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09/07/85
Melody MakerLEGEND OF A LONER
Melody Maker 7th September 1985
Interview by Adam Sweeting
The bus paused for breath at traffic lights, wheezing a
little. After all, it had been on the road for 10 years.
It had reached a place called Troy in upstate New York,
the original one horse town. Old men in trucker's caps sat
on benches in the deserted streets, watching it. On the
roof, the top halves of a couple of old Studebakers had
been welded into place like twin observation turrets, silently
surveying the passing scenery. One of them had a windsurfer
board strapped on top of it. The sides of the bus were covered
with weather beaten wooden ribbing. As it accelerated away
from the lights in a growl of exhaust smoke, bystanders
could see the legend "BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD" across its rear.
The vehicle could have been wandering the plains forever.
Inside the bus, a hound called Elvis sat in the front seat,
keeping an eye on the road. Fittings, shelves, seats and
sideboards were all made from hand carved wood, right through
from the kitchen area at the front, via the central lounge
section to the bedroom in the rear. The vehicle's owner
patted the dog, who rolled his eyes mournfully upward. "I
played here once with the Buffalo Springfield" he recalled
in a voice which managed to be both dark, and nasal at the
same time." I remember we didn't get our money. The guy
drew a gun on us, told us to get the fuck out. Those were
the good old days." Nearly 20 years later, Neil Young had
returned with his latest ensemble, a squad of veteran Nashville
musicians called The International Harvesters. His new country
album, " Old Ways" is as the author sees it, the third in
a sequence of records which began with the best selling
"Harvest" in 1972, continued with the winsome "Comes A Time"
in 1978, and after assorted diversions has brought him back
to the road in 1985.
"Old Ways is a skilfully crafted piece of work, full of
perfectly assured melodies and impeccable performances from
familiar Young sidemen like steel guitarist Ben Keith and
Drummer Karl Himmel. More significantly, the record captures
the state of mind of a man who's shot the rapids of rock
'n' roll lost some good friends along the way, wilfully
turned his back on the charts and pop stardom, and who has
managed to become an adult in a field where the odds are
stacked against it. Neil Young has survived, and he's grown
too. And changed. "I think in some ways - only in some ways,
but in some ways rock n roll has let me down," he said.
"It really doesn't leave you a way to grow old gracefully
and continue to work." Why's that? Because you're supposed
to die before you get old? "Yeah,right .If you're gonna
rock you better burn out, cos that's the way they wanna
see you. They wanna see you right on the edge where you're
glowing, right on the living edge, which is where young
people are.They're discovering themselves, and rock'n'roll
is young people's music. I think that's a reality, and I
still love rock'n'roll and I love to play the songs in my
set that are sort of rock'n'roll, but I don't see a future
for me there."
Young paused; his lank black hair flopping forward, and
rubbed his chin which was covered in a heavy overnight stubble.
"I see country music, I see people who take care of their
own. You got 75 year old guys on the road. That's what I
was put here to do, y'know, so I wanna make sure I surround
myself with people who are gonna take care of me. Cos I'm
in it for the long run". "Willie Nelson's 54 years old and
he's a happy man, doing what he loves to do. I can't think
of one rock'n'roller like that. So what am I gonna do?"
Old Way's features guest appearances from country luminaries
Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, both of whom will be
playing some support dates with Young on his current tour,
A lot of the performances find Young and his International
Harvesters playing to family audiences at state fairs, huge
day-long gatherings of people, animals, carnival sideshows,
food and drink, where everyone turns up for the entertainment
in the evening. It's miles away from the rock'n'roll crowds
who've flocked over the years to see Young play with Buffalo
Springfield, Crosby Stills & Nash or his perennial backing
band Crazy Horse. Young is still best known among non-partisan
observers as the laid-back whiner who had a hit single with
"Heart Of Gold" in 1972.His early Seventies albums "After
The Gold Rush " and "Harvest" provided a melancholy soundtrack
for any number of mentally unbalanced young people to ponder
suicide to. His work with Buffalo Springfield in the Sixties
brought him into fierce creative proximity with Stephen
Stills, and among a bunch of fine songs recorded by the
group, it's still Young's dreamlike mock- symphonies "Expecting
To Fly" and "Broken Arrow" which remain the most haunting
and inexplicable.
