Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  Apparently marijuana no longer made Neil twitch all that badly. Jack Nitzsche, amazed at the prodigious amounts of pot the once apprehensive musician could now consume, asked what had happened to make this possible. “Success,” answered Young.

  I was kinda on my own. I survived the Springfield and headed out to Topanga—farther away from Hollywood. That was a heavy scene. At that point it was too intense for me. And I knew I wanted to do a solo thing—I didn’t want to be part of another group. That was liberating.

  —There was a lot about L.A. you didn’t like.

  Well, y’know, I liked my place, I liked where I lived. I just didn’t like the hustle and bustle of the entertainment business. Once I made it, I didn’t like to be there at all. Once I got to a certain point, I didn’t have to be there. I really couldn’t relax there. A little too fast. I’m fast—but I have to have slowness around me. I have to have space. I have to have room.

  I didn’t hang at the Corral that much … it was cooler for everybody else than me, probably. Those places are hard for me. I was pretty high, probably why I don’t have any memories. I remember one night I went to the Corral and when I came back the next day, I had no hair. Heh heh. My hair was gone. I wasn’t married at the time.

  At some point Young—along with a white mutt named Winnipeg, who would share the cover of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere—parked his ass on the couch at David Briggs’s ranch at 1174 Old Topanga Road, formerly the site of the final Springfield bust. Also congregating on the property were a motley bunch sometimes known as the Topanga All-Stars: Bobby Morris was the ranch manager when he wasn’t totaling Briggs’s newest car; pals Louie Kelly and Ron Denend lived out in the barn; and actor Danny Tucker was always good for a bad joke or a fierce right hook. “All of us had long hair, but we were the furthest thing from hippies you can imagine,” said Morris.

  Briggs and Tucker liked to gamble, so high-stakes card games were a ritual for the clan. “They’d frisk ya when you came to the table to see if you were holdin’ drugs or guns,” recalls Denend. “Drugs stayed, guns went in the locker. They’d get me to bring a couple newcomers into the games. I knew it was a turkey shoot. They’d play all these weird games, like if the third deuce dealt is a red one it’s wild. The rules changed as they went along. How can you play with guys like that?”

  Den mother for the bunch was David’s companion at the time, Shannon Forbes, who stayed busy feeding the troops pineapple upside-down cake and sketching everybody from her kitchen easel. Nils Lofgren, who would soon be making records with both Briggs and Young, felt that it was a real boys’ club. “They treated women like dirt,” said Lofgren, laughing. “That whole macho cowboy thing—walking into a restaurant and calling some woman ‘sugar’ or ‘babe.’ I never heard anyone before refer to a woman as an ‘old lady.’”

  Amid all this testosterone, Young was the sensitive longhair. “Neil was very kind,” said Shannon Forbes, remembering a shy, quiet Young hunched over the shabby old upright piano, picking out notes around the missing keys. “He was tall, thin—Neanderthal man with an oddball voice.”

  In addition to all the other Topanga crazies Young was meeting, at some point in 1968 he encountered Charles Manson a few times (curiously, Young and Manson share a November 12 birthdate). The two were introduced by Dennis Wilson, a friend of Young’s since the Beach Boys tours. Manson lusted after a recording career. “Helter Skelter” was months away.

  This meeting of the minds has provided much fodder for interviews, with Young telling journalist Nick Kent that Manson was “great, he was unreal…. I mean, if he had a band like Dylan had on ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ …” Young wrote a wild number inspired by Manson in 1974, “Revolution Blues.” Manson returned the favor, telling a 1995 interviewer from his Vacaville, California, prison cell that his music-celebrity friends from the old days “didn’t give me shit”—except for Neil Young, who bequeathed him a motorcycle.

  Charlie remembers me too, huh? Everybody else ripped him off, I gave him a motorcycle. I turn out to be a good guy.

  We just hung out. He played some songs for me, sittin’ in Will Rogers’s old house, on Sunset Boulevard. Dennis had the house there, and I visited Dennis a couple of times … Charlie was always there. I think I met him maybe two, three times. Spent the afternoon with him, Dennis and all those girls—Linda Kasabian, Squeaky Fromme.

  The girls. They only paid attention to Charlie. Dennis and I felt like we weren’t there, okay? Now that may not seem that unusual, but—it is. Because both Dennis and I were known. These girls couldn’t see us.

