by Neil Young
That short tour will always be one of my best road memories. Maybe it’s because I had Zeke out there again! I’m looking forward to getting back out there with Lincvolt and the boys for another trip someday soon. Maybe I can get Amber to come next time, too. It really felt good to wind down from the show behind the wheel of that old convertible. I guess I was harkening back to the days when entertainers would travel in Cadillacs pulling trailers full of band equipment.
Only the headliners of the biggest shows could afford that back in those days. I wanted to be like them and just keep going to the next town. When I saw Roy Orbison in Winnipeg Municipal Auditorium around 1960, he had a big motor home; very impressive. Gene Pitney had a Cadillac and trailer. So did the Crickets, with Waylon and Sonny Curtis, when I saw them at Winnipeg Beach, sixty miles north of Winnipeg. Dick Clark’s Cavalcade of Stars all rode in one bus when they played the Municipal Auditorium—eight artists and the band all in one bus with the master of ceremonies, Fabian!
Those were my glory days.
With Crazy Horse (Ralph Molina, me, Billy Talbot, Frank “Poncho” Sampedro), in a Copenhagen hotel room, March 1976.
Chapter Fifty-Four
In 1974, on the night Carrie’s mom died, I woke up in bed at the ranch and I saw her head in the air screaming at the foot of my bed. It was a nightmare I will never forget.
Although Carrie and I had just broken up, I went to Chicago to help support her in her grieving and be with her family. There were rumors of some strange circumstances around her mother’s death that would lead one to believe that it was very traumatic. It was investigated and concluded to be a carbon monoxide suicide in a garage. I was very uncomfortable, but I felt I should still be there with Carrie because she needed me. Zeke was back in California with a friend.
While I was there in Chicago, I called Ben Keith, who was in Nashville, and Crazy Horse in LA so that they could come and play with me at Chess Recording Studios, the historic Chicago studio where so many great blues records had been made. I had already played with Poncho once at Billy Talbot’s house in Echo Park. Billy and his new, young wife, Laurie, had been there with a few kids. We had played on the porch, and the music had echoed in the canyon outside. I guess that’s why they named it Echo Park. Poncho had fit in real well, and we’d been able to jam on some cool stuff. I don’t remember what we were playing, but it had a good sound. Poncho is Spanish, Billy is Italian, and Ralph is Portuguese; three Latins and a Canadian, I thought to myself. There was something sympathetic about the way we played together. It felt really fluid and hot, yet funky and solid.
When we all got to Chess Studios, we found it on the fifth floor of a big old brick building that really had a historic vibe. I felt I was in a hallowed place. It was funky and there was nothing high-class about it, like some of the studios we had played in Hollywood. It had everything it needed, though. We recorded one song, “Changing Highways,” at that session. It was kind of an experiment with Poncho in the studio, and it went well. We rocked. Crazy Horse went back to LA.
After that session, I said good-bye to Carrie and her family, and Ben and I drove south to Nashville in the ’59 Cadillac Eldorado I bought in Chicago—the as yet unnamed Nanu. That did not happen until Mr. Briggs first laid eyes on her and named her Nanu the Lovesick Moose. The car was really cool, and we had a good trip. It felt great to be on the road again; I was relieved to be free from all of the feelings around the death of Carrie’s mom and the aftermath of my breakup with Carrie.
When we got to Nashville, we had a series of sessions with Levon Helm, then Karl Himmel, and, on one track, Kenny Buttrey on drums. Elliot Mazer was in the control room. Tim Drummond and Ben Keith were on all of the tracks. It felt really good. It was the beginning of an entire album I have held back, entitled Homegrown. I was making so much music then, it was hard to keep track of all of it and complete a record. The creative process was spinning slightly out of control because I had so much music to record. When Homegrown would normally have come out, I put out Tonight’s the Night instead, because we all listened to both of them and Tonight’s the Night, although almost two years old, just had to come out. I had delayed it originally, having felt it was not yet the right time for release, and also I had a sense that it needed something else added to it for perspective. I did find those tracks eventually, and then the record was complete. Now when I listen to it, I am not sure about that decision. Some things take a while to settle with me.
