Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  I think Hendrix had an effect in just makin’ me want to get outthere. He’s just so free. He played loud—and he was real sensitive. He didn’t ever play fast … It’s easy to play if you can figure out just what it was he was doin’. He was so into it. All the little things, the little nuances—where he pulled his hand off and where he releases the note—it’s not the notes he plays, it’s the way he plays them.

  He and Jimmy Page are favorites of mine. When I was playing with Page, it filled the hole that Stills used to—more than filled it, it overflowed. He’s so liquid, so at ease with his guitar—a natural sense of time. I’m a hack compared to him. He can really play.

  Eric Clapton’s a survivor, isn’t he? He’s worked hard, real conscientiously, at what he does. He’s earned my respect. I didn’t used to be that into his music fifteen years ago, but I am now. Everything he does seems to mean somethin’ to him, y’know—I guess since he did the Unplugged. A lotta things have happened to him. He’s very much like Ry Cooder—very studious kind of blues guy—but also there’s a broad appeal to his playing style, the fact that he was in Cream, his history. I think he’s come a long way. I liked playing with Clapton. Steady—you can always hand it to him and you know it’s gonna happen. He’s clean, real good. And I can add a funky edge to his leads with my rhythm, ’cause I’m really a rhythm guitar player.

  I’m not like, all over the guitar. I play half-speed to these fuckin’ other assholes, Steve Vai and whoever the new-incarnation Mutant Guitar God is. And y’know—they’re great, they’re fast and more power to ’em. Fuckin’ stock-car-racer guitar players, heh heh.

  —What do you think of your guitar playing?

  Well, y’know—it’s got a lot of feeling. It’s getting better. But technically, I don’t have the chops. I just play the way I play. It works for me. Sometimes. I wish I could do more, y’know—then I try to learn. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. It’s mental. You gotta be in the right frame of mind to play guitar right. It’s not like “You’re great!” You can’t practice and Be Great. It doesn’t work that way—for me it doesn’t. You gotta be in tune with yourself—then you can play an out-of-tune guitar and it’s great. I know that I’m not a really good guitar player—but that doesn’t get in my way.

  What is it about J. J. Cale’s playing? I mean, you could say Eric Clapton’s the guitar god, but what the fuck does that mean? I mean he can’t play like J.J. J.J.’s the one who played all that shit first. Most of the songs and the riffs—the way he plays the fucking guitar is so … great. I think we’d play great together. There’s no doubt, if it was just the two of us, it’d be somethin’ special. And he doesn’t play very loud, either—I really like that about him. He’s so sensitive. Of all the players I ever heard, it’s gotta be Hendrix and J. J. Cale who are the best electric guitar players. J.J.’s my peer, but he doesn’t have the business acumen—he doesn’t have the idea of how to deal with the rest of the world that I do. But musically, he’s actually more than my peer, because he’s got that thing. I don’t know what it is.

  I must have it, too—but I don’t recognize it, okay? But I know J.J. has it. I’m only saying I have it because, after thirty years I must have something. I’m just doin’ what I like to do. Really, is it original? I dunno … I know it’s what I like, and I know what I like is what other people have done. I’m just doin’ my versions. My music is just a bunch of stuff that comes from other people’s music—and my life.

  Rust Never Sleeps was voted album of the year, Young named artist of the year—by both readers and critics in Rolling Stone, and artist of the decade by the Village Voice. It had been an incredible ten years. He had released an amazing string of albums and recorded enough unreleased material for five more. Neil Young was at the top of his game.

  Then came a turn of events that would change everything. Not long after Ben Young was born, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Ben had a much more complicated diagnosis than Zeke: He was spastic, quadriplegic, nonoral. He would be confined to a wheelchair, unable to converse, constantly plagued by medical problems.

  Up to this point in his career, Neil Young had been driven to the point of mania. Nothing had stopped him—not Rassy, not Scott, not school, not epilepsy, not polio, not relationships, not Stephen Stills, not failure, not Danny Whitten, not drugs or disappointment or weakness. He had been unrelenting.