  He seemed a little uptight, a little too intense. Frustrated artist. Spent a lot of time in jail. Frustrated songwriter, singer. Made up songs as he went along, new stuff all the time, no two songs were the same. I remember playin’ a little guitar while he was makin’ up songs. Strong will, that guy.

  I told Mo Ostin about him, Warner Brothers—“This guy is unbelievable—he makes the songs up as he goes along, and they’re all good.” Never got any further than that. Never got a demo.

  Glad he didn’t get around to me when he was punishing people for the fact he didn’t make it in the music biz. That’s what that was all about. Didn’t get to be a rock and roll star, so he started fuckin’ wipin’ people out. Dig that.

  —What would’ve happened if he got signed?

  Well, he probably woulda gotten pissed off at them. He was an angry man. But brilliant. Wrong, but stone-brilliant. He sounds like Dylan when he talks.

  He’s like one of the main movers and shakers of time—when you look back at Jesus and all these people, Charlie was like that. But he was kind of … skewed. You can tell by reading his words. He’s real smart. He’s very deceptive, though. Tricky. Confuses you. Crosby was scared to death of doin’ “Revolution Blues.” He didn’t think it was safe to do it. Didn’t want people to get the message, y’know, about rock and roll stars being worse than lepers, heh heh. Didn’t want that vibe out there *

  —Are some people just evil?

  Some people’s lives are evil. I think people are receptacles—evil and good are out there. We either pick up on one or the other. I can’t see a little kid being evil.

  —You believe in the death penalty?

  Yes. An eye for an eye. It makes absolute sense. I mean, if somebody does something like that … y’know, okay, they’re crazy. They’re crazy—that’s a reason why it’s okay? We’re gonna spend the rest of their lives trying to change them—and they’ve already committed this heinous crime, taken away somebody’s life? Those people don’t really deserve an investment. I make the call for the death penalty, ’cause it’s cheaper. Too many little kids out there need that money.

  Some were intimidated by Susan Acevedo. Guillermo Giachetti, who worked as a roadie for both Young and Stephen Stills, recalls Susan dressed head to toe in black, tearing around town in Neil’s black Mini-Cooper. “Susan was a wild one. She didn’t look like a mellow, easygoing person—she was a city chick.” Willie B. Hinds—who washed dishes in the Canyon Kitchen, said, “Susan was maybe the first women’s libber. She was in hate with men.”

  “Susan was a tough broad—I liked her,” said Tom Wilkes of Young’s first wife. “She was kind of overpowering.”

  “Susan was much tougher than Neil,” recalled Elliot Roberts. “Real smart, real strong, very much like Rassy. Neil was always dominated by women. I think he respects women more than men—he thinks they’re smarter and tougher. It seems to me all great artists pick very strong-willed women who are combative so they can draw into their art to get away.”

  An earthy, strawberry-blond Sicilian approximately a half-dozen years older than Young and raising an adolescent daughter from a previous relationship, Susan Acevedo ran the Canyon Kitchen, a bacon-and-eggs hangout in the tiny Topanga shopping center. Longhairs would gather to soothe last night’s mescaline hangover with some of Acevedo’s homemade bread. “Susan showed me the merits of brown rice and tofu,” said Wilkes’s ex-wife, Ly
nn. “She always knew who did the best tie-dye.”

  Young seems to have a special affection for waitresses; they figure in several of his songs. “Neil wasn’t into sitting at a table with eight girls and seven guys,” said Elliot Roberts. “But you put a waitress at his table alone, and she’s gone.” Romance bloomed in the Canyon Kitchen. “Susan set her cap for Neil and absolutely pursued him,” said Shannon Forbes.

  “Susan cooked, took care of things, fielded the calls—she kept everything calm and smooth for Neil,” said Lynn Wilkes. “Susan was definitely a bit of a mother figure to him. At times I got the feeling that was ninety percent of their relationship—very respectful and kind to each other, but not terribly demonstrative.”

  Jeannie Field, who would work on a number of film projects with Young, remembers that when she first met Neil, “Susan was painstakingly ironing this white tux shirt with all these ruffles. I couldn’t believe it—I was so nonhousemaking at that point, and here’s this beautiful red-haired woman. I think she spent the entire visit ironing Neil’s shirt.” With an eye to Young’s epilepsy, Acevedo weaned him off hamburgers and onto a healthier diet.