When I got to LA, I was soon in the Malibu groove. Briggs and I were up to our old tricks, having a lot of fun in the bars at night and lying around in the sun all day. I had rented a house on Broad Beach Road. Nanu became a regular on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). Ben had driven the car out from Nashville and brought it to LA. Nanu was the scene of many good times. There was a bar named the Crazy Horse Saloon in Malibu that we frequented. Poncho had a house on the PCH, and we hung out there, too. There were lots of girls and we were living the dream.
I kept writing, and when I wrote “Cortez the Killer” and “Hitchhiker,” I called for the Horse to come and record. We decided on Briggs’s Point Dume house with the Green Board as the ideal location. I lived a few miles north near Zuma Beach. Malibu, with the Crazy Horse Saloon, was a few miles south. It was a perfect situation for good times.
The album Zuma is the first album we made with Crazy Horse after Poncho joined the band. It’s one of my favorites. The cover is by Mazzeo and came out of a conversation we had on a day trip from the ranch to Zuma. We set up a Green Board control room in Briggs’s den. We played in the garage. One day Bob Dylan, who lived nearby, came along and sang a blues tune with us. On a break, Bob and I took a walk around the neighborhood, talking about the similarity in some of the paths we had each taken. It was the first time we had ever really talked. I liked him.
Back at Briggs’s, we kept playing day after day and partying at night. We did the original “Powderfinger” and held it back. We did “Sedan Delivery” and held it back. My song “Born to Run” was recorded, left unfinished, and held back. “Ride My Llama” was completely finished and mixed and held back. We recorded a lot of tunes and held them back, but we released “Cortez,” “Don’t Cry No Tears,” “Stupid Girl,” and a bunch of other tracks on Zuma. It has a great feeling to it. Today I like listening to all of those tracks together in a compilation I call Dume that is in The Archives Volume 2. Those were some of the finest, most alive days of my life. I was getting past the lost relationship with Carrie, living the life with my best friends, making some good music, and starting to get a grip on something: an open future in my personal life and a new future with Crazy Horse after Danny.
Recently, I was in Point Dume visiting my producer friend Rick Rubin and told him about the sessions at David’s old house; we went for a drive and could not locate it. It may have been torn down. It was a classic ranch-style house with wooden shutters around the windows. I saw a few others still around in the style of David’s but couldn’t find the one. Strangely, though, when Rick ordered some fish tacos to go for us at the local place located in the Dume Shopping Center, it turned out to be the same spot where Briggs and I used to eat breakfast every morning back in the day.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Bruce Palmer and I had been in LA for only six weeks when Buffalo Springfield played at the Whisky a Go Go for the first time. Buffalo Springfield had already done a hootenanny at the Troubadour, a club down on Santa Monica Boulevard that showcased new talent all the time and had folk-oriented headliners playing weekly. That showcase had been set up by Dickie Davis, our original road manager who worked the lights at the Troubadour, and Barry Friedman, our manager who had put us up and guided us through the first weeks of our existence. That gig got the record companies interested in us and also got the attention of some other managers.
All kinds of people got their start there. Sometimes ten acts would be seen in one night, all of them looking for a break. It was LA, and a lot of these acts made it. Just gett
ing to LA was a big thing, a launching spot to the big time. We had a one-night showcase along with a few other bands. It was an event because a lot of people thought we were going to be the next big thing. We were good that night, and though we were really nervous, it was obvious to everyone that we had something. Stephen and Richie sang incredibly well, and because of the diversity of musical roots, the band had a blend of music that was largely unknown at the time. It was kind of folk rock, but kind of country blues with a rock and roll edge. Richie’s great voice and Bruce’s unique Motown bass style brought depth. Dewey’s smiling face behind the drums was both incongruous and appealing. It was Stephen’s soulful vocals and phrasing that set us into another class.
