My problem was, when I was making records during that era, I didn’t have a record company. I had no support, so everything kind of had a chip on its shoulder. I had this accent I was singing with at the time that kind of bothers me now. Y’know, like I went over the edge into country music. It’s kind of phony-sounding. That’s because I was not successful at it—it wasn’t because it wasn’t the right thing to do. But I didn’t have the focus I needed. If I’d been living in Nashville and living it—living the music and writing the songs and getting together with the people and doing it … but it was always like “You only have so much time, you gotta do it now.” A lotta things were bothering me. I was trying too hard.
But I don’t care what people think of my country music. They can stick it up their ass if they don’t like it.
I don’t even think of it as country music—I just think of it as playing with Rufus and Ben, whatever the fuck that is. Who cares? People can call it whatever the fuck they want. Just because it has a steel or a Dobro in it, people think it’s country. I think I could play some good music with those guys—still. I think it’s right there on the edge of happening. It’s never been fully developed. Always got kinda lost making the records. But it’s not over yet. There’s more to do. Oh, I’ll go back there. At a time when it’s the least fuckin’ expected and the most unfashionable thing to do, I’ll be there—either a hundred years behind or ahead.
Old Ways might’ve been a misfire, but as usual, when Young went out on the road with the new Harvesters in the summer of 1985, the music mutated into something else. The two new pickers Young added—Joe Allen and Hargus “Pig” Robbins—were more traditional country, but this version of the Harvesters was heavier and rocked a lot harder. Young hadn’t ignored rock entirely in the country period. Halfway through the first Harvesters tour, he added “Down by the River,” and he had taken the jaunt down under with the Horse, but the new band was more of a country-rock hybrid.
Particularly exciting was the interplay between Young and Robbins. A blind pianist whose licks have graced countless Nashville classics—he’s the only pianist Jerry Lee Lewis would allow to play on such country records as “I’ll Find It Where I Can”—Robbins provided the band with a dark, smoky bottom that drove it like an old Chevy. “Southern Pacific,” complete with Young shouting out train announcements as the band lurched to a halt, also ran like a bat out of hell. There were two new songs that were among the most exciting of the country period: “Grey Riders” and “Interstate,” one of the loneliest songs Young’s ever written.
Young’s weirdness was something Robbins hadn’t encountered in Nashville. “I never played on a song ran seven, eight minutes. Neil told me, ‘We’ll trade licks—you go where you want, I’ll answer ya.’” The call-and-response between the two during a loping, spacey “Down by the River” drove audiences wild.
On July 13, Young appeared in Philadelphia at the mega-benefit for Ethiopian relief, Live Aid. He participated in a bumble-fuck CSNY reunion that was plagued by monitor problems, and also appeared with the Harvesters, unveiling a new song called “Nothing Is Perfect.” This plodding, turgid, overripe “message” song possessed one great couplet—“But nothing is perfect in God’s perfect plan / Look in the shadows to see”—but there was nothing subtle about it. An inventory of all things American and proud of it, the lyric promotes acceptance, but somehow the performance betrays a certain anger. This was the flip side of Young’s country persona: a preachiness not unlike one of Rassy’s venomous rants.
His great-grandpa worked this farm. His grandpa worked it and his daddy worked it. He’s thirty years old. His wife and children at his side, he stands in the window of the old farmhouse. A car comes up the driveway. A man in a suit is at the wheel, his briefcase at his side. Today is the last day for this family farm. Tomorrow is foreclosure day.
President Reagan, in many ways, you have been a great leader. Today, as you read this, your advisors are telling you that America must be strong. America must compete in the world food markets. They advise you to keep prices way down, lower than ever. Do you know that this is killing the family farm? And that only the large conglomerate farm units will survive?
Mr. President, you have a decision to make. Will the farmer be replaced by the farm operator? Will the family farm in America die as a result of your administration? Will the family system in America be dealt a fatal blow right at the core, sending a tremor of fear through every small family business in America? What will this do to the American spirit?