  Young had moved into his own house in August 1968, using his entire cash advance from Warner Bros. to purchase the property. “I said to Neil, ‘So tell me what the least amount is you need to get this house,’” recalls Roberts. “He said, ‘Fifteen thousand.’ It turns out with tax and commissions it was seventeen. So I went back to Mo Ostin—‘Mo, I fucked up. I was supposed to ask for seventeen.’ He thought I was so naïve and stupid he gave it to me.”

  “I always seem to live in places people can’t find,” Young mused in his first Warner Bros. bio. The house at 611 Skyline Trail was typical Neil: a redwood box situated on top of an extremely steep hill overlooking the canyon. “It’s a totally ridiculous piece of architecture,” said Tom Wilkes. “Three stories, skinny, straight up like a quart of milk. I can’t believe it hasn’t fallen down the hill.”

  The house was quintessential hippie: cats, candles, antiques. Down one embankment sat a trashed TV set Young had apparently pitched out in a rage. The road up to the house was so treacherous that one night Young’s Mini-Cooper slid off the drive and nearly demolished a neighbor’s house.

  Neil and Susan were married there December 1, 1968. “During the wedding the whole house shook,” recalls Louie Kelly. “I thought it might fall down.” Neil wore a white suit, Susan a white satin dress. Scott Young was invited at the last minute but couldn’t attend; nor was Rassy present. “I never met Susan,” she told me. “I sent her a thing out of the paper on epilepsy and she gave me hell for even mentioning it.”

  Presiding over the ceremony was George Herms, an artist whose wild hair gave him the look of Rasputin. After Susan’s daughter, Tia, entered carrying a ring on a pillow, Herms—an ordained minister in the Temple of Man—blew a horn, then read a long poem he’d written the night before. “Neil,” Herms asked solemnly, “do you wish to be the solar light upon this lady’s path? And Susan, do you wish to be the moonbeam of devotion to this man’s light?”

  Too bad it didn’t take. It was beautiful while it lasted.

  Something about me caused my first wife to say that she hated my mother—heh heh—and never wanted to meet her and would never meet her.

  —Rassy had differences with every woman in your life.

  Yeah. None were spared. The smartest one was Susan. She wouldn’t allow her to come and visit me. She said, “Neil, I know you, and I know your mother because I know something about you, and I don’t want to meet your mother—ever” Heh heh. I went, “Hmmmm”

  —What do you think it was?

  Well, it was a magical combination of her being thirty-one and me being, like, twenty-three—a young twenty-three. The start that I had in sexuality was basically being on the road, heh heh … a different start—but hey, it was mine.

  —How did the relationship between you and Susan begin?

  I used to come to the Canyon Kitchen for one of her breakfasts: the one-eye. One egg and a couple pieces of Canadian bacon. It was pretty good.

  Susan was my friend. She was cool. A real ball of fire. I think we loved each other. A great, great lady—very strong. My life is better for havin’ known her. Met Russ Tamblyn and Dean Stockwell through Susan. Dean—very cool guy. Turned me on to Devo. Into Bowie way early.

  Susan introduced me to people who were artists—George Herms, Wallace Berman—those guys were friends of my wife. Susan really loved them, she knew all about them. Susan introduced me to the concept of art.

  For many it’s impossible to talk about Topanga’s glory days without invoking the name of Wallace Berman. As of 1997, Neil Young was planning to use an image of himself from one of Berman’s collages for the cover of his Archives boxed set. An influential assemblage artist, Berman created collages with an early photocopying machine called a Verifax. With his hatchetlike nose and long steel-gray ponytail, Berman was part beatnik, part pool shark and all art. “Wallace Berman was as pure an artist as there ever was,” said longtime Topanga resident Dean Stockwell. “He was the funniest motherfucker that ever lived, the greatest cocksman that ever lived … a big magus, the big affector … Wallace Berman was the Monster Mash.”

