by Neil Young
The instances of that sort of thing were many in those days. Hippies were targets. Eventually Charlie and Brian got an attorney and I was out on bail, but I was even more scared of the cops after that. There was never any thought of pressing charges, because I didn’t have a leg to stand on. No license. We felt lucky that I wasn’t deported. They didn’t realize I was an illegal alien. They weren’t thorough, just brutal. I still cringe when I see a Hollywood sheriff’s cruiser, even though I have been legal for a long time.
Once Stephen and I and the rest of the Springfield went to a beach near Point Dume to do a radio promotional event. You got airplay that way. KHJ was doing a promotion where the Big Kahuna was arriving from Hawaii in a canoe and giving out cash to KHJ listeners. KHJ Boss 93 was giving away big bucks, and Buffalo Springfield was going to be on the shore to greet the Big Kahuna when he arrived. It was live on the air, and we were all doing interviews. Soon a grass canoe with outriggers rounded the point and the Big Kahuna appeared! There were a lot of babes there, and Stephen and I were having a great time.
Later we met the Big Kahuna and found out his name was Chris. He sold us some of the best weed in Hollywood after that. It was called Kahuna grass. (Another name is sinsemilla, for “no seeds.”) This was some really potent weed that all the bands were smoking. The Big Kahuna had delivered the mother lode. This went on for quite some time, and Kahuna grass is still legendary today in old LA musicians’ circles. It used to make me so paranoid thinking that I was going to have a seizure that I had to stop smoking it. If you smoked a little, you wrote a song. If you smoked too much, then you were toast. That was the reputation it had with me.
Chapter Sixty
Farm Aid 26 is coming up next week. I haven’t played much lately. I don’t have a musical direction at the moment, other than my wish to play with Crazy Horse and explore the territory, see the view. At times like these, I am at a loss. Gigs that come up on a time clock don’t really work for the creative process and are a disturbance for the muse. That has nothing to do with my support for the farmers, a lifelong commitment. It has to do only with the muse. How can I play if I have no direction? It’s not just a job you do.
Usually I do benefits in October. That way I can prepare myself, figure out what I will be doing, and play three or four benefits during that month. This Farm Aid is happening at an odd time of year, August. If I’m not on the road, I’m resting in August, and that rest is very important. After a long time off, playing one gig takes at least a month of mental preparation to get an idea of what I’m going to do, where I will be drawing from. I have less than a week left now to prepare. I need to start playing every day so my hands are ready with calluses on my fingers and I know the words and songs.
I’m going to do my best Bob Dylan imitation! I will go out there with an acoustic guitar and harmonica. No electric. This will be a folk approach, based on story songs with lots of words and verses. I will be like a ghost from the past, totally a throwback to another time. (It’s funny; I call it a Bob Dylan imitation, but Bob never does it. It’s what everyone would like to see him do, and he never does it. I suspect it would be too lonely and singular for him, no band to hang with or friends to see every day when he gets off the bus.)
So that is my plan. I will play a few new tunes that I did on the last tour—“Love and War,” “Peaceful Valley Boulevard”—and do them differently, with a pushier groove and more harp playing with a straight acoustic rhythm instead of the more sensitive fingerpicking and bass-reinforced Le Noise sound. I may revert to history with some story songs like “Powderfinger” and a few others, punctuated here and there with some more personal lyrics like “Sugar Mountain” and “Comes a Time.” I will probably not play any other instruments, keeping it way simple and focused on the old-time folk music approach. Maybe I’ll play “Vampire Blues,” maybe not.
Basically I will come and go, just being myself in a really simple way. No bells and whistles at all. This is something I think I can do and make it work. I have been thinking about this for about three weeks and actually worrying about it. That is how a forty-minute set can take a month of preparation. It would take the same amount of preparation for me to do a whole tour.