Young joined Crosby Stills & Nash as additional instrumentalist
and dark horse. His stint with them barely lasted a year,
but it got him some prime exposure on their album "Deja
Vu" and set Young up perfectly for his subsequent solo career.
The association also proved to be something of an albatross,
but as the years passed and Young's own albums pursued a
grim and tortuous path, it became clear that while CSNY
had given him a priceless commercial boost, it had scarcely
hinted at the depth and range of his talent.
Records like "Tonight's The Night" "On The Beach" and "Time
Fades Away" were to prove emphatically that Young could
hardly have been less like the hippy peacenik the media
fondly imagined him to be. Crosby Stills & Nash are
still playing together and grossing wads of dollars, but
Young won't have anything to do with them until David Crosby
kicks his cocaine habit. The topic brings out a hard puritanical
streak in him, probably because he's seen several friends
die from drug abuse. "David says that he loves to play music
with Crosby Stills Nash & Young more than anything in
the world. I told them when they could prove that to me
that that's really what he wanted to do with his life and
give up drugs, that I would go out with them. I told them
that three years ago, and it hasn't happened yet".
"The way I look at it, either he's going to OD and die or
we're going to play together sometime. It's pretty simple.
But until one of those things happens until he cleans up,
I'm not gonna do it, Live Aid was an exception to the rule
which I made up on the spot. They all know how I feel. "I
will not go out with CSNY, have everyone scrutinise the
band, how big it is and how much it. meant, and see this
guy that's so fucked up that he can't come back because
we've all seen him when he's been clean recently, where
he's very sharp just like he always was. But he seems to
feel like he wants to do that, or he would stop doing it.
So y'know, until he has more respect for life and his effects
on the young people....why should some young person who
loves CSNY's old records from listening to their parents
play them, some young kid 12 years old, why should he see
CSNY on TV and know that this guy's a cocaine addict been
freebasing for fuckin' years and years, and he looks like
a vegetable but they're still on TV and they're still making
it and they're still big stars ? I don't wanna show anybody
that. That's something no one should see."
On the recent Live Aid broadcast, Young and his band were
seen delivering a song called "Nothing Is Perfect" It's
not included on "Old Ways" and is a strikingly forthright
declaration of Young's current absorption with his family
life and an almost gung-ho enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan's
America. Young in the main steered clear of the loudmouth
leftism politics of Crosby Stills & Nash, but wrote
the scorching "Ohio" after National Guardsmen shot four
students at Kent State University. It's something of a shock
to find him supporting Reagan's arms build-up. The Loner
has turned Republican.
"In the Carter years, everybody was walking around with
their tails between their legs talking with their head down,
y'know, thinking America's been so bad, we've done all these
things wrong. But, especially militarily, we had a lot of
disasters and a lot of things that never should have happened
and that maybe were mistakes in the first place, although
it's hard to say. People were being killed everywhere before
we went over to try to help, and we went over and tried
to help them and we fucked up. But y'know, you can't always
feel sorry for everything that you did. Obviously I wish
no-one had to die in any war, but war is, ah, is a dirty
game".
"It seems like the Soviets, it doesn't bother them that
much to walk into Afghanistan and kill people left and right
and take the fucking country and do all that shit. You can't
just let them keep on fucking doing that without saying
enough's enough. So to do that, to have the strength to
do that, you have to be strong". "Ten years ago the US was
starting to really drag ass, way behind the Soviets in build-up.
All that's happened lately is more or less to catch up,
just to be equal, reach equality in arms. At best it's a
bad situation, but I think it would be worse to be weak
when the stronger nation in the aggressor against freedom".
"So I stand behind Reagan when it comes to build-up, to
stand, be able to play hardball with other countries that
are aggressive towards fee countries. I don't think there's
anything wrong with that." But would you have thought that
way in 1967? "No, no I wouldn't have thought that in 1967.
But I'm an older man now, I have a family.I see other people
with families . There' s no immediate threat to American
families, but there is an immediate threat to other families
in free countries, y'know, a lot of the countries on the
borders of the Iron Curtain. To stand there and say it could
never happen is wrong, because it's happened. We just don't
want it to happen any more - at least, I don't".
It seems utterly insane when you think of the billions of
pounds or dollars that have been spent since 1945 on weapons
that have never been used, surely? "It is crazy, it's fucking
nuts," growled Young. "At least in our countries we have
the fucking freedom to stand up and say it's crazy.And that's
what we're fighting for, to be able to disagree. Openly.