  And yet by Young’s own admission, he had left behind a “big wake.” The emotions that fueled his art were harder to contend with in life, and the truth was, he had been surrounded by people eager to keep him insulated no matter the cost. Joel Bernstein related a story. “Neil had planted some trees on a road to his house, obviously to grow into shade trees so he could drive under them. And a plague came and they got sickly. They had some tree surgeons down trying to help them out and they couldn’t do anything with them. The skin was mottled, they had that half-dead look. And one day Neil just told someone to take a chainsaw and just go cut ’em down, ’cause he couldn’t stand driving under them anymore. The point is, he just couldn’t deal with it.”

  Now there was a baby boy who needed his father’s help. For Ben, Neil practically put his career on hold. He and Pegi searched out every source of help and kept the situation entirely out of the press. At the time not even Young’s record company knew how serious the situation was. “I wasn’t allowed to tell people that Neil was involved with therapy with Ben eighteen hours a day, and that’s why he could not promote anything,” said Elliot Roberts. “I could never use that as an excuse, because it would become the story. One thing we didn’t want was pity.”

  People close to the situation were moved, some to tears, in recalling Neil and Pegi’s dedication. “The crisis came early in their relationship—it was a child at birth,” said Roberts. “But they dealt with it with dignity, great love. They’re a class couple, a class act.” But Young would not tour for four years after Rust, and outside of two benefit performances, this musician—who thrives on live performance—would not play music in front of an audience at all.

  Beyond Young’s personal situation were changes in the cultural weather. The eighties found the country retreating into conservatism and gripped by economic woes. Musically, it was the decade of the mega-artist—Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen. Figures who, however you feel about them, seemed a little less real and a lot more media-savvy. The black hole of MTV sucked everything through its vortex, demolishing the few barriers that remained between rock and other forms of mass media and erasing whatever tiny regional identity it had left. Outside of rap, which had little effect on Young’s world, it was a confusing, passionless time for rock and roll, and many of Neil’s peers appeared lost in the shuffle. Dylan, who confused and angered fans with his extreme exploration of Christianity, seemed to lose his instincts in the recording studio in the eighties (or at least for much of what he chose to release).

  Neil Young would switch labels, joining a company that gave him little support and eventually sued him for the art he created. He would make wildly uncommercial records that were dismissed by critics and the public alike. He would see his power as a recording artist dwindle to the point where his label would deny him the right to record.

  “That whole era, there’s always something wrong,” Young would tell Karen Schoemer in 1992. “There’s always something between me and what I’m trying to say. The invisible shield.”

  The eighties were Young’s most difficult decade. But he kept moving.

  * Young told me he studied Pegi from afar for quite a while before they became seriously involved. “I didn’t wanna make any mistakes … one mistake is enough.”

  * Just a few months after making these remarks, famed singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt died of a heart attack on January 1, 1997. He was fifty-two years old. Hank Williams—Van Zandt’s hero—was found dead in a Cadillac the same day in 1953. On his way to a gig with a bottle of booze by his side, Williams was twenty-nine years old. His single at the
time was entitled “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.”

  * The take of “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” is the same live Cow Palace performance from October 28, 1978, on both Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust, but the Rust Never Sleeps version benefits from massive overdubs. “That one has Billy Talbot playing the studio door on every two and four,” said Briggs. Although Young didn’t remember it this way, Poncho insisted that one influence on “Hey Hey, My My” was the massive stomp-stomp beat of Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” a hit at the time.

  * I asked Young if “Powderfinger” is an antiviolence song. “I dunno. Depends on how you interpret it. Might be. I think that the crux of it is antiviolent, because it shows the futility of violence. Guy’s gonna take a shot but gets shot himself. It’s just one of those things. It’s just a scene, y’know?”

  a voice no one could recognize

  Spend a little time around Ben Young and you won’t forget it. Sitting in his wheelchair in his Harley Davidson swag, his long hair in his face just like his dad, he has an irresistible smile and big bright eyes. Communication isn’t the easiest process for Ben, but you immediately feel his presence. His spirit fills your heart as effortlessly as his dad can fill a stadium. “With all the shit Ben’s been through—all the operations, all the problems, all the hell—he’s a champ,” said his half brother, Zeke. “He’s a special kid to a lot of different people.”