—
Because someone had the rights to the name PureTone, we changed our name to Pono. It is Hawaiian for “righteous and good.” We love our new name. Negotiations for the Pono project between Pono and WMG have been ongoing for about six weeks now, trying to settle on the details of the founding partners group. This process is distinctly different from most every other thing I have done in the past. My friend Marc Benioff told me that I need to remember what I’m in it for, saving the sound of music and rescuing an art form, and just focus on that. “Business is not like a song, Neil; there is no last note. It just keeps going on and on, and there is conflict almost constantly,” he told me one night when I called asking for his advice.
The exercise is very frustrating.
He pointed out that I need to focus on what I can do, not what I can’t do. I need to figure that one out for my own sake, because it’s too wearing on me. I need to let it happen the way it will and not try to control every little part of it. Control is my way of ensuring that things go right, and if I don’t have control, I worry that things are going to get away and not be done correctly. You know, the videos I have been making that showcase me playing Pono for musicians and music lovers are coming along so well, and I see the happiness on the faces of people who are hearing great sound and enjoying it, discovering that music can be much deeper an emotional experience than what they’ve grown used to recently. I feel this is so important, and it is so gratifying to watch all of these car interviews, some twenty-five now, as the editing continues on the ranch. The musicians and music lovers are of all ages, and they are all unified in their strong, supportive, and positive reactions. This is most positive and reaffirms what I believed in the beginning. I should be so happy to focus on that.
The goal is so great, and the success of this will be so gratifying. Yet everyone cautions me about the strength of Apple and iTunes. I think that no matter what, this project will force iTunes to be better and to improve quality at a faster pace. I just hope what Apple does is great enough, not some measured response that is hyped so much that the consumers feel they are getting the best when they are not.
The record companies are sort of held hostage in a weird way by the Internet’s dominance in their industry. But because the record companies still hold the gold, their high-quality music masters, it’s time for them to step up and take control of their own destiny. I realize the amount of cash Apple has far exceeds the amount of cash the United States of America has, and everyone is scared of that. But I think public opinion and social networking could win over money, just as it has upset the status quo in the Arab Spring and all of the other revolutions around the world organized through social networking. This is just another revolution. Quality sound can make a return and be reestablished for those who want the best. The best is just not available right now in a consumer-friendly way. The Sound Revolution could bring it back, if the cards the record companies hold are played. That is the big If. Will they have the balls to stand up and take care of the music?
—
These days it’s all about closure of this and that for me. I have too many things to finish. How can I move on until I clean that slate? My film Human Highway is one of those things. It should be available to the public. Dean Stockwell and Russell Tamblyn, my old friends from Topanga Canyon, and Dennis Hopper, a good old friend, were in this movie with me, and we wrote the dialogue as we went along. It is the dorkiest damn movie ever and it walks a very fine line right on the edge of being too dorky. Some may say it falls over that line. The film was never put to rest to my satisfaction, and for the last ten years or so, Larry Johnson had been struggling, trying to find some pieces of that film that may be lost now. He was very occupied with getting the quality preserved for David Myers’s legacy. Not that
we don’t have copies. We do. We have everything we need to edit together the film in a way I can rest well behind content-wise. When I finish something, I want it to be right, or as right as it can be.
As I mentioned, Human Highway is just one of those things. I am not Cecil B. DeMille. It is not a great commercial movie. But it has never reached its potential, so I have never been able to let it go. I have carried it with me all these years. It was released, bombed, and was buried before I even felt it was done. With Larry Johnson gone and David Myers gone and Dennis Hopper, too, I am left with this drive to finish. I went into the editing room on the ranch, which is actually in the train barn as fate would have it. (I love that I can leave the editing screens and walk around looking at the trains and work on some small detail of the layout or clean and polish some wheels while I work out some editing challenge in my head. That is so liberating. It is the combining of two different worlds in a good way for me.)
