by Neil Young
We all were going to share the driving. Zeke would be traveling with us for a lot of the tour, too, joining us along the way for some “daddy time,” as Carrie used to call it. We rented a new GMC mobile home for the tour; Zeke called it the Mobil Obil. It was a fun ride. There was a bedroom in the back that was perfect for Zeke.
Leaving a few days before the first show, we drove up California Highway 1 through Oregon to Washington, having a wonderful time staying in random motels along the way. Mazzeo would make camp coffee on the motor home’s stove. He was expert at making it, and just dropped the grounds into a stew pot, heated the water, and strained it out of the pot into a cup. It was the smoothest coffee I had ever had. Combined with the weed we were smoking, the trip was a real odyssey.
We had an old typewriter we started using, passing it around from person to person, letting each one write a continuing chapter of a story we created. It turned out to be quite a document. Eventually everyone contributed: random guests and people we didn’t know from Adam. Personal thoughts were interwoven with wordplay, dreams, song lyrics gone awry, and other ramblings unclassified.
Like the old wagon trains, perhaps mobile homes are conducive to creativity and should be marketed that way. I doubt it, but ours was.
At the shows, the crowds were gigantic. Playing to thousands and thousands of people in stadiums was very different and impersonal. It was a sea of humanity, and we couldn’t see many faces because the people were so far away. It really was a mixed blessing. The close, personal aspect of performing before an audience and connecting with it was missing for me. Now it was a celebration instead. The shows came up and we knocked them down. This was the biggest blowout tour I had ever been on, and I wanted to keep to myself off the beaten path; getting to the shows and playing them, but not staying in the big hotels or flying in airplanes with a huge entourage. CSNY was very famous and successful and our presence in public added a lot of pressure so I tried to skip that. Just having all of those people looking at me, and knowing I was always being watched, was overwhelming. Traveling down the highway, stopping wherever we wanted to eat, and sleeping in random motels was when we were happiest.
After a couple of shows in Seattle and Vancouver, we played Day on the Green, a concept of Bill Graham’s, which was a large outdoor show where people could walk around in a large zone in front of the stage or sit in seats behind that area, watching the whole scene. Flags flew. People wore colors and danced. That year was the beginning of Day on the Green. I think we were one of the first shows for Bill in Oakland. I guess these mammoth shows were the offspring of the Beatles playing at Shea Stadium crossed with Woodstock. In its infancy, the technology to run them was very experimental and I remember the huge PA system with its gigantic high-frequency horns. People in the back still said they couldn’t hear very well, even with all that equipment. It was nothing compared to what we use today, multiple sound towers of tuned speakers with time delay, but the people were into the music, and it was all alive.
Some of our shows were inside arenas and a lot of those were quite good. There were a lot of drugs around and it was occasionally a little erratic, but we were getting off and giving the folks a good show. Eventually Ranger Dave, Mazzeo, and I ended up staying in some of the hotels with the whole entourage, needing to get some good rest with a comfortable room and shower. We spent a lot of time driving, and it was peaceful out on the road, the proud highway of second thoughts.
When the tour headed south, Zeke Young met us at the Albuquerque airport. Zeke’s escort, Ellen Talbot, was a friend of Carrie’s, and a fun-loving, creative lady whom Zeke enjoyed. She caught the next flight back to California, but it was easy to tell she wanted to stay and travel with us. No, this was boys’ time. We had gotten Zeke Young a little tape cassette player in the airport as a gift. It was bright red plastic, very small, with a handle just his size, and we had equipped it with a Native American music cassette featuring Indian drums and their ancient singing. So there we were, the four of us, walking through the airport, Zeke with his Indian drums and high-pitched Indian chants echoing through the terminal as he walked along happily. Like any little guy, he loved being with the boys, and this was a real good feeling for all of us.
With lonely mountain ranges in the distance, we crossed the Southwest with its monumental landforms, open spaces, and ribbons of highway stretching across empty seabeds. Cactus families stood together and watched us roll by. The Mobil Obil was hanging in there, now with Zeke Young on board, sleeping on a little Indian blanket on the bed in the back reserved just for him.
