Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  The tour finally began again with a six-day stand at the Fillmore East in June. CSNY arrived in regal fashion, with their own light show designed by flamboyant Woodstock luminary Chip Monck, their own sound system and a documentary film crew. A phone-book-sized contract rider demanded all sorts of ridiculous perks, including a Persian rug that had to be placed on the stage just so.

  For some on the Fillmore crew—mainly young music-loving longhairs—the coming of CSNY marked the beginning of the end. As Fillmore lightshow creator Joshua White told writer Robert Greenfield, the group “were stoned and sang flat and the audience went nuts. To me that indicated that times were changing. We were now applauding the presence of the artist. Rather than the performance.”

  Joel Bernstein, fresh out of high school, attended most of the shows and was dazzled as only a young fan can be. Listening to tapes of the shows years later for Young’s Archives project left him disappointed, particularly when he compared them to the CSNY’s first Fillmore appearance nine months earlier, during which, he said, “They still had something to prove. By June it’s superstars, American Beatles. They didn’t rehearse as much, their vocals weren’t as good.” Nash would oversee a two-record set from the tour, 4 Way Street, which was released to huge commercial success in April 1971. Stills would disown the album in the press, deeming it “atrocious” because the group didn’t overdub away the rough edges. But no amount of overdubbing could save such a dud. Jams that might’ve seemed exciting in person sounded interminable and self-indulgent on vinyl.

  During the Fillmore engagement, Stills was up to his usual antics, sneaking three extra songs into his solo segment the night Dylan showed up. Backstage after one show, Bernstein naïvely snapped a close-up shot of Stills “watching his friend take a hit of blow the way a hungry dog watches another dog eating. I didn’t realize Stephen was completely drunk. He staggers over and grabs me, whips a buck knife out of his pocket, and sticks the point in my neck and said, ‘That better not be a wide-angle lens on that camera.’”

  Neil Young sailed serenely through this sea of madness. Bernstein recalls visiting Young in his room at New York’s Gorham Hotel, which he had personalized by draping a scarf over the lamp, burning some incense and sticking up on the wall a ridiculous drawing of Crosby that some fan had done.

  “Neil had more of an elfin quality then than he did with Crazy Horse. Magic, otherworldly—not in a spaced-out way, but a dreamy way. He was scarecrow-like, lanky, but his frailty was belied by the intensity of his eyes. His eyes are different now—he’s lived a lot. They were wider then, more open to the world, but getting wiser all the time. To the rest of them, CSNY was the biggest thing in the world, but Neil took it with a grain of salt.”

  Young pulled out a worn acetate of the new CSNY single and played it for his teenage fan on “this rinky-dink kid’s turntable. That D-modal drone comes through the speaker and from the first bar I was electrified. I knew what kind of effect that was gonna have on the country.”

  On May 4, 1970, four students had been shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State University. Crosby, hanging out with Young at road manager Leo Makota’s place in Pescadero, California, handed Neil a copy of a magazine containing the infamous picture of a Kent State student grieving over the body of her dead classmate. Neil “looked at it, got out his guitar and wrote the song right there in front of me,” said Crosby. “On the porch in the sunlight. I called Nash—‘Book the studio. Now.’ I’m sure it wasn’t twenty-four hours before we were in the studio. I remember gettin’ nuts at the end of the song, I was so moved. The hair was standin’ up on my arms—I was freaked out because I felt it so strongly—screaming, ‘Why? Why?’ Ahmet was in Los Angeles, we gave him the mix, and he got on the red-eye and it was out—BANG!—while it was still fresh in everybody’s mind.” According to Chrissie Hynde, then a Kent State student, Jeff Miller—one of the slain—had been a big Neil Young fan. *

  Cut live with the new rhythm section on May 15, 1970, “Ohio” flew up the charts to number fourteen, passing Nash’s odious “Teach Your Children” on the way. In ten lines, Young captured the fear, frustration and anger felt by youth across the country, and set it to a lumbering D-modal death march that hammered home the dread.