I asked Will Mitchell, Larry’s and my right-hand man, for all of the existing Shakey Pictures’ Human Highway footage to be brought to the editing room, and when it all arrived, I sat down with Toshi Onuki and we reviewed what we had. There were three separate versions of the film. One version, which was based on the original cut, the director’s cut if you will, had last been worked on by Larry and Toshi. It was exactly what I was looking for. I asked to see it, and then I viewed it while taking notes. When it was all over, we took a little break and then went through the film, making corrections. It really got good when we made the changes. Humor is all about timing, and I have learned a lot about that in the thirty years since I first cut this picture. We had a hodgepodge of prints and qualities, but were able to cut together the story.
I now feel the picture is in its final shape, and I love it. It’s not the greatest picture in the world, but it is my picture, and I love what it does. It moves me now like I always wanted it to. I think it might still get panned, but I don’t care. I like it. That is what matters to me. Once the technical aspects are all pulled together and the final sound mix is done, I can rest knowing I have done my best. I hope it is what Larry would have wanted. That is a good feeling. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, David. Thanks, Dean and Russell. Thanks, Dennis. I love you guys. I’ll show it to you when I see you.
—
When my studio album Prairie Wind was finished, I talked to Jonathan Demme about making a picture. We had discussed the idea a few times before but had no direction to go in. Now we did. We talked about the songs and the feeling on Prairie Wind for a long time, the musicians of Nashville, and the great history of country music. We talked about my home in Canada, my dad, my mom, my upbringing, my dad’s hometown on the prairies, my dad’s passing, my cousins singing under the direction of my uncle Bob, who was a great musician and my dad’s brother; we talked a lot about those things. What it all boiled down to was an appearance at the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry in its heyday. We decided to do a performance that was a tribute to those times, to that heritage, while also showcasing Prairie Wind for the very first time. We were going to assemble a cast of the great musicians and singers who played on Prairie Wind and perform it live at the Ryman in front of an audience of Nashville folks on the night of the August full moon! It was a great plan, and we were very excited to get started.
One night in Nashville we were eating in the restaurant at the Hermitage Hotel. It’s a wonderful place. We were enjoying some fine wine and talking about the picture. I’ll never forget the look on Jonathan’s face when I said I had invited the costume director down to meet him at the restaurant.
WHAT? You’ve chosen the costume director? (Jonathan’s thought bubble!)
Jonathan Demme always chose his own costume directors! Of course I have the greatest respect for Director Demme’s taste and knew he would love Manuel, who originated in Nudie’s shop in Hollywood. Manuel was the man who made every country artist’s clothing. He made Elvis’s gold lamé suit. He made Dolly Parton’s and Porter Wagoner’s clothes. He was the man. And there he was, walking into the restaurant. He joined us. He was wearing a very cool shirt and looked like he was already in a movie. Accompanied by a young lady and a young man assistant, he sat down at the table and took a little sip of wine. Then he started talking. It was fascinating. He blew everyone’s mind with his stories. Then Jonathan told him the whole concept for the show, describing the backdrop art, the Ole Opry atmosphere, the Prairie Wind songs and feelings, the ambience around the songs being written, my life-threatening situation at the time, the newness of the music, the audience itself, and the camera angles, and asked him what he wanted to do.
“Don’t worry,” Manuel said. “It will be perfect, like a dream you are having.”
Manuel did not offer one detail. It was a moment to remember. Manuel was totally in control. Jonathan was seeing a living legend. This was a great moment.
We went on to make the movie, and it is something that will last a lifetime. We are all very proud of this film. We paid tribute to those who had come before and left an enduring document to the greatness of country music and the tradition of Nashville. My favorite shot is one taken from the back of the stage. You can see Emmylou Harris and me singing “This Old Guitar.” It looks like it’s from the forties, a perfect time capsule. And through beautiful camera work, lighting, and a great instrumental performance, we left a living picture of one of the greatest country music artists of all time, Ben Keith.