And it's our right, and we have to do everything we can
to preserve it". "So I don't put down anybody who says we
should stop building weapons and everything. I disagree
with them, practically. Idealistically I agree with them.
It's like walking both sides of the fence, but I think there's
too much to be responsible for as men and as people, that
you have to take care of your own". "So that's why I have
more of a sympathy for Reagan than other people would have,
a lot of other people in my walk of life." But that sounds
dangerously like an "every man for himself" philosophy?
Correct me if I'm wrong.... "Sort of,but . . . .I think
it's more like every man for his brother than is every man
for himself. That's how I look at it. I think it's real
important to be strong". Young's attitude has not been formed
overnight.
Looking back, it's easy to spot traces of it on his 1980
album "Hawks & Doves", a patchy phase in Young's continuing
evolution. "Union Man" was a jokey item apparently supporting
the Musician's Union proposition that "live music is better"
Young celebrating the idea of communal togetherness with
an exhausting slab of hoedown. In "Comin' Apart At Every
Nail", he avowed that "this country sure looks good to me"
even while it was falling to bits in some respects. The
concluding "Hawks & Doves", a powerful slice of country
raunch, examined cycles of history, both in terms of America's
past and as they applied to Young's own career. He declared
himself "willing to stay and pay"
In 1981 Young released "Re-Ac-Tor", an even scrappier piece
of work. Thematic continuity could still be discerned occasionally,
however, as in "Motor City", where he patriotically lamented
the demise of the American car industry as the Japanese
invaded ("there's already too many Datsuns in this town",
don't mention the war....) Then there was the hard-driving
"Southern Pacific" a paean to the disappearance of the old
railroads and the men who worked on them.
Young's current live show contains a powerful reworking
of the piece, and it sits comfortably alongside his hymns
to home, family and an America dusting off its battered
pride. Redneck? Let's hope not.
On tour, Young travels alone. Dave his driver and minder,
will motor from the gig and park for the night at a rest
area or truck-stop. Young won't see the band until soundcheck
the next day, though he's in radio contact with them. On
board the bus, Young played the perfect host breaking out
the Budweisers and demonstrating his fruit-juice machine.
"Natural fruit juice is great, better'n any drug," he explained.
"Gives you a natural sugar rush." By way of a preamble,
he also vented some spleen about the mauling doled out to
him by the British music press on his last British visit,
when he played heavy metal at Wembley Arena.He seemed especially
incensed by some impertinent scribe who'd alluded to pedal
steel guitarist Ben Keith's blow-dried hair. Reading between
the lines, it appears the tour was a shambles on a musical
and organisational level.
Today, Young seems balanced, positive and very clear about
his objectives. "I think it's time to be positive," he said,
looking across the table with eyes that could bore through
steel. Tour manager Glenn Palmer says he always knows from
a single glance if Young is unhappy about something. If
he is, he beats a retreat and comes back later. "I think
if all the hippies and everything from the Sixties, if they're
still complaining about every little fucking thing, if they're
not happy about anything, it's their own fucking fault.
Cos they're the ones who should have changed it. Time has
gone by now and what we have is what we've done so far,
and if they're still putting down everything that they're
done then I really don't feel compassion for that." I thought
I heard the sound of distant cheering. "We should be proud
of the things we have been able to do, and the positive
aspects of who we are in the world. It's our own creativity,
ingenuity, whatever you wanna call it. I don't think all
that's dead in America, I think it's still there. I feel
that the Sixties was a decade of idealism, and the Eighties
is more Of realism."
On the road, Young has time to think and write. By the time
the Maker caught up with him, he'd already written a new
song called " This Old House" and worked it into the set.
It's about the enduring strength of family and a sense of
identity in the face of hard times and repo men from the
bank. "This old house of mine is built on dreams," Young
concludes. His writing has always flirted with cliche, and
paradoxically he's often at his best in that area, working
the edge between insight and platitude. Consequently, he's
always been ready for the country, where homespun philosophy
is the order of the day but only if it's been earned by
hard experience, But, crucially, Young's work has been distinguished
over the years by a mystical dimension beyond the experience
of most artists. There' s a feverish, luminous undertow
to his best songs. It's difficult to analyze, perhaps because
his most powerful images are more visual than verbal.