  “Ohio” was the best record I ever made with CSNY. Definitely. That’s the only recording that I know of where CSNY is truly a band. It’s all live. And it felt really good to hear it come back so fast—the whole idea of using music as a message and unifying generations and giving them a point of view. That’s what I brought to that band. That song. And that song gave the band a depth that the band didn’t have without that. Aside from that one thing, I was a hindrance to their progress—except live.

  I always felt funny about makin’ money off that. It never has been resolved. I think I resolved it by the way I treated other things after. That was about the first time I had to have a conscience about something like that.

  There’s nothing I did before “Ohio” that would be in the same category—and very little since. Because it’s kind of a political song as well as a feeling song, and it’s dated to a particular incident, kinda like “Rockin’ in the Free World.” I just don’t write that many of them. It’s not personal like Tonight’s the Night is personal.

  Events like that don’t happen every day, so you gotta have an artist at a point in his or her life where the artist is vulnerable, open and feels completely what has happened so they can put it into words or some sort of expression. All those things gotta come together. You can’t have a cynical artist. That’s my whole thing—to try to stay open. With all I know and all I’ve learned, to try to keep it in perspective, be open to what’s really happening and feel it. That’s really the essence of youth.

  During his Fillmore engagement with CSNY, Young told Joel Bernstein about a piece of property near San Francisco that road manager Leo Makota had shown him. “It’s just incredible. There’s a log cabin, a pond with red-winged blackbirds. It’s paradise.” Young paid $340,000 cash for the 140-acre property and moved there around September 1970. He named it Broken Arrow Ranch.

  Susan would not be going with him. So much had happened in the last year and a half: three solo records, two tours with Crazy Horse, Déjà Vu, three tours with CSNY, “Ohio.” Young’s career had exploded, and one casualty would be his marriage. Young would later tell Bernstein that the cover shot of Gold Rush—where he walks by an old woman heading in the opposite direction—symbolized the end of the relationship.

  “Susan was older than Neil, so she was very insecure about that and tried to be very possessive—wrong!” said Crosby. “Trying to be real possessive with Neil is like trying to hold on to a greased snake.”

  “For Susan, life was nothing but hard work and raising children, and Neil swept her off her feet and put her in this beautiful house,” said Linda Stevens. “But she couldn’t take the pressure from other women—and there were a lot of us around.”

  Young’s celebrity status drove Susan off the deep end. “When Susan would go to a show, the girls would just kinda push past her to get to Neil, and she just couldn’t handle it,” said Russ Tamblyn. “She’d talk about how these girls would come in the dressing room and fall all over Neil, totally ignoring the fact that he had a wife sitting there. It became a real problem. This was a very strong lady, with lots of identity, who was suddenly no longer Susan Acevedo but Mrs. Neil Young.

  “Her personality changed. She started to hate everything Neil was. I remember this one time right before they split up—this was at a point when Neil was out front in the press and Susan was screamin’ at him because of his popularity—it was like ‘Get unpopular.’ I know she used to scream at the fans—‘Get outta here!’ It was bizarre, really bizarre.”

  “I’ll tell you only one thing about Susan,” said Graham Nash. “I shot a portrait of Neil in 1969—a really great shot. I made Neil a print of it. I went out to his house in Topanga, and Susan had pinned it up on one of those little corkboards by
the refrigerator. She’d pinned it up with two pins through the eyes. That’s where Susan was at.”

  Susan never took advantage of me. Never ever was lookin’ out for Susan—always lookin’ out for me. Even afterwards. She never wanted to rely on me or take advantage. Very, very independent. She had a lot of pride in herself. I still have a piece of patchwork she made that I keep up in my study, and a little cup from our wedding day…. I keep these things.

  —Were you mature in that relationship?

  Not really. I was in over my head. I wasn’t ready. It just wasn’t the right time. It was a good combination, but the time frames were outta sync.

  Success was hard to handle. Both of us had a hard time handling it. But Susan even more, because being older than I was, I think she was a little bit insecure about that. It’s different when a woman’s older than a man. All these chicks around and everything … naked women in the house. It was just too fuckin’ much. It was not meant to succeed. But it was fun trying.