Chapter Sixty-One
You may remember Nina. She is Pegi’s new dog. All curly and soft, little Nina weighs about twenty-five pounds. She went through that broken-down Cadillac Eldorado episode with me out on Interstate 5 in the 106-degree heat. We bonded. Well, now Pegi is on the road with the Survivors, and I am at home with Nina. Nina sleeps at the foot of the bed whenever I am sleeping. It feels good to not be alone. Pegi calls quite regularly to tell me what to do with Nina in this case or that case, and that is always helpful.
Last night Nina was barking incessantly at something outside. I let her out and she just kept on barking. This is something that has just developed recently, and whenever I told Nina to stop barking, she would just ignore me completely. The barking just went on and on. I was beginning to get irritated with this development. Was this dog going to take over the whole house? She was really cute, but she was really LOUD, too. Once she started barking, she would never stop.
I tried yelling at her, “STOP BARKING, NINA!” in my biggest “man voice.” It had no effect. I was getting pissed. Eventually, she got tired and stopped, but it had gone on for a long time. My always active imagination was now getting the best of me in a barrage of images and thoughts. I was starting to visualize a dog barking for the rest of time.
The next morning at about six, Nina and I got up and went out to the kitchen. I put on some water to boil and opened the door and we went outside. I stood there with her as she peed on the lawn. She went about her business, sniffing and carrying on in doglike fashion. Eventually, we returned inside and I made some tea. Sitting down at the computer to check my morning mail, I heard her growling softly, then more loudly, until it developed into a full-on bark. Nina was standing in the kitchen, barking! I sat there, digesting the situation. She continued her barking.
In an epiphany, I softly called her name and gave her my special little whistle that was just for her. She came over to me and I held her little head and in a very soft voice told her, “Nina, there is nothing out there. Just lie down here with me and chill out. Everything is fine. It’s morning now, and it’s all good. Just you and me right here, you on the floor and me with my morning mail.” I patted her little head. She lay down on the floor at my feet and fell asleep. The dog is my new guru.
—
Drummers are very important to my music and the success of any band playing my music. Ralph Molina is the drummer in Crazy Horse, and his feel is a big part of that Crazy Horse sound. He is very sympathetic to improvisation and can quickly go with any flow change. That is reall
y a key thing if you are playing a long jam or instrumental à la “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Down by the River,” “Big Time,” “Change Your Mind,” “No Hidden Path,” or “Rockin’ in the Free World,” to name just a few. Those songs require the drummer to listen to the subtle changes in guitar leads and rhythms, and follow with changes in the groove. Ralph is the best at that for me. Combining that with Billy Talbot’s simplicity, soul, and aggression, Crazy Horse’s rhythm section is solid as a rock.
Yet at the same time, Ralphie is extremely subtle and can express emotions beautifully in both a ballad and a laid-back song. He is completely unique, emotional, and driving at the same time. His flourishes with my feedback at the end of a long song are always right with me, as if he knows right where I am going. Fact is, we are going there together, feeling our way, and that really applies to all of Crazy Horse. That is what makes the Horse as great as it is, and as cosmic as it is. That is the Force of the Horse. Making the new albums, Americana and Psychedelic Pill, I have found that this cosmic force has increased, not diminished, with time.
Kenny Buttrey, on the other hand, is a finesse player with a master’s touch on any song he plays. His grooves on Harvest are in the pocket, and yet so original at the same time. On drums, he just doesn’t sound like anyone else. Kenny was a complete original who I was lucky to know and play with. His bass player was usually Tim Drummond, a master in his own right. The two of them together were just what my music needed. Tim Drummond also played with Karl T. Himmel on many of my recordings. They also played with JJ Cale on a lot of his early stuff, which just had that amazing groove. The International Harvesters’ A Treasure is one of the best illustrations of the massive talent of Karl T. Himmel. Karl played on “Comes a Time” and “Four Strong Winds,” as well as a lot of tracks on Prairie Wind. Karl’s feel is so fluid and sensitive, and I still love playing with him today.