Pictures of your family are neatly framed in the Oval Office, showing your love and reminding you of why you took on the great task of making America strong again. At the end of the day, your wife looks you in the eye and tells you she believes in you. All over America, farmers’ wives do the same. But sleep does not come easily for you tonight—nor does it for them.
As we sell our low-priced food products to the world market, we undercut the family farmers in those countries, forcing them out of business. They turn to cash crops such as textiles and other non-food related products in an effort to earn money to buy American food. Must we destroy their native food chains and their family farmers along with it? What happens if we have a drought, or some other act of God, that ruins our crops at home? Then we will have to raise our world food prices. What will our world food-market customers do with no native food and not enough money to buy ours? Consider the consequences for America and the families of the world.
From “An open letter by Neil Young,” 1985
This letter was read aloud at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana on September 22, 1985, and published in a full-page ad across the country in USA Today on October 4. The occasion was the first Farm Aid concert, to benefit a cause Young has been deeply involved in since its inception. It was classic Neil Young: direct, from the heart and more than a bit dramatic. He also unveiled a new song at the event, which was essentially the opening paragraph of his letter set to melody: “This Old House,” the best of a handful of songs Young has written on the farmer’s plight. It remains one of the simplest, most affecting musical statements of his country period.
Farm Aid came about as a direct result of Live Aid, where Bob Dylan had asked whether some of the millions raised for global hunger could be set aside for the dwindling number of family farmers in America. Young took Dylan’s plea seriously. Just a few days later in Texas, he was shooting the video for “Are There Any More Real Cowboys?” with Willie Nelson, and the two discussed the idea further. The idea of a benefit concert was hatched, and with John Cougar Mellencamp and country singer John Conlee pledging their support, the roster soon grew to thirty-eight acts for the September concert, where a reported $10 million was raised.
Young has appeared at every Farm Aid since. Particularly memorable was his appearance at Farm Aid Six in Ames, Iowa, on April 24, 1993. Pissed off that neither Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy nor Vice President Al Gore had shown up, Young gave an emotional, off-the-cuff critique of the Clinton administration at a press conference before the concert. He spoke with the fervor of a tent-revival preacher. When he finished, he was nearly drowned out by the applause and cheers of the farmers present.
“I understand Vice President Gore is busy today at the Gay Parade in Washington, but I think he coulda fired up Air Force Two and come on down here and given the American farmer a shot in the arm…. I thought when we got rid of Bush and Reagan that there was gonna be a change … but I don’t have respect for the administration. They have not treated us—and the American farmer—the way we should be treated. We’re not lookin’ for a handout. We’re not lookin’ for help—we don’t wanna hear about help. We want change, so all I can say is, where is the change? We voted for change…. Where is Gore? Where is Espy? … Why aren’t they here to hear this? I’m not happy to be here, okay? … We shouldn’t be doin’ this for seven, eight, ten, fifteen, twenty-five, thirty years—Farm Aid is not an American tradition. It’s a Band-Aid. We ought to get
rid of it! We want more from Washington!”
Young continued the attack onstage with an angry performance of “Last of His Kind (the Farm Aid Song).” Accompanied by the throbbing chords of Willie Nelson’s guitar, a scowling Young spit out the words: “For seven long years we’ve been fightin’ for a change / Lookin’ for a country that don’t need Farm Aid.”
Willie Nelson chuckled recalling the press conference. “All the guys from the agricultural department are sittin’ at a table behind Neil, and he’s readin’ the riot act to ’em. Neil was just lettin’ ’em know we shoulda got a little more attention—and we did.” Nelson and a group of farmers got a one-to-one meeting with Secretary of Agriculture Espy, which Nelson credits to Young’s outburst, widely reported in the media. “Neil’s very up-front—he tells exactly what he means. You don’t have to worry about how you stand with Neil, and I like people like that. Thank God there’s a guy like him who will stand up and tell ’em. Neil will lay it on the line.”