  Whenever I think of Susan, I wonder what it would be like to sit down and talk to her a little bit now and see how she’s doin.’ I think about her daughter, Tia—what a little sweetheart. I wasn’t able to take the responsibility—if I could’ve stayed, I could’ve probably been a good father for Tia … it just didn’t work out.

  I was busy. Had a lot of music in me. Topanga got pretty wild. Not much privacy left. That’s when I realized it was a little too out in the open. You never knew what was gonna be happening when you went home.

  Young split from Topanga, staying briefly at the Chateau Marmont before moving to his new ranch. Leo Makota remembers a frantic phone call from Susan demanding to be taken to the ranch. When he refused, she became hysterical. She never made the trip.

  Longtime friend Gary Burden bought Young’s Topanga home. “Neil didn’t want it. He wanted to get away from the vibes of the house, that’s why he sold it to me. It was real painful—he wanted to break up, he didn’t want to break up.”

  I told Burden that, as I understood it, Susan thought she was moving to the ranch, too. “I’m sure that’s true. And that’s why Neil was so stressed out—because he’s capable of making ruthless decisions, but at the same time has this side of himself that feels real bad about it—or maybe not,” he said, laughing. “Neil knows the pain he is causing, but he does it anyway.”

  Ralph Molina recalls tension between Neil and Susan at the beginning of work on Gold Rush. “I was in this booth in the studio, and Neil got this phone call and I remember him saying, ‘Fuck, Susan, all I have is $250,000, and you can have every penny of it. Just leave me alone!’ I’ll never forget those words.” According to court records—which state that Young left the Topanga residence on August 20, 1970—Young paid Susan $80,000 for court costs and medical expenses. Susan filed for divorce on October 9, 1970.

  “Susan Acevedo was very classy,” said Elliot Roberts. “Didn’t want an accountant to go over Neil’s figures. She needed eighty grand for a restaurant. That’s all she wanted, not a penny more, and never came back. I mean, we saw her through the years, but never for a reason. She never came back, never asked for anything, never once.”

  Young was loath to criticize Susan in any way, and it was only after prodding that he expressed having felt the need to escape the relationship before her jealous rages went any further. I got the impression that he fled quickly and without explanation. Acevedo took the separation hard. She went on a particularly bad post-breakup trip after ingesting some hallucinogens with Jack Nitzsche and Denny Bruce at Nitzsche’s Mill Valley home. Said Jack Nitzsche: “A bunch of friends were over, and we all got high and everyone was doin’ fine, except at one point she asked me, ‘Do you think Neil will ever come back to me?’ I said, ‘Never.’ My God, she freaked out. Y’know the theater masks of comedy and tragedy? She froze into a tragedy mask. For like five minutes. You should’ve seen that mask of tragedy.”

  Young would move on to another new life. Alone.

  —Your relationship with Susan ended abruptly?

  It didn’t end that abruptly. We had divorce proceedings. It was just … late. It was over. Y’know, at that point in my life it was easier for me to walk away from that than it was to walk away from my career—and the two of them were not gonna go together, okay? It was one or the other.

  —Can I find Susan in any of your songs?

  Something about ribbons. It’s not there. I can’t remember. *

  * I left my love with ribbons on and water in her eyes …

  I took from her the love I’d won and turned it to the sky

  —“Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets),” 1969.

  —You mean “Running Dry.” You also refer to shaming yourself with lies.

  Somehow I don’t think you remember what those lies were.

  Yeah, I don’t. I’m sure I’ve lied, your honor. I confess to having lied at some point, heh heh.

  —So you knew then it was heading south?

  Probably. Yeah.

  —To be an artist, do you have to be ruthless?

  I do. Hey, you can either be true to your art or be a good public relations man.

  —When did you leave Topanga?

  As soon as I finished After the Gold Rush. When I broke up with Susan.

  —How did you get so driven?

  Well, I didn’t get that way … I am that way. It didn’t start at any given point. There’s no time of day or year that it starts.

  It was just … there.

