by Neil Young
Summer ends year in year out.
Why are you growin’ up so fast
My boy?
Why are you growin’ up so fast
My son?
—“MY BOY”
Citroën Deux Chevaux
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
n the summer of 1971, exiting an elevator onto the mid-floor of a gray parking garage in downtown New York City, I could feel a sense of urgency or apprehension among those who were accompanying me. In the corner, almost hidden by a big car, was a French Citroën Deux Chevaux, a very small car easily memorable as Inspector Clouseau’s vehicle of choice (if you have ever seen a Peter Sellers movie about the inspector). My friends, including Carrie and her brother and someone else, were looking at the car with me, but they said they did not want to go near it until it was sold to me officially, even though I had already paid for it.
There was something odd about the whole thing. Why did they not wish to be close to the car, and what or who was it they kept looking around for in the garage? Eventually I came to understand that something was in the car, having been shipped from Europe and then moved and stored in this downtown garage. Something was inside the car but it wasn’t visible by just looking at it.
I learned after questioning them for a while that the car was a courier of sorts, with a hidden cargo perhaps in the quarter panels, and it may have been the subject of surveillance, perhaps even when we were there. I had purchased the car, but I couldn’t have it until Carrie’s brother was officially the owner and gave it to me, and this curious situation was making me suspicious as I felt trepidation in my fellow travelers.
A few weeks later the car was delivered at the ranch, shipped from New York. It turned out to be a really fun car to drive, just right for the ranch and the back roads, no matter how rough they were. This car with its small engine was really quite unique and required a mix of oil and gasoline to run.
I looked thoroughly at all of the side panels and every other place that could have hidden anything but could not find a trace of tampering. There was certainly nothing obvious to me. There was always an air of mystery about the car’s story, though, and somehow I think there was a clue that I missed. Perhaps something Inspector Clouseau might have noticed with his keen eye.
I enjoyed the car immensely, driving it around the ranch and even up on the hill to Alice’s restaurant a few times. Top speed was about forty miles an hour. There was a seat that was kind of a rubber sling hanging between metal arms, very funky but quite comfortable, actually. It even had a sunroof that rolled back. The gearshift was in the dashboard where it could be moved in and out with a lever that had a large ball on the end to hold on to while changing gears.
Eventually something went wrong with this car and I sold it because I couldn’t find anyone who knew how to work on it. The folks who bought it had been looking for one for a long time and were very happy to get it.
I was starting to be known as a guy who loved old cars. In the fall of 1971, I was buying cars left and right. Half of them didn’t run very well, but they were all unique looking and defined a style. The price of gas was thirty-six cents a gallon.
Around 1972, I bought another car in LA. I don’t know what the heck got into me. I think I have a disease. Anyway, it was a 1950 Packard Clipper and the only positive thing about it was that it had a great hood ornament, a beautiful bird with its wings spread out. It looked like the front of an old ship or something. It was a normal sedan, like the ones my dad bought when I was a kid, with nothing special about it. It wasn’t a hardtop convertible or a ragtop. It wasn’t a wagon. This car smoked so badly that I was unable to drive it in public, even in LA. Even then, smog was becoming a big problem and this car had so much smoke coming out of it that even I would not drive it. Somehow I got it back to the ranch and put it into the junkyard in case I ever needed parts.
1950 Packard Clipper Sedan
Eventually I did use the hood ornament on another Packard, a woodie station wagon. The 1950 Clipper sedan was ultimately scrapped. What was I thinking? Moves like that made me start to wonder about my habitual buying of cars and my values in general. This one set me back five hundred bucks. Was there a deeper meaning? Some inadequacy I was trying to cover up? But this is a book about cars, so I won’t go into that.
Sometime in late 1972, I located a 1948 Packard woodie in a remote suburb of LA. I found this fine example in many parts at a garage. I picked it up for five hundred dollars, feeling I had a rare find at a steal of a price. There was something special, almost supernatural, about this Packard woodie.