Farm Aid basically hasn’t been able to do much. It just helps farmers that are gettin’ screwed. Helps them to get legal advice, helps them to get food, helps them make their payments if they have to. That’s why I keep goin’ back to it, because it’s a good thing—but y’know, it’s got its limitations. It should’ve gotten to be a big thing—if it was managed different, it might be a huge charity by now, because it’s a natural. But Farm Aid is not mine, Farm Aid is more Willie’s. I just believe in Willie. I believe in what he’s trying to do—and I don’t always believe in how he does it—but that doesn’t matter. I’ll still be there with him.
Farm Aid has been great. We’ve done a lotta things. The shortcomings of Farm Aid are many, and the accomplishments are many. It’s just one of those things—you believe in it, you keep goin’ and you keep tryin’ to make it better.
I still really believe the farmers are bein’ sold short and it’s a cause I committed myself to. I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be able to make any difference, but I won’t stop talking about it.
—You went to Washington, shook people’s hands—
Yeah, we tried to do that. Now I realize that that doesn’t really make a lot of difference. Those people are just paying you lip service. I’m a celebrity that gets catered to while I’m there—and forgotten about when I leave.
All the situations have to be lined up right for what I have to offer to make a significant difference. A lot of other things have to be in place and the momentum has to be goin’ the right way. Then a guy like me can be the tip of the iceberg and really make something happen. But it’s not tangible what these other forces are—it’s change.
“One morning I woke up and all I could hear was this massive fucking beat,” Young told Jim Henke. “And my guitar was just rising out of it. I just heard rock and roll in my head, so fucking loud that I couldn’t ignore it.” Actually, the transition back toward rock had been gradual throughout his country period, but Young was reinventing himself again, and the country band would be left to twist in the wind. “Neil said, ‘Y’know, Anthony, I don’t care if you have ten gold records—I always want you to be in my band,’” recalls Crawford. “That was the last time I ever saw him.”
Now Young would head to Los Angeles to make the kind of name-producer studio record Geffen had demanded. Not that he would give them what they wanted, because Landing on Water would be his weirdest music yet.
* Young would embark on an acting career in the eighties, starring in a low-budget hippie drama, ’68, plus small roles in a pair of Alan Rudolph films, Made in Heaven and Love at Large. His role as a mobster in Dennis Hopper’s Backtrack (which also featured Dylan in a cameo as a painter) was left on the cutting-room floor.
† One of the Human Highway extras would be a face from the past—the Doctor, fresh from a prison term for his role in the Topanga slayings that had inspired “Tired Eyes.” Young gave him a new start by putting him in the film, but unfortunately Keil Martin, one of the other actors, boasted of the Doctor’s past to the rest of the cast and crew. “Martin tells everybody on the set I’m a convicted murderer. Everybody started lookin’ at me a little weird. I got upset and didn’t come back to one of the rehearsals. Neil came to me personally and said, ‘Don’t let it bum you out. You’re in the big shot. I need you.’ I walk back on the set, and forty-seven people applaud. Neil was a stand-up guy to put me in the thing.”
* All was not fun and games in the land of the Shocking Pinks. Bus driver Paul Williamson recalls that Young was reading Albert Goldman’s Elvis Presley exposé while on tour. “Neil’s frame of mind got uglier and uglier … Elvis’s influence is ugly with Neil.”
meadow dusk
Dave McFarlin is hard core. He stopped listening to the Ramones after they did a Bud Lite commercial. A model-train fan, he’ll put back anything that says MADE IN KOREA, because everything he buys is American-made, down to his sneakers. He’s the quintessential New Jersey guy—the one Springsteen supposedly sings for, except Dave could care less about the Boss. The only things he really gives a shit about are fishing, the Weather Channel and the noise of an electric guitar.
Born in 1964, McFarlin heard Rust Never Sleeps on the radio when he was fifteen and that was it. When his parents broke up a few years later, he holed up in his room, playing “Down by the River” over and over. His first chance to see Crazy Horse live came in 1986, on the Landing on Water tour.
McFarlin loves Young’s music—his room is piled high with live tapes—and what he really loves is Young going over the edge on Old Black, the more painfully loud the better. Harvest Moon? Young with Booker T. and the MGs? With Pearl Jam? Forget about it. Dave wants to see Young burn out—before his very eyes.