One day, climbing out of the long valley on a two-lane, we saw an Indian encampment on the roadside, selling blankets and art. We had never passed one of those. A Native American family had set up everything so you could easily view it while approaching; jewelry, baskets, and blankets were all laid out. There were a couple of kids about Zeke’s age there with the family. Zeke got excited. We opened the door and walked over to look at the offerings, which were extremely beautiful and authentic. Then all hell broke loose as Zeke Young ran right over and bit one of the kids on the arm. All the kids started yelling and Zeke was screaming. Looking around, I saw the Native American mother walking toward me. I told her I was very sorry for what had happened. She just stared at me, unflinching. I asked her, “What would you do if your child had done what my son did?” She said she would put a knife in his mouth and tell him to bite that.
Zeke and I had a good talk about that. I tried to explain to him that hurting people was a bad thing to do. Zeke was crying out desperately for attention and I did my best with him, feeling a lot of guilt about it, feeling a responsibility for the way he was feeling and his situation in life with his brace and being different from other kids. Like the young father I was, I struggled to do the right thing and give the guidance he needed.
After several more shows and a few thousand miles, we lost the GMC. It did not make it. We all agreed it was underpowered.
Perhaps we were pushing it too hard. Perhaps we were not maintaining it well enough. The world had never seen anything like it before. It was the product of many engineering hours by countless GM employees. It was very cool-looking with three axles (two in the back, one in the front) and six tires. However, with some mechanical problems, hard-to-find tires that wore out fast from the front-wheel drive, transmission trouble, scraping and rattling, and a general feeling of unreliability, the Mobil Obil was doomed. It had to be replaced. And so it was.
With a five-day break in the tour, we made our way from Texas to Virginia, where we met a good old boy named Carl Higginbotham, a seller of buses. You might say he was a bus dealer, although he was also a boat dealer. He had an old house and barn on the lake where he had a lot of buses, some motorboats, and a big dock. Buses and boats were scattered everywhere. After checking out a few of them, we purchased an old 1957 Flxible Scenicruiser split-level motor-home conversion bus to continue our travels on the tour. It was beautiful: gold and white, with a pin-striped insignia on the side, but on its last legs. We bought it from Carl and named it “Sam Sleaze” because it looked like it had gotten lost in a time warp and had just arrived from a Vegas card game in 1957.
We had to learn how to drive a bus. It took a little doing, and we quickly realized we had to keep it off the shoulder because if we didn’t, it would pull hard toward the ditch. Sam’s interior was fixed up with a nice bed and sitting areas in front on multiple levels, and had a desk and a dining table. It was a very fine motor coach in its twilight and was the victim of a lot of breakdowns, which thankfully we were able to easily repair along the way. I loved Sam. Sam lasted almost the whole tour.
One night during the tour, I had a curious dream. In the dream, Mazzeo and I were working as valets, parking cars at the Brussels Hilton. We were very busy with a lot of vehicles to park. The following morning, the dream stuck with me. It was a very vivid dream, and I relayed it to Mazzeo and RD and wrote it down in ou
r communal book. It meant something, but we were not sure what.
We continued on to Atlantic City, where we met a few girls after the show and enjoyed entertaining them in Sam Sleaze. The bus was a big hit. It had a great ambience for entertaining and most certainly had been the veteran of a lot of parties long before we came along. Sam was a fine machine and I wish we still had it today. It was very classy, in a sleazy sort of way. Eventually Sam had a breakdown that was too big for us to fix.
It happened in Ohio, well into the tour. The old Flxible finally buckled under the pressure and rolled to the side of the road in a cloud of black diesel smoke somewhere outside of Cleveland. We had to call Paul Williamson, who came out to Ohio, fixed Sam, and drove him back to California.