I was already the proud owner of a Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon, yet this particular woodie was very appealing to me because of its exceptional style. It was very round, making it look like an old R. Crumb cartoon, with a distinct “Keep on Truckin’” appearance. I loved its back end, a wooden door all curvy and round. It was amazing to me how those designers came up with ideas. I imagined them staying up half the night, working on their fabulous creations. It seems like they just picked them out of the air. Whimsical and free, the postwar era produced an art form all its own. The big V8s that powered these creations rolled along emitting a pound or more of CO2 into the atmosphere with every stylish mile, over country, through cities, states, and provinces across North America.
Back at the ranch, I had made the acquaintance of a man living on the peninsula who went by the name of Spokely Wheeler. Spokely was a round-faced, red-haired, wire-rimmed-glasses type of guy who was a mechanic. He always wore mechanic’s coveralls and he worked out of his own house and garage, specializing in 1940s Chrysler products, a great many of which surrounded his house and spilled out onto the street where he lived. I recognized him as a real character and liked him immediately upon our meeting.
Although I was hesitant to do much in the way of restoration after my previous failures, I asked Spokely if he could restore my new Packard woodie. We discussed how far he could go with the work and exactly what it would entail. In the end, Spokely Wheeler did an admirable job upgrading the upholstery to a vinyl that was very period-appropriate and worked well with the Packard. The woodwork detail was done by Spokely’s own hand, and included a musical note and a broken arrow he had inlaid nicely. It was a very soulful restoration, and I completely loved the finished product.
• • •
I WAS LIVING in Santa Cruz in the late seventies, escaping reality and playing with a band known as the Ducks, not a normal band. Ducks members were Bob Mosley, from Moby Grape—a group I had known since the early Springfield days—on bass, and Jeff Blackburn, from Blackburn & Snow—another San Francisco sixties band; I was on guitar; and Johnny Craviotto, now one of the greatest makers of custom drum sets in the world, was on drums. All Ducks sang.
According to legend, the story behind the Pussinger Curse goes like this:
A group of ducks crossed the street by the harbor every day, waddling in a line from the lagoon on one side of the street to the harbor on the other side. There, peaceful waters lapped on the many hulls of local pleasure craft. One day the ducks were dutifully following their leader, Master Mallard, across the pavement, when Pussinger, a local surfer in a hurry, came flying wildly down the street in his car and ran over the ducks, injuring several of them and killing one right on the spot. Master Mallard, in an uncontrolled moment of anger, placed a terrible curse over the city, since known as the Pussinger Curse. It became local knowledge that the only way the curse could be lifted was through a Nuclear Quack, a giant “Quack-In” of unsurpassed and as yet unknown magnitude and volume.
The Ducks were not able to play outside of the city of Santa Cruz until the Pussinger Curse was lifted.
In an effort to lift the curse, the Ducks played all over the city in small clubs for fans who purchased duck calls from every hunting outlet in the Bay Area and brought them to Duck appearances to attempt a Quack-In. Some audience members simply made a loud qua
cking sound with their own voices. Until the curse was lifted, Ducks performances couldn’t be announced ahead of time.
The Duckmobile, the Ducks’ 1950 Packard woodie, could be seen late in the afternoon outside of any club where the Ducks were to play that evening. That was the only indication that an appearance was imminent. Through word of mouth, every appearance of the Ducks drew great crowds overflowing onto the streets and often a Nuclear Quack was attempted by the audience coming together and quacking as one. The Quacks grew increasingly loud and long, but the curse was never lifted and the Ducks were never heard outside of the city limits.
1948 Packard Woodie Station Wagon “Duckmobile”
One fateful night, a beautiful winged bird, the hood ornament of the Duckmobile, was ripped from its hood, right outside a club where the Ducks were playing. The Ducks never recovered. That sad event broke their spirit. Since that sorry criminal act was committed, Santa Cruz, California, Surf City, has long suffered from transients, homelessness, street crime, an active drug trade, and some well-known unsafe areas where the Pussinger Curse still remains particularly strong to this day. Santa Cruz is now considered one of the most crime-ridden towns in all of America.