I asked him about the new song "Misfits'.It's the odd-man-out
on "Old Ways", a strange collage of science fiction and
apparently disconnected scenes, "all related" (according
to the LA Times) "only by a modern isolation as profound
as any ever experienced on the open range" Young scratched
his head, turned to look ahead through the windscreen, then
pivoted back again. "There are a lot of science fiction
overtones, time travel overtones, in "Misfits" at different
places geographically , it could all have been happening
at exactly the same time. All of the scenes in that song
could have been happening simultaneously' and yet they're
also separate. It's an interesting thing...." "I dunno,
it only took me a few minutes to write it. I picked up my
electric guitar one night in the studio, I was by myself
and I turned it up real loud and started playing and, I
wrote it just that night. Just got into it. Jotted it down
on a piece of paper. "I try not to think about the songs
that I write, I just try to write them. And I try not to
edit them, because I think editing is a form of, ah...,
I know there's a source where the music comes through you
and words come through you, and editing is really, uh, something
you do to something that you've thought about. If you think
about it and you try to put it down, then you can edit it.
If you're not thinking about it, you just open up and let
it come through you, then editing it is.... you're really
taking a lot of, what's the word, ah, a lotta liberties
by editing."
But if it's yours, aren't you allowed to edit it? "Well
that's the thing, I'm not sure that everything I write is
mine, That's the difference. I think some of the things
I write are mine, but I think some of it just comes through
me. My mind is working behind the scenes and puts these
things together without me consciously thinking of it, and
then when the time is right it all comes out. That's more
like, y'know, creation in the true sense of the word than
it is contrivance". "So it doesn't really need to be edited
so long as you get it out right, get it out clean y'know,
without second-guessing yourself every line thinking 'what
are people gonna think of me if I write this? That's something
I try to stay away from. I try not to worry about what people
are gonna think about it till after I've recorded it and
it's to late to change it. Then I'll start worrying about
it. But then it's too late for me to fuck it up, SO...."
Do you have to be in a certain mood to write? "Yeah, it
just kinda comes and goes. Sometimes I write first thing
in the mornings. There's no rules. A lotta times I write
driving vehicles or moving in vehicles, with no instruments,
and I'll write the whole song and remember it all and know
exactly what the music is before I even pick up an instrument.
The whole thing, it just falls into place" Do you ever dry
up? "Yeah. That happens. I just wait. I don't try to think
of something cool to write. Because sometimes I won't have
a record out for a long time, and then I'll have two or
three out really fast. The time between 'Everybody's Rockin"
and 'Old Ways' was a longer period of time than Buffalo
Springfield or CSNY was together. I still wrote a lotta
songs in that period, I wrote two and a half or three albums'
worth of material, so really I have a lot of stuff in the
can that's been recorded, and a few songs that haven't been
recorded."
The Neil Young roadshow seems to cut across several generations.
The shows I saw in Rochester and Troy were both in arenas
in front of some 8,000 people, a lot of them college students.
"I just accepted this is what I'm doing now, I'm not 25,
I'm not jumping around just doing rock'n'roll, this is me,
so I shouldn't try to be something I'm not. And once I accepted
that in myself everything was alright. But it is hard sometimes
to see a young crowd and to go out there and remember that
I played in front of crowds that age when I was that age,
and what I was like, and try not to be that way." Doesn't
it feel strange, singing songs like "Once An Angel" and
talking about your family to a bunch of kids? "If they can
get something from that then fine, and last night they seemed
to," said Young the day after the Rochester show. "Even
though they're young, most of 'em are only a couple of years
away from being married or having a meaningful relationship,
and a lot of them are married. There's a lot more older
people at the back that aren't running up to the front,
so it's there for all of them. A lot of them come because
to them it's history - they're seeing things they've only
heard about."
The sets contain material from every phase of Young's career,
though he's whittled down the demented electric side of
his music. His main chance to stretch out guitar is in "Down
By The River", where he attacks his familiar black Gibson
as Joe Alien modifies the long-familiar bassline slightly.