Our guitar interplay was also something no one had ever heard. Stephen and I would play these intricate parts off of each other all the time that were largely improvised, and people could hear that it was spontaneous. It was exciting, and we were young and very alive. Everything started moving really fast.
Record companies, managers, everyone wanted to talk to us. Dickie Davis tried to handle the whole thing. He did the best he could and, as I mentioned earlier, we eventually ended up with Charlie Greene and Brian Stone, two guys from New York who had handled Sonny & Cher, as our managers. These guys were real hustlers. Before we met them, when they first came to LA from New York, they had actually set up an office on the Universal lot and were doing business there for six months before anyone at Universal realized they were there. Imagine that. They just walked in, set up an office, started using services, and lasted six months before they were caught. It was not long after that we first met them and we decided we liked them the best. They told us their story. They were also record producers, they said. They had a big Lincoln limousine and Joseph, their own driver. We were way too impressed by that limo.
They bought out Barry Friedman, who regrets it to this day, and so do I. He was a musical guy with some knowledge of who we were. Losing him was a very big mistake. It was too late to back out of our agreement when we found out that Greene and Stone had never really produced a record. Still, with their connections, we were getting some major dates. We got a gig right away opening for the Byrds and played about a week of local California shows. We were playing with the Byrds! They were our heroes. It was so fast. I remember a show we played where the Byrds were pretty messed up. They were one of the biggest acts going, and that night we blew them away. It was obvious to us all that the Springfield was a force to be reckoned with.
Shortly after that, by chance Greene and Stone booked us into the Whisky to cover another band’s night off—we ended up staying for six straight weeks without a break. We were building a following. We started opening for Hugh Masekela and then Johnny Rivers. Headliners came and went, but we stayed. We built our own fan base that kept returning every night. Mario Maglieri and Elmer Valentine ran the place and treated us like their own. Elmer was the boss. Mario was the doorman and floor manager. They were like fathers to all of us in the scene: the groupies, the bands, all of us. Mario still called me Skinny years later when I would drop in and say hello.
We were also recording our first album during that time. Greene and Stone had signed us to Atlantic, because they had connections there with Ahmet Ertegun through their success with Sonny & Cher. When we got the album down and mixed, we felt great. We had been there guiding the mixing process and everything. One day we were leaving to go on the road for a weekend, and we heard Greene and Stone had to go in and do a stereo mix. We had only done a mono. We were so unaware, so green! Stereo was the new big thing.
In one day they remixed the whole thing into stereo without us, and we only heard it when we got back to LA from our weekend tour.
We hated it.
The mixes sucked and didn’t have the energy we felt in the studio or on the stage when we were playing live. That was what was missing. The sound was very thin, and the mix itself was terrible. Stephen and I were so disappointed. They released “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” as the first single, and that was a big mistake. It was way too weird to be a single. We had “Go and Say Goodbye” and “Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It,” either of which would have been a much better choice. But we went along with it. While I thought it was cool to have “Clancy” out there, I doubted whether it was commercial enough. But what did we know?
It bombed.
Riots were happening on the Strip. Hippies against the war, cops against the hippies. Stephen wrote “For What It’s Worth” about the riots. It was a great message song of the times, with his signature vocal phrasing. We recorded it at Columbia with the help of Stan Ross, owner of Gold Star, because Gold Star was booked. Tom May was our Columbia engineer. Stan and Tom got us a decent sound. They got the drums right. Thankfully, Greene and Stone were not there producing. We had our first hit and rereleased the LP with that song on it. If you listen to that record now, you can hear the difference in tonal quality and production between “For What It’s Worth” and the rest of the Buffalo Springfield album. We missed a good chance to remix the whole album right there and never even realized it.
Soon we were back at the Whisky, headlining on a Sunday night. We were recording artists now, and our fan base was exploding. We started to feel different and act different, but we were still just a bunch of green kids. That was our beginning, and we went on for a year and a half until we broke up. Bruce got busted a couple of times and was eventually deported. That was the beginning of the end for us.