  *“When Bruce Palmer found out I was takin’ his job, he flipped right out,” said Greg Reeves. “He swung a guitar at me. [CSNY] gave him a D45 guitar with mother-of-pearl inlay and $5,000. I felt bad for him.” Neil Young on Palmer: “He couldn’t learn the songs fast enough, and they didn’t have the patience. He was kind of a rough runner—always made a few mistakes, like Billy [Talbot] does. Didn’t stop me.”

  *One musician would be conspicuously absent from the event. “Woodstock—I didn’t want to be part of that thing,” Bob Dylan said in 1975. “I liked the town. I felt they exploited the shit out of that, goin’ up there and gettin’ fifteen million people all in the same spot. That don’t excite me. The flower generation—is that what it was? I wasn’t into that at all. I just thought it was a lot of kids out and around wearing flowers in their hair, takin’ a lot of acid. I mean, what can you think about that?”

  *In 2000, Young pointed out that his contribution to the song was the lines “Sure enough they’ll be sellin’ stuff when the moon begins to rise / Pretty bad when you’re dealin’ with the man and the light shines in your eyes.” “Not that it matters now, but Danny was more subtle and I was more surface,” he commented.

  *Always game for a good joke, especially one that put his name on the radio, Young would laud “Sweet Home Alabama” in a 1975 interview, telling Bud Scoppa, “I can’t do songs like ‘Southern Man,’ I’d rather play the Lynyrd Skynyrd song. That’d be great.” Van Zant was a huge Young fan; the cover of the last original Skynyrd album, Street Survivors, shows him wearing his omnipresent Tonight’s the Night T-shirt. Hearing the news that Van Zant and members of the band had been killed in a plane crash, Young played a medley of “Alabama”/“Sweet Home Alabama” in tribute during a November 12, 1977, concert in Miami. Rumor has it that Van Zant was buried in the Tonight’s the Night T-shirt.

  *Dutch group Prelude would score an improbable a cappella hit with the song in 1975; Linda Ronstadt cut it accompanied by glass harps. Even Dolly Parton (solo and in a Grammy-winning cut with Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris) tackled the surreal lyric, asking permission to change the song’s infamous, crowd-pleasing lyric about getting high to “I felt like I would cry.”

  *Not everyone was so fond of “Ohio.” Devo member and future Young cohort Gerald V. Casale, also a student at Kent State, knew two of the four students shot. “At the time we just thought rich hippies were making money off of something horrible and political that they didn’t get. I know there were big, screaming arguments in
SDS meetings about Young being a tool of the military industrial complex. I just said, ‘Well, it wasn’t a very good song.’”

  cut to the lizards

  “Look at his eyes,” Young said. “Is this guy a wizard or what?” As usual, Neil was on the money: The light in Mazzeo’s blue eyes glistens like fire on the sun. A big dirty-blond creature who pads about with the awkward gentleness of a bear pawing something out of an overstuffed garbage can, he is described by Neil’s half sister, Astrid, as “the surf bum from hell. Just the fact that Maz can consistently come up with these seventeen-year-old girls boggles my mind.”

  Mazzeo is a fabulous artist. He’s worked in every medium, even cardboard, but is most beloved to Young fans for the twisted naked women and prehistoric-bird pen-and-ink illustrations on the 1975 Zuma album, which enjoyed the distinction of being chosen one of the all-time worst covers by Rolling Stone.

  Jim Mazzeo, aka Sandy Castle, aka Sandy Mazzeo, has been Young’s off-and-on running buddy for many years. Defenders maintain he’s an artist who helped Young tune in to his muse, while critics describe him as a con artist who attaches himself to Young—and his money—like a lamprey eel. Others see Mazzeo more as an equal-opportunity chaos maker. “Sure, Maz would take your car and crash it,” said Frank “Poncho” Sampedro. “But it doesn’t have to be Neil’s car—he’d do it to anybody.”

  Mazzeo didn’t flinch in the face of such accusations. “Well, I’ve always tried to substantiate those claims whenever possible,” he said with an innocent grin. On one tour, rumors flew that Mazzeo had picked up a disabled girl and attached electrical wires to her brace to see how she jumped when he plugged her in. Maz not only didn’t deny the untrue story, he embellished it. “I try to tell ’em something so awful that even I don’t believe it.”