To record Landing on Water, his first straight rock album for Geffen, Neil Young wouldn’t use Crazy Horse or David Briggs. He would hire session players and a new coproducer: Danny Kortchmar, then riding high at Geffen with ex-Eagle Don Henley’s soulless pop hits. No doubt the record company thought Kortchmar could coax something commercial out of their problem child. Kortchmar already knew Young, having played guitar with him alongside Ry Cooder on a Monkees session many years before, but he would soon find out that Young had his own way of doing things. “To tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter who fuckin’ produces Neil,” he said. “I’m sure Briggs helps a lot, and Tim Mulligan, but lemme tell you, man—Neil could get one of those professional wrestlers to coproduce and it would still come out the same.”
Compared to the work of Don Henley, Landing on Water was the Outer Limits. “I never ever made a record like this before,” said Kortchmar. “Henley is very meticulous. He isn’t interested in spontaneity. Henley goes over every word of his vocals—you punch in syllables. That’s the exact opposite of the way Neil wants to work.” When Kortchmar tried to overdub a flat note or bum word, Young told him, “I can’t do that. I’m not Henley. I can’t punch it in.”
But Young would really click with Niko Bolas, the engineer for the Los Angeles sessions. Bolas was a real live wire—young, energetic, blissfully ignorant. “I wasn’t a fan. When Neil walked in, I thought he was somebody’s hippie dad. Everybody was treatin’ him with all this fuckin’ awe. It was just another gig to me, so I met Neil on a brand-new level.”
Niko would work on the next four albums, coproducing two, and his total lack of preconceptions would make for interesting results. He would also share responsibility for the downside of bringing Neil up to date: albums that were eighties-entrenched, lackluster-sounding. But Bolas was an important catalyst—and an honest voice—at a time when Young desperately needed it, prodding him to try new things, including new musicians.
“If Niko has an idea about something, he’s not scared to tell Neil,” said Young’s half sister, Astrid. “A lotta people tiptoe around Neil, ’cause he’s really intense and can be volatile, but Niko has no fear. Neil once said that Niko is God.”
I needed a complete change. I wanted to see what was happening, what was going on in the studios in
L.A., what kind of records were being made, how they were making them. The vocals on that record were pretty weak because they were all overdubbed. The demos were overdubbed, too, because the original track was overdubbed onto a click track. It wasn’t Danny’s idea to do that. That was my fault. It was a concept thing, I wanted to see what would happen. That was sort of a reentry into creative recording. I kind of lost it awhile there. Landing on Water was the beginning—or the end, depending on how you look at it. I just wanted to try somethin’ else, break out … I felt like I was dying. Felt like if I didn’t do something, I was gonna lose it. Something had to wake me up.
I started working out when I did Landing on Water. I didn’t have enough strength to lift my guitar up over my shoulder—it was all fucked up, pain up and down my arm, pain in my back, pain in my leg. That was like post-polio syndrome or something. But I’ve been able to beat it by weight-lifting. That was the beginning of my physical reconstruction. It made my music more aggressive.
Landing on Water was an experiment. It has its high points and low points. “Pressure” and “Drifter”—those two are probably my favorites. “Pressure” is the high point. I had [drummer] Steve Jordan scream a couple of times, I sampled the scream and then I played it on the Synclavier. On the last note I held it—“Eeeeeeaaah!” Geffen wouldn’t even put out the single. Too much art, not enough compromise.
The band for Landing on Water was a trio: Young, Danny Kortchmar on synthetic-keyboard bass and Steve Jordan on drums. Jordan was a powerhouse, a total monster (Briggs said he’d been after Young for years to work with the drummer and was furious when Neil made the record without him). Full of attitude, Steve Jordan made a big impression when he waltzed into the session late and picked up Young’s guitar. “Nobody touches Old Black,” said Young’s guitar tech Larry Cragg. “This is the hallowed thing. You don’t touch Neil’s guitar.” But Jordan did, and he was rolling around on the floor playing it when Young walked in to meet him. “Neil just looked at him,” said Kortchmar. “I knew it was love at first sight.”
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