To replace Sam, we purchased a 1954 Cadillac limousine from a body shop in the suburbs of Cleveland for $400. We named this limo “Pearl.” She had a little rust and was not in very good shape, but with some new tires and a lube job, we were up and rolling again. The motor was pretty good, if you kept oil in it. The interior was rather nice: an earth-colored cloth was on the seats and a lighter shade covered the headliner. The transmission was rough shifting from low to drive. Mazz and RD were riding in the front and I was in the back with the typewriter, entering random notes and musings on life into the communal book as we rolled along through the countryside. I guess I was about twenty-nine years old and had few cares in the world; only that I was moving.
Zeke came and went regularly. Cities and stadiums flew by. The typewriter chattered away as it was passed around. Various authors contributed chapters. Stills, myself, Mazzeo, RD, Joel Bernstein, Graham Nash, Crosby, anyone who wanted to contribute was welcome. The book was taking shape, crafted of anecdotes and not holding a thread of continuity. Little drawings in pencil by Mazzeo; Joni Mitchell added something; the road crew chimed in with stories. It was haphazardly written and no one signed their real name. They made up names or just didn’t sign at all.
The old Cadillac limo rolled onto the backstage grassy area at Toronto’s Varsity University football field, jam-packed with music-loving fans. The show featured the Band and Joni Mitchell as well as CSNY. I saw Danko and we said hi. Everyone was already there and we arrived only an hour before the show. Elliot Roberts and some others were pretty concerned about the reliability of our mode of transportation, but there we were, driving across the grass in our old limo with a saxophone in the rear window and the portable typewriter chattering away.
Carrie arrived with her friend Gigi to pick up Zeke and decided to travel with us to New York. We had the border crossing ahead and had been careful to smoke our weed before we reached it, all the while discussing whether to risk carrying a joint or two across the line, hidden inside some rubber alligators we had on the dashboard. We had picked them up in Tampa. The gators were hollow and the joints could just slip inside them and be invisible. They were hard to smell through rubber, but we thought it over carefully and decided not to try, especially with Zeke Young in the car.
When we arrived at the border, the guards made us leave the limo. Then we were separated and put into different rooms. Time passed. More time passed. We were busted. In a simple twist of fate, Carrie had tried to cross the border with something in Zeke’s bags. I was not angry but I was not surprised, and just stood there shaking my head. I think he still had some diapers with him and although he did not use them, they were checked by the guards and we all went to jail for a few hours in Buffalo. With the help of a lawyer, we were released on bail and drove on to New York in Pearl. Zeke said his good-byes again and flew home with his mother.
In Westbury, New York, at the end of our CSNY Tour of America, Bill Graham had a big hospitality tent for us and presented us with beautiful commemorative art pieces made out of the tickets from all of our shows fanning out like the Wheel of Fortune. Bill was big on commemorating things for people, so they could always remember what they had done. He was our pioneer. Bill Graham was a very special individual, greatly responsible for shaping the way rock and roll tours are today. I like Bill a lot. He said to me once that all the big stars had bought ranches and he couldn’t afford to book them anymore. He was always playing around with us, challenging us. Our US tour had ended. Leaving the hospitality tent behind, we walked by a giant ice sculpture Bill had made of the letters “CSNY” as it melted away into water and soaked into the ground.
Many years later, on October 25, 1991, Bill Graham died suddenly one foggy night. His helicopter, which he used to avoid traffic and return home after shows in the Bay Area, collided and tangled with a high-tension-wire tower, electrocuting all on board. I attended his funeral with a lot of other musicians and other people he had touched. He was truly a great man and a friend. He changed rock and roll in America, beginning with the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco and growing the music business into huge outdoor concerts, all with his personal touch. Playing for Bill was not like playing for anyone else. He made us feel like he was representing the people.
In September of 1974, the tour went on to Wembley Stadium in London, England. It was a huge show. I missed Pearl and I missed Sam. It was just not the same. I liked traveling separately and making my own way with my friends. The Wembley concert was our last live CSNY tour until the year 2000.