1947 Buick Roadmaster Sedanet (Fastback) “Black Queen”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
n November of 1972, Zeke Young was two months old, the ranch was full of new life, and I was ready for a new car. Spokely Wheeler had just made a visit home to Idaho to see his relatives, and when he returned to California he told me he had found a 1947 Buick Roadmaster fastback in a church parking lot with a FOR SALE sign on it. The car was priced at $650 and Spokely thought it was a great deal. He described it as a low-mileage, original car, period, end of story.
I was always looking for Buicks that reminded me of Mort, and this model was identical in the controls and dashboard, very familiar to me, just as the 1947 convertible I had bought and abandoned in Toronto years before had been. Excited, I asked Spokely to please go back to Idaho and pick it up.
A few days later, he arrived at the ranch with the Roadmaster and it was everything he described. A beautiful rich black, it had lines that were very sleek and it drove like a dream. I took it down to LA and back to try it out and it was a perfect ride, no problem anywhere, except a little squeak that I could hear on the redwood roads around the ranch, something in the hood release.
Eventually I noticed some small flaws in the paint on the hood, which was otherwise mirror perfect. There were some ripples that almost looked like water. I grew fond of them. In 1973, I took the car down to LA to record an album called Tonight’s the Night. It had been a rough year with the losses of Danny Whitten, the Crazy Horse guitarist and singer, and Bruce Berry, our CSNY roadie, both to drugs. These two deaths touched me deeply, and the music we made down in LA at the Studio Instrument Rentals rehearsal hall was kind of a wake.
Briggs rented a lot of recording equipment from Wally Heider, including a sixteen-track tape machine, some outboard gear, microphones, and a tube recording console called the Green Board. Beginning at about midnight, we drank a lot of tequila while recording, going until the wee hours of the morning. Among our occasional guests for these late-night sessions were Joni Mitchell and Mel Brooks. After the sessions we would jump in the Buick, named the “Black Queen” by Briggs, and drive down Santa Monica Boulevard to the Sunset Marquis Hotel sometime before dawn. Night after night, that’s what we did until Tonight’s the Night was recorded.
The Black Queen sat for years in my car barn, still with beautiful lines that no one could ever take away from her, but a little worn-out and not looking as great as some of my other cars Jon had worked on. Briggs always used to ask me, “Why don’t you fix up the Black Queen?” I didn’t want to ruin it. It looked perfect to me; a time capsule of good memories. After Briggs died, I reconsidered and fixed her up in his honor. Jon put in a beautiful black-and-white Indian blanket design in her interior with a black headliner. It had a comforting, cared-for, and loved feeling inside. David was right. She was a whole lot better.
The Queen rolled through my life as I recorded albums and played tours. She was there with me when we opened the Roxy in LA with our premiere performance of Tonight’s the Night. She took me between the ranch and my home in Malibu as I flew back and forth on my beloved Pacific Coast Highway, avoiding constricted and impersonal air travel. The Black Queen, one of my all-time favorites, will always be with me, after being such an integral part of my life and writing in the 1970s. For me, the Black Queen defines a place where life, music, and machines come together. Now she has a permanent stall in Feelgood’s Garage.
1954 Cadillac Limousine “Pearl”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
he year 1974 was very tumultuous in my world. I had broken up with Zeke’s mother, Carrie, creating a void between Zeke and I. This was the heaviest weight I had ever experienced as a result of any of my decisions, and I was doing a lot of second-guessing about it, but I still felt I was doing the right thing. I saw Zeke on the weekends at first, as these things usually go. There were some very reflective and sad moments as I weighed the consequences.