  Neil’s model-train barn is a special place for him and Ben. “Where Zeke and Neil might talk about recording techniques, or Amber might talk about her art, Ben can’t tell you except with his eyes, with his laugh, or whatever sounds he’s got,” said recording engineer John Nowland. “When he’s at the trains, that’s somethin’ he can do.”

  Ben participates in the trains via a large red button that sits before his hands, plus a flexible plastic arm that attaches to the back of his wheelchair and hangs over his head. At the end of the arm is a sensitive microswitch, and when Ben hits it with his head, it commands the train; when he hits it again, it cancels the command. The device is also wireless, allowing Ben to move his wheelchair all around the layout. Who came up with the idea for this sophisticated gadget? His father. Engineer Harry Sitam recalled the momentous day they got the wireless system working. “I don’t know who was more excited,” he said. “Neil or Ben.”

  “Neil talks to Benny more than any other person in the world,” said Elliot Roberts. “Everything he thinks he discusses with Benny. Benny knows everything—every dark secret that Neil has.”

  My life with my children has been quite an experience for me. My boy Ben is a spastic, quadriplegic, cerebral-palsied, nonoral child … with a big heart and a beautiful smile. He’s just a wonderful human being. It did something to me … when he was born…. Cerebral palsy—nobody really knows what it is. It’s just the name for something—paralysis of the brain, any amount of things. It’s a lot like a stroke at birth. Or before birth.

  My first son, Zeke, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was about eighteen months old. And then, years and years later, I’m married to Pegi. We had Ben. Somewhere along the line Pegi kept saying, “Something’s wrong. He’s not doing what other babies do.”

  So we went to the hospital, through all these neurological tests, and here we are at Stanford—this big hospital, supposed to be one of the best hospitals there is—and we’re in a room with two doctors, the head of neurology and some other doctor. And no one has said anything to us. They’re standing around, talking to each other. And the guy in charge, the big doctor, said, “Well, of course, he diagnosed cerebral palsy, spastic paraplegic.” We’re sitting in there, Pegi and I, and that’s the first time we heard it—and he’s not even telling us. He’s sitting in the same room …

  So I remember we made it outside to the car, and we’re sitting in the car, and I’m going, “There’s something wrong with me. Why did this happen?” Two different mothers. What’s going on? Pegi’s heartbroken, we’re both shocked, we have no idea what we’re gonna do.

  It doesn’t hit us what really has happened. Too big a picture, too big. We’re sitting there and I’m saying, “No. It can’t have happened twice.” I was looking into the sky, looking for a sign—“What the fuck is going on here? What made this happen? Why am I here in this situation? And why are the kids in this situation?” And then you get into that—“What did I do to deserve this?” It just blew my mind. I couldn’t believe it. So in order to understand what it’s like to have a kid like that, you sorta have to take a look at what we did. We tried everything we could, went to all the different doctors, trying to get something going. And finally we went to this place in Philadelphia called the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential, where they teach you this program called “patterning,” where you manipulate the kid through a crawling pattern.

  It takes three people to do it. You do it thirteen, fourteen, hours a day, seven days a week. You don’t take any breaks—there’s always one parent in the house. You have volunteers come in. We did that for eighteen months without a day off. And it’s a rigorous program.