  Berman was known to be eerily prescient, even predicting his own death at the age of fifty in 1976. Stockwell recalls seeing the future at the Berman household in 1958: “One day I noticed a decal on his backdoor window—an American flag, and at the top of the thing were the words ‘Support the American Revolution.’ All of a sudden it was like someone said my mother was a hooker…. It bothered me. It struck me so heavily I couldn’t even confront Wallace with it. So some years go by and I see the fuckin’ revolution happen, man. I see everything in the world change around me.”

  A Stockwell photo of Berman would appear in the lineup on Sgt. Pepper, and both he and George Herms were fixtures on the Topanga scene. Herms, an eccentric who made mournful sculptures out of shopping carts and old car parts, was another natural for Young. As actor Russ Tamblyn put it, Herms was “a junk artist. It’s unfortunate that what George found beauty in was rust—that doesn’t make it with a lotta people.”

  Both Herms and Berman encouraged Young as an artist. Herms first encountered Young’s music during an acid trip at Dean Stockwell’s house, when the actor played him “Expecting to Fly.” “Neil was this Canadian with this incredible cowboy side to him,” said Herms. “He was like this jewel that was just blossoming. One thing Neil said was he did not know where those lyrics were coming from. We all said, ‘Don’t worry, man—let ’em come.’ Because that’s always been a tradition in the arts—that we don’t know where it’s coming from.”

  Both Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn were former child actors who had turned their backs on Hollywood, save for the occasional exploitation movie to buy groceries. Both were involved in the Topanga art scene, and Tamblyn, who lived right up the hill from Neil, was making a go of it as an artist himself.

  “I was very anti-entertainment, and I sort of resented the fact Neil was living next door to me—fans used to camp out on the side of the road, and I’d have to go by ’em to get home. I was really into my art and not the friendliest guy in the world. Neil used to come up and sit in my studio. We hardly talked at all … sometimes he’d sit there for hours.” Years later, working on Young’s film Human Highway, Tamblyn apologized for being so uncommunicative back in Topanga, and Neil told him how much he’d enjoyed the silent times. “I was probably one of the few people who didn’t talk to him.”

  Stockwell, a music aficionado, was an early champion of Young’s work. “There was a great awareness of the talent of Neil Young being amongst us. I just think he’s on another level—I thought that when I first laid eyes on him. Neil’s a tormented person of towering strength and huge creative power. If he didn’t have creative talent, I don’t know if he would be with us. I also sensed that Neil was a real good guy and very straight with people—and that people were straight
with him…. I saw nothing but admirable qualities in him from the get-go.

  “Neil’s always fun to be with … whether you’re on a bummer or your car broke down or you’re in a limo. I just love him deeply, and maybe I value him even more.” As to why he’s been able to remain friends with Young all these years, Stockwell said, “I don’t ask him questions about himself. I never have. Maybe that’s one reason Neil likes me, if he does …”

  “My first album was a really lonely experience,” Neil Young would tell deejay Tony Pig. Producer David Briggs didn’t remember it that way. “We had a lotta fun making that record. We’d get up, smoke a joint, cruise down Mulholland all the way to Hollywood. We’d work in one studio for three hours, then go to another … in those days, Hollywood had great studios—Sunset Sound, Wally Heider, Gold Star, TTG. It was beautiful.”

  It was around August 1968 that Young and Briggs plunged into work on the first album. Three cuts coproduced by Nitzsche featured soon to be top L.A. sessionmen, including a young Ry Cooder, then Jack’s protégé. The rest were cut with a rhythm section consisting of Jim Messina on bass and drummer George Grantham from Messina’s new band, Poco. Messina, who admired Young during his time with the Springfield but never felt close to him, was surprised to get the call. “I wasn’t sure he liked me. Neil was very aloof.” *

  Neil Young sticks fairly close to the eclectic mix developed in the Springfield. Each side opens with an instrumental overture and ends with an epic, with shorter, more straightforward numbers in between. Only Shakey would begin his solo career with an instrumental, but “The Emperor of Wyoming” finds many of his trademarks already in place: a simple, classic melody line; a relaxed, loping beat; the distinctive bentvibrato guitar. Once the prairie feel is established, Young adds another layer to his mystique with “The Loner.” With lyrics more Mickey Spillane than sixties rock—“He’s the perfect stranger, like a cross of himself and a fox”—the song is tough and driving, full of the attenuated guitar squeal that vibrates throughout the album.