by Neil Young
The Coastal Bar Tour was accomplished by a method we perfected. Not wishing for any advertising, David “RD” Cline would contact the bar owners and tell them that we would like to play in their establishments. We would ask for the open dates and tell them that we would like to play one of those dates but would not commit to a precise one. On the day of the appearance, we would show up in the late afternoon and set up, allowing for word of mouth to fill the bar or club with locals. That way, we never were committed in advance, played for the locals, and could back out at any time. It worked perfectly.
Daddy came to a lot of the shows in the Plymouth Special Deluxe. We played up and down the coast at little clubs and bars, rarely more than two or three hundred people in the crowd, sometimes less than one hundred. Johnny Talbot, Billy’s brother who lived with his wife Ellen on the ranch, handled the road manager duties.
One of our best shows was in La Honda, a redwood town in the mountains near the ranch. The place we played was called the Boots and Saddle Lodge and it had a dance hall with a little stage. The bar adjoined the dance hall. It was very rustic with log walls and a beautiful stone fireplace. Daddy parked the Special Deluxe in the parking lot under the giant redwoods and we played great that night. “Country Home” was brand-new then and we played it for about twenty minutes. The Boots and Saddle burned to the ground in a suspected arson fire some years later and nothing else was ever built on the spot where it used to be. I can still see Daddy in the green Plymouth under the redwoods every time I pass by on my way to or from the coast.
I hate to go down to the flats
’Cause I can’t park on a hill
Instead of getting a rolling start,
I have to pay a bill.
I guess I need that city life
It sure has lots of style
But pretty soon it wears me out
And I have to think to smile.
—“COUNTRY HOME”
Daddy, quite the lady’s man, enjoyed the Northern California Coastal Bar Tour immensely. His being there in the Plymouth was a big treat for both of us, one of the best. Daddy and the Horse had a great time.
The Special Deluxe has traveled many more miles with me and it still does, especially at home on the roads of Broken Arrow Ranch. With springs perfectly suited for the rough terrain, the old Plymouth is comfortable on back roads that would challenge any sedan that was not sturdy and well made. Old Chrysler products from that era are famous for being runners in the truest sense of the word. And so it has been. Up and down the old ranch roads for years upon years, vacuum wipers beating away the winter rains, big round tires handling the potholes with ease, and the trusty six-cylinder engine firing up responsively whenever asked. The Plymouth Special Deluxe has persisted.
Elvis, my soulful and friendly Tennessee bluetick hound, took up residence for ten years on a horse blanket in the backseat. As the interior slowly gave way to the constant wear and tear, blankets of one kind or another were thrown on all the seats. The old Plymouth just kept on giving, and time rolled by. When Elvis died at the vet’s, where he was having an operation to remove a cancer, he was given one last ride back to the ranch on his old blanket. Although Elvis was gone, the Special Deluxe just kept on rolling on with me and my memories in it.
I was thirty-six years old and weighed about 135 pounds. I had never been a physical person, avoiding sports and exercise like the plague. I had gotten so weak in my arms and shoulders that I was having trouble lifting my guitar strap up over my head to put it on. It was a heavy guitar, but not so heavy that I should have had a problem with it. My left shoulder joint hurt a lot when I tried to lift anything above it. I was not a physical person at that point, and had no exercise routine at all. I knew I had to do something, as I was wasting away.
While in LA, recording the album I called Landing on Water, with Danny Kortchmar producing and Niko Bolas engineering, I had hooked up with a trainer named Frank Moran. Frank was a fitness motivation expert who worked with a lot of Hollywood pros, actors, producers, et cetera. They had to look good to do their jobs and be fit. Frank worked me out very hard and would always leave me exhausted, whereupon he would smile and say to me: “Welcome to the land of the living.” Frank got me boxing. I would show up at his place in the morning and we would box in his garage. Then I would hit a punching bag. By the time I left to go to the studio to record with Niko and Danny, I was jacked out of my mind, ready to take on anything. Frank really got me going. I was into being fit. He got me started and I’m still doing it today.
After Landing on Water was finished, I asked Frank to fly up to the Bay Area to continue working me out so that I could keep up with the routine. In 1983, we were working out at a place in Millbrae, near the airport, called the Royal Athletic Club. Frank said I should weigh about 185. I had a lot of growing to do! He worked me out so hard that some of the guys at the gym thought he was going to kill me. There were a lot