Rufus Thibodeaux, the cajun fiddler from Louisiana who's
built like Mount Rushmore, perches himself immovably stage
left, jigging massively in time to Young's twisted soloing
- though it's noticeable that Young's playing is more organised
and better sculptured than it might have been in a show
with Crazy Horse. Young's even written a punchy new song
about his band, called "Grey Riders"
The sets open with an old song, "Country Home" There are
several tunes from "Old Ways", plus "Looking For Love",
"Helpless" and a beautifully loping "Comes A Time" as reference
points. The best reception of the night, though is not for
"Heart Of Gold" but for the haunted "Old Man", with the
evergreen "Sugar Mountain" running it a close second. "I
do "Sugar Mountain" really for the people more than I do
for myself," Young explained. "I think I owe it to them,
cos it seems to really make them feel happy, so that's why
I do that. They pay a lotta money to come and see me and
I lay a lotta things on 'em that they've never heard before,
and I think I owe it to them to do things they can really
identify with. It's such a friendly song, and the older
I get and the older my audience gets the more relevant it
becomes, especially since they've been singing it for 20
years. It really means a lot to them, so I like to give'em
the chance to enjoy that moment." He paused for a moment,
then the familiar wolfish grin spread across his face. "I
had it on the B side of almost every single that I had out
for 10 years".
No doubt this careful consideration of the audience's wishes
stems from the balance Young has managed to strike in both
his personal and professional lives. His wife isn't on the
road with him this time as she usually is - she's back at
the California ranch looking after the kids, a brother and
sister. Young has another son, who suffers from cerebral
palsy. This has profoundly influenced his outlook on life.
"I've always felt that God made my son the way he is because
he was trying to show me something, so I try to do as much
positive as I can for people like that, and for families
of kids who are handicapped. I have a lot of compassion
for those people and a lot of understanding for them that
I didn't have before, and I think it's made me a better
person. "And I think since I have the power to influence
so many people, it was only natural that I should be shown
so many extremes of life, so I could reflect it somehow.
Nothing is perfect y'know, that's it."
Looking back 10 years or more, Young can now put his well
documented bleak period into a longer perspective, After
"Harvest" had clocked up sales running into millions, Young's
fans were horrified first by the release of the double album
"Journey Through The Past", a bitty and meaningless "soundtrack"
for Young's rarely-seen film of the same name. After the
album came out, the film company refused to release the
movie, to Young's continuing disgust. Next came the nerve-shredding
live album "Time Fades Away", a dingy and macabre affair
notably devoid of the pure melodies beloved of his soft-rockin'
aficionados. Young, feeling boxed in by commercial success,
had steered away from it. The chart performance of "Heart
Of Gold" had brought him a lot of things he found he didn't
want. "I guess at that point I'd attained a lot of fame
and everything that you dream about when you're a teenager.
I was still only 23 or 24, and I realised I had a long way
to go and this wasn't going to be the most satisfying thing,
just sittin' around basking in the glory of having a hit
record. It's really a very shallow experience, it's actually
a very empty experience". "It's nothing concrete except
ego-gratification, which is extremely unnerving kind of
feeling. So I think subconsciously I set out to destroy
that and rip it down, before it surrounded me. I could feel
a wall building up around me."
To add insult to injury, his next studio recording was the
harrowing "Tonight's The Night", though with a perversity
that was becoming typical of him the latter wasn't released
until after the subsequently-cut "On The Beach" Both albums
stand up strongly to this day. Both use the rock format
as a means of redemption and rejuvenation, the very act
of recording (no overdubs) serving as therapy.
"Tonight's The Night" and "On The Beach" were pretty free
records," Young pondered, lighting another unfiltered Pall
Mall. "I was pretty down I guess at the time, but I just
did what I wanted to do, at that time. I think if everybody
looks back at their own lives they'll realise that they
went through something like that. There's periods of depression,
periods of elation, optimism and scepticism, the whole thing
is.... it just keeps coming in waves". "You go down to the
beach and watch the same thing, just imagine every wave
is a different set of emotions coming in. Just keep coming.
As long as you don't ignore it, it'll still be there, If
you start shutting yourself off and not letting yourself
live through the things that are coming through you, I think
that's when people start getting old really fast, that's
when they really age". "Cos they decide that, they're happy
to be what they were at a certain time in their lives when
they were the happiest, and they say 'that's where I'm gonna
be for the rest of my life'. From that minute on they're
dead, y'know, just walking around. I try to avoid that."