Thirteen years later, in 1987, Pearl would be restored to beautiful condition by Jon McKeig. It was like a brand-new limousine. The interior was very comfortable, and the divider window, which had always been cracked, now had a fine engraving of the timeless image of Pearl, an ethereal Hippie Goddess. This new artwork had successfully disguised the cracked divider window because that piece of glass had proven to be impossible to find and replace. The old limo glowed in its rebirth, now living with a new purpose and a second life.
A musical change was coming. I could feel it in my bones. I was on tour with Crazy Horse in America, playing outdoor stages, called sheds, venues that were very popular at the time. The first part of our performance was acoustic, then it went electric, but in the middle of the program there was a section of new music I was referring to privately as Blue Horse. That part of our set consisted of four new songs in a blue vein: “Big Room,” “This Note’s for You,” “Ain’t It the Truth,” and “Don’t Take Your Love Away from Me.” We crisscrossed the nation with our tour.
When we got to Alpine Valley, an outdoor venue in the Wisconsin countryside, we went through a picket line to do that gig and I did not like it. They were protesting non-union workers working the stage and venue. I vowed this was the last time I would ever cross a picket line. We didn’t know about it in advance and the place was full of people when we arrived. Bad situation. I was upset that managers and agents had not prepared me for what they knew was surely coming.
In the fall of 1987, Blue Horse, the name we had been using internally, was introduced as the Bluenotes for the first time. We had a funky and soulful horn section brought to me by Billy Talbot. It included Steve Lawrence, Claude Cailliet, Tommy Bray, Johnny Fumo, Larry Cragg (my multitalented guitar tech), and my amazingly versatile friend Ben Keith on saxophone. We played live at the Cocoanut Grove in Santa Cruz, an old ballroom right on the ocean. The Horse had slipped into a whole new thing and it felt good. It was the perfect venue for our old-style music.
I don’t remember this being a great gig. Everyone was pretty high on all sorts of things. Several new songs were added with horns, including “Find Another Shoulder,” “High Heels,” “One Thing,” and “Ain’t It the Truth.” Even “Hello Lonely Woman” from the Squires at the Flamingo Club days made a reappearance. The sound was not very good and we couldn’t hear well, but the crowd loved it. They were pretty high, too, and I am sure that contributed to our success. There was a phenomenal ambience in that old ballroom and our music fit perfectly. By the end of the year, the Bluenotes were regularly playing clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Around this time, I was high on the idea of doing a film called The Big R
oom. It was kind of a Vegas send-up, only really sleazy. I had big ideas for this, with notes outlining all the characters and the club ambience. My character was Shakey Deal and Steve Lawrence was the Big Man. Pearl and Wog had big parts. We were going to have a blast. We had a great club-owner character, old cars, babes, cigarette girls, booze, you name it. We had the songs. It was going to be a success story gone wrong.
The club would be a miniature Vegas hotel at a location formerly owned by Doris Day. It had a Caesars Palace type of entry and grand architecture, but it was small in size. Vegas in miniature. The showroom was perfect. I could see the whole thing in my mind and planned on shooting it very economically, but I could not get financing from the record company and was really disappointed. I hate it when things don’t work out. When the record company wouldn’t finance it and shut me down that time, I was really pissed. I had never been so limited in my creativity.
Things were going to shit with the record company and they thought I was doing the wrong things, so I was sued for playing the music I wanted to play, because they said it was “uncharacteristic of Neil Young.” But the Bluenotes moved on, playing more clubs—the Cabaret in San Jose, the Omni in Oakland—and recording on my dime until we got to the Fillmore in San Francisco on my birthday, November 12, 1987.
Then the unbelievable happened. I was at my studio on the ranch reviewing club tour recordings for an album to be called Bluenote Café. I had just smoked a big joint and was ready to listen to all the picks from the shows when I got a call from Elliot. He said the record company had dropped the lawsuit against me! I walked outside and stuck my hands in the air. I did that for several minutes before I could even speak. Really. I was so fucking happy that I almost crashed right there. Bad timing on the joint. All the old record company wanted was a “best of” album from the time we had with them. As Briggs would say, “GREATEST MISSES.” There were thirteen songs. I called it Lucky Thirteen.