  Where they’re teaching the kid how to crawl—he’s crawling down the hallway, he’s banging his head trying to crawl, he can’t crawl—and these people have told us that if he didn’t make it, it was gonna be our fault. That we didn’t do the program right. When we went to Philadelphia they programmed us in this room. They had this week of lectures on how to do this program with your kid, and then they tell you if you’re accepted or not. And the room was fifty-five degrees, we were in there for fifty-five minutes, then you have five minutes off. You get to drink coffee and have a doughnut, and go back in for fifty-five minutes. They have a different speaker that tells you the same thing. The parents of these injured kids are in there—couples with kids with all kinds of problems. It’s like almost a United Nations-seminar kind of a place—we’re sitting in there, looking down, all the parents, and they’re lecturing and lecturing and lecturing and it’s fifty-five degrees so you won’t fall asleep. And it goes on and on and on, for hours and hours and days and days. Until finally you’re brainwashed. And you think the only thing you can do that’s gonna save your kid is this program.

  And they have you so scared that if they call and you’re not at the house, you’re off the program. Forget it, you’ve ruined it for your kid. And here we are, we think this is the only thing we can do—they’ve drilled that into us—and if you don’t do it exactly the way they say, bango! You’re out.

  So it was kind of a scientific experiment, I guess, that we were part of. We lasted eighteen months. Eighteen months of not going out. Not doing anything. During those eighteen months, I made Re-actor. That’s the turning point right there.

  “This isn’t going to hurt me, I must survive, the children have got to be taken care of, we’re not gonna be selfish, we’re gonna go on, we’re gonna do what we have to and do the best, take care of Pegi, take care of the kids”—I made up my mind that’s what I was gonna do and that I was NOT GOING TO HURT.

  I didn’t know that I shut the door on my music when I shut the door on pain. When I blocked out of my head that I wasn’t gonna feel the pain—to deal with it—I didn’t realize what I did. I closed myself down so much that I was makin’ it, and doin’ great with surviving, but my soul was completely encased.

  I didn’t even consider I would need a soul to play my music. I shut it down, and I didn’t realize it was gonna stay shut down when I played. You can’t shut it down without shutting it down totally. You can’t do that. That’s how people get old.

  Ben is very sensitive—we don’t know how cognizant he is. His cognizant abilities seem to shift with the wind. Sometimes he’s real sharp, other times he’s not. There’s no set of strict rules with Ben.

  I’m trying to develop a common standardized communication tool that can be used for people of all handicaps. So when kids are in school together and one’s communicating one way and one another way—they’re all using the same tool, s
o the teacher doesn’t have to learn all these different programs. So the teacher can actually teach.

  A kid can do it with a laser on his forehead, can run the whole thing and talk. And kids who can’t talk can type what they want with a head switch. And kids who can’t do it visually, because they can’t see, can do it through their ears. They learn the cues, and when they hear a cue—like a one-word cue—they know if they hit the switch after hearing it that it’s gonna say a sentence. And that sentence is what they wanna say. So they keep listenin’ to the cues until the appropriate cue comes up, and they hit their switch, and the voice comes out and tells people what they wanna say. Maybe the kid stays home at night and tries to put together a presentation, and he goes in and he waits till the right time and hits the switch. And presents an idea. So there’s all these things that we’re working on.

  I feel we’ve come a long way—we’ve been successful dealing with what we’ve been given to deal with. And we haven’t let it destroy us. Y’know, a lot of families break up when this happens with one kid, and we’ve got two. And they’re great kids—I love my kids. It’s just real. This is the condition of life they have.

  My boy Zeke is a great kid. One day I told Mazzeo, “Zeke is on Level One at school—he’s not gettin’ in trouble, and he’s doin’ great. He’s concentrating and he’s not disrupting the class.” Zeke had trouble with that, he’d always been disruptive—in a heavy way, not just a lightweight way. He got himself under control—Level One. And Maz looked at him and said, “Who’d ya have to pay off to get on Level One, Zeke?” And Zeke looked at him and said, “I paid off myself.”

  That’s a beautiful thing to say. It makes me feel good when he said something like that. So we got our kids and things are lightening up. I’ve carried this story I just told you for years, okay? Without telling anybody—except Pegi. I don’t want to cop out, saying I did what I did because of my kids. So I hope it doesn’t come out that way. It’s just LIFE, that’s all it is. And that’s what happened to me, and this is what I did.