One of the key tracks from "On The Beach" was "Revolution
Blues", a predatory rocker in which Young adopts the persona
of a trigger-happy psychotic, eager to slaughter Laurel
Canyon's pampered superstar residents. Reflecting on the
song prods Young into some unsettling areas. "That was based
on my experiences with Charlie Manson. I met him a couple
of times, and er.... very interesting person. Obviously
he was quite keyed up." Gulp. Before or.... after the Sharon
Tate killings? "Before. About six months before. He' s quite
a writer and a singer, really unique - very unique, and
he wanted very badly to get a recording contract. I was
at (Beach Boys) Dennis Wilson's house when I met Charlie.
Coupla times". "The thing about Charlie Manson was you'd
never hear the same song twice. It was one of the interesting
things about him. He had a very mysterious power about him
which I'm hesitant to even fuckin' think about, it's so
strong and it was so dark, so I really don't like to talk
about it very much. I don't even know why I brought it up."
Young stopped talking for a moment. Thought we'd lost him,
but he continued. "There is a saying that if you don't look
the devil in the eye you're alright, but once you've looked
him in the eye you'll never forget him, and there'll always
be more devil in you than there was before". "And it's hard
to say, you know. The devil is not a cartoon character,
like God is on one side of the page and he's on the other.
The devil lives in every one and God lives in every one.
There's no book that tells you when the devil said to God
'fuck you' and God said (makes a raspberry noise). All those
books that are written are just one person's opinion". "I
can't follow that, but I can see these things in other people.
You can see it and feel it. But Manson would sing a song
and just make it up as he went along, for three or four
minutes, and he never would repeat one word, and it all
made perfect sense and it shook you up to listen to it.
It was so good that it scared you, A couple of years later,
then, Young wrote "Revolution Blues" "well I'm a barrel
of laughs with my carbine on, I keep hopping till my ammunition's
gone...."
So how did the superstar community take it, Neil? "Well,
see, I wasn't touring at the time, so I didn't really feel
the reaction of 'On The Beach'. Then when I went out on
the road I didn't do any of it, so...." He did however,
perform the song on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
reunion tour,to the discomfiture of the others."David Crosby
especially was very uncomfortable, because it was so much
the darker side. They all wanted to put out the light, y'know,
make people feel good and happy and everything, and that
song was like a wart or something on the perfect beast."
When it came to the release of "Tonight's The Night", Young
again incurred the wrath and disbelief of people who thought
they knew him fairly well. The album had been recorded with
a Crazy Horse reconstituted after the death of songwriter
and guitarist Danny Whitten, a close friend of Young's who'd
given him early encouragement in his career. Whitten had
been due to go out on tour with Young, but was too heavily
dependent on heroin to cope.Young sent him home.The same
night, Whitten died of an overdose. "Time Fades Away" documented
the subsequent tour while "Tonight's The Night" was made
in memory of Whitten and Bruce Berry, a CSNY roadie who
also died from heroin.
Young rememberd the day he'd taken "Tonight" into the offices
of Reprise, his record company at the time. "It was pretty
rocky," he grinned. "I would describe that as a rocky day.
They couldn't believe how sloppy and rough it was, they
couldn't believe that I really wanted to put it out". "I
said 'that's the way it's going out'. It's a very important
record, I think, in my general field of things. It still
stands up. The original 'Tonight's The Night' was much heavier
than the one that hit the stands. The original one had only
nine songs on it. It was the same takes, but the songs that
were missing were 'Lookout Joe' and 'Borrowed Tune', a couple
of songs that I added. They fit lyrically but they softened
the blow a little bit". "What happened was the original
had only nine songs but it had a lot of talking, a lot of
mumbling and talking between the group and me, more disorganised
and fucked-up sounding than the songs, but they were intro's
to the songs . Not counts but little discussions, three
and four word conversations between songs, and it left it
with a spooky feeling. It was like you didn't know if these
guys were still gonna be alive in the morning, the way they
were talking. More like a wake than anything else."
Why did you take it off, then? "It was too strong," said
Young slowly. "It was really too strong. I never even played
it for the record company like that. We made our own decision
not to do that. If they thought 'Tonight's The Night' was
too much the way it came out which they did, a lot of people
- they're lucky they didn't hear the other one." It was
here that Young hit the lowest patch, spiritually, of his
career, probably of his life. His impatience nowadays with
the hippy generation, and his endorsement of a right-wing
President, believed by many to be a dangerous lunatic, can
probably be traced back to the traumas around the time of
"Tonight's The Night" Until then, the ride had been more
or less free.
