the sound the way we used to. I missed the sound.
I had to make adjustments in my personal life to make up for the loss of income and sell the part of the ranch that housed my car collection. I had to choose which cars I wou
ld keep. In 2010, I sold the Bentley to someone who would try to bring it back. I didn’t want to sell it, but I was done. It was too painful, remembering what the car used to be like. Many cars were sold in what I call the big purge of 2010. It was difficult, yet it somehow lightened my load and I didn’t mind too much. I got used to it. Freeing it was, the big purge.
I planned on building a smaller place, which would be less than one-quarter the size of the original barn, to house my cars on the part of the ranch that we kept. I had a great structure built by local builder John Dixon, who earlier had reinvented our house with me by adding on to the original in a massive expansion project we now call Shakey Heights. John built a small car barn for me and I call it Feelgood’s. Today, Feelgood’s is my office and holds about six cars and many old amplifiers from my recordings and tours over the years—beautiful things built to make music. A lot of my favorite things in the world are in there.
I focused on the cars that really had a human and enduring lifetime connection with me and I kept those. Those cars hold some of my favorite thoughts, feelings, and memories, my moments of bliss. They are things of metal, but they harbor part of my soul.
1951 Willys Jeepster
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ack in Topanga Canyon in 1968, Susan Acevedo had a restaurant named the Canyon Country Kitchen. I quickly fell in love with her. One morning, before we were married, I was enjoying a “one eye” breakfast at the Canyon Kitchen, looking at Susan. I was reading “445 Collector’s Cars” in the LA Times want ads. I usually didn’t bother with the headlines unless something was happening of interest, and Susan was by far the most interesting thing happening.