Chemistry is the big thing in any group, and Bruce was the element that made us unique. His roots in R&B (that he got in Toronto playing in his first band, where he was the only white guy) were so important. Stephen and I loved Bruce. He was a complete original. He played like Motown, but he had an added flair that was totally Bruce. Everyone knew he was completely off the charts. A genius player. Musicians would just stand there slack-jawed, watching and listening to him play. After we lost him, we were never the same. It was the beginning of the end, right there. We had Jim Fielder on bass for a while, and he ended up with Blood, Sweat & Tears. Then we had Jim Messina, who we had met at Sunset Sound. But we could never find anyone like Bruce, and it was killing us slowly. Stephen became frustrated with the rhythm section problems and started cutting his songs with other guys, Buddy Miles on drums and Bobby West on bass among them.
When we used to play at the Whisky, Bruce and I would be back there with Dewey holding down a groove with our backs to the audience, lost in the music. That was magic. That is why Richie and Stephen sounded so great. They were singing on a rock-solid foundation that breathed and pulsed. We were so into the music back there that the girls in the audience could feel that pulse, and it drove them crazy. We didn’t even realize what we were doing. The way Stephen and Richie sang their asses off, if we hadn’t lost Bruce, the sky would have been the limit for Buffalo Springfield. But we did lose him. When he got busted for grass in a hotel in New York while we were playing a club there, he was instantly deported. Bruce was gone.
That was why the Springfield broke up. All the fighting was because we lost Bruce. If he had stayed in, we would probably still be together today (if we had all lived). Sure, I would have done some solo records, but with that sound there, I always would have come back to it. It is as simple as that. We broke up because we were broken. We were missing the essential ingredient, and all the momentum in the world could not replace it. People say we were great and ask why we ever broke up. That is why.
If you want to see the Springfield, the best representation of it is a Dick Clark production, Where the Action Is. On that show, you can see the real group. We were lip-synching, but that was what we looked like. Those were the finest times of Buffalo Springfield, and it never, ever got better. Without Bruce, that was all gone.
Our last gig was at the Long Beach Arena. We walked out and the place went nuts. Our fans knew this was the last time. We started playing and the crowd left their seats and rushed to the front of the stage. Some author
ity figure turned on the lights and walked out onstage, admonishing the crowd to sit down. He repeatedly said, “Buffalo Springfield will NOT play until you return to your seats.”
Eventually we started to play again. It was a bittersweet moment. I was wearing my finest Buffalo Springfield fringe regalia, Stephen had on his great cowboy hat and suit. We all wore our finest. Without Bruce! It was like a funeral. We were just a little more than eighteen months old as a band. It was nobody’s fault. We were just too young and we had made a lot of bad and inexperienced decisions, starting with losing Barry Friedman. But losing Bruce broke our heart.
Thank you, Buffalo Springfield. There will never be another. It’s about chemistry. Love and chemistry.
Chapter Fifty-Six
In Feelgood’s there is a 1957 Jensen. It is a 541, one of just thirty-five ever made. In 1975, while I was down in Florida working on restoring the WN Ragland with Roger Katz and a bunch of shipbuilders and sailors, I found the Jensen in Fort Lauderdale in a little used-car place on Sunrise Boulevard. It was $2,750. I had never seen one before, and it was very beautiful. I needed a car. It was in original condition, faded red, well-worn, but nice. This was and is still my favorite combination; beautiful, original, and worn.
Its worst flaw was that the back window had been cracked from a falling coconut somewhere. It was a right-hand drive and had a unique little lever in the dash; if you pushed up, the horn honked, and if you pushed down, the brights would come on. Toggling it back and forth resulted in a classic European blasting-horn-and-flashing-lights combination effect. It also had been equipped with glasspacks. That meant it was loud as hell! I loved it and bought it the next day.