Was it, I queried, a case of Whitten's death being not only
a personal tragedy, but a metaphor for a generation and
a way of life? Or death? "It just seemed like it really
stood for a lot of what was going on," Young answered. "It
was like the freedom of the sixties and free love and drugs
and everything.... it was the price tag. This is your bill.
Friends, young guys dying, kids that didn't even know what
they were doing, didn't know what they were fucking around
with. It hit me pretty hard, a lot of those things, so at
that time I did sort of exorcise myself." Did you feel guilty
that perhaps you and people in your position had encouraged
that? "Somewhat, yeah, I think so. That's part of the responsibility
of freedom. Freedom to do what you want with not much experience
to realise the consequences. I didn't feel guilty, but I
felt a little guilty."
It's fitting that Young's re-emergence in public with yet
another shift in musical direction should coincide with
a wave of new groups who acknowledge a debt to his past
work. Green On Red's Dan Stuart freely admits that their
"Gas Food Lodging" LP was heavily influenced by Young's
epic "Zuma" collection ("If your gonna steal, steal from
the best," as Stuart puts it). Jason & The Scorchers
play "Are You Ready For The Country", The Beat Farmers turn
in a welt-raising treatment of "Powderfinger", and Pete
Wylie's just cut a version of "The Needle And The Damage
Done" as an anti-heroin gesture. And Dream Syndicate's Steve
Wynn will reminisce about Young and Crazy Horse any time
you like.
With half the material for a follow-up album to "Old Ways"
already in the can, Young is in the middle of a renaissance
of sorts, Not even the AIDS terror can dent his confidence.
"It is scary. You go to the supermarket and you see a faggot
behind the fuckin' cash register. you don't want him to
handle your potatoes. It's true! It's paranoid but that's
the way it is even though it's not just gay people, they're
taking the rap. There's a lotta religious people, of course,
who feel that this is God's work. God's saying, y'know,
no more buttfucking or we're gonna getcha'" Young cackled
dementedly. "I don't know what it is. It's natural, that's
one thing about it. It's a living organism or virus, whatever
it is. I hope they find something to stop it. It's worse
than the Killer Bees." Young obviously isn't making a play
for the Gay vote. They probably don't hold with that sort
of thing in the country.
But his conception of the entire universe is, to say the
least, unorthodox. "I'm not into organised religion. I'm
into believing in a higher source of creation, realising
that we're all just part of nature and we're all animals.
We're very highly evolved and we should be very responsible
for what we've learned. "I even go as far as to think that
in the plan of things, the natural plan of things, that
the rockets and the satellites, spaceships, that we're creating
now are really....we're pollinating, as a universe, and
it's part of the universe. Earth is a flower and it's pollinating".
"It's starting to send out things, and now we're evolving,
they're getting bigger and they're able to go further. And
they have to, because we need to spread out now in the universe.
I think in 100 years we'll be living on other planets."
On a more earthly plane, Young's excited about the prospect
of playing a benefit for the people of Cheyenne, Wyoming,
whose houses and land have been devastated by a freak sequence
of natural disasters. Young's band and equipment will be
airlifted in for the show, by National Guard C130 transport
aircraft and by private jets loaned for the occasion by
some giant corporations. "There's something different about
it, "Young mused, "having the government help us get there
so we can help the farmers. The National Guard's gonna help
us load and unload, get in and outta the place, help us
set up the stage. It's interesting." But it's something
else, above and beyond his this-land-is-your- land preoccupations,
that gives Neil Young his lingering aura of menace and strange
purpose. You can feel it when you talk to him, and it permeates
all his best music.
He sees it something like this "I've got a few demons, but
I manage to co-exist with them. The demons are there all
the time y'know, that's what makes you crazy, that's what
makes me play my guitar the way I play it sometimes. Depends
on the balance, how strong the demons are that night, how
strong the good is". "There's always a battle between good
and evil in every second in your life, I think. In every
judgment you make both sides are represented in your mind.
You may hide the bad side, but it's there.
Pictures by Tom Sheehan.
Aurora Borealis Index The Scottish Highland Mall
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