My life became a bit more erratic. I had moved down to Malibu and was renting a house on Broad Beach Road, near Zuma Beach, and had been hanging out with Rick Danko of the Band, who had become a friend. We spent a lot of time at a place called Shangri-La, a ranch estate house that the Band had made into a studio. It was located about five hundred yards inland from the Pacific Coast Highway, opposite Zuma Beach, and was a great place to play music. A lot of musicians were up there at times, and I enjoyed being able to have a studio so close to where I lived. That’s where I met Levon Helm and he told me about his friend Johnny Tyson from Arkansas. Johnny’s family company, Tyson Foods, used to fill our Shangri-La freezer with Cornish game hens. They were easy to cook. Many times, gangs of musicians were there enjoying these dinners. One night, Dylan came by and I played him a couple of new songs, “Hitchhiker” and “Cortez the Killer.” When he heard “Hitchhiker,” a confessional about the progressive history of drugs I had taken through my life, he told me, “That’s honest.” That moment still crosses my mind. It makes me laugh every time I think of it because Bob’s humor is so wry. I think it was his way of saying kindly that the song was not very inventive as far as creating a story goes, just that I was following a history and not making up anything new. It’s still funny to me, at any rate, the way he put it.
I guess you might say I was falling into the seventies Malibu lifestyle for rockers and actors. I was experimenting with cocaine, and I still smoked a lot of weed and drank my share of beer and tequila. During the week, Briggs and I often visited the new Crazy Horse Saloon, formerly the Malibu Inn, the same place where I had discovered Electronovision years earlier.
When I saw Zeke on weekends, we would go to the Topanga Country Store at Pacific Coast Highway and Topanga Canyon Boulevard to buy a sixteenth of a cord of wood for the fireplace and load it into the trunk. Zeke Young and I both loved fires. Then we would curl up in front of a roaring fire, Zeke in my arms, at the rented Broad Beach house we called home and named the Meeker Mansion in honor of its owner, Mr. Meeker.
That summer I went on the road with CSNY on a tour of baseball stadiums, promoted by Bill Graham. Before we left, we rehearsed on my outdoor stage at the ranch, right across from the studio, in a redwood grove. It simulated an outdoor stadium stage and was perfect for rehearsing the type of show we were about to do. Many times, the Jeepster or one of the other old cars would be parked right in front of the stage as we played, listening, while the rent-a-cars huddled far away from the stage.
At the ranch, while rehearsing for the tour, I wrote a new song called “Hawaiian Sunrise.” It seemed like every day I had another new song. With all the changes going on in my life, I wrote songs daily, turning the changes into something. I always looked at occasions in life as inspirations for songs.
Pretty Maui Mama,
Lying over the water
With my son in your eyes,
Will you hear the melody I play?
It changes every day
Oh, Hawaiian sunrise.
Once when we were there
We had a relaxing time,
Thought we might settle down.
But the music called me
And my friends have
Much to spread around,
We move from town to town.
Oh, Hawaiian sunrise.
And in the morning when you rise,
Will you look in my son’s eyes?
I know you do.
Pretty Maui Mama,
Lying over the water
With the moon in your eyes.
From my hotel window in the clouds
I love you right out loud.
Oh, Hawaiian sunrise.
And in the morning when you rise,
Will you look in my son’s eyes?
I know you do.
—“HAWAIIAN SUNRISE”
We were singing so easily. It was flowing. We were all high on weed and excited. Crosby called up Peter Fonda, and we sang “Hawaiian Sunrise” for him over the phone from my cabin living room, all four of us. It was the best we ever sang it. To this day, I’m sorry we weren’t recording it. That is one of the biggest lessons I have learned about recording music. “Get it while it’s hot.” Every song has its moment, and we let that one escape into a telephone.
Hearts and hopes were high. How could we not be soaring? Our tour was sold-out. Our records were all hits. The time was flying by. We were booked all over the USA and parts of Canada, and would eventually make our way to Wembley Stadium in London. The first show was in Seattle, and I had decided to travel from gig to gig with my friends Ranger Dave and Mazzeo. Ranger Dave was an intelligent and very interesting character who had tried oyster farming on the Pacific coast. Most of his work was done near Ano Nuevo Point between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay, and we talked about it quite a bit. He was fascinated with the process. Jim “Sandy” Mazzeo was an artist who I had met at a commune called Star Hill Academy that bordered Broken Arrow. We three were close friends and had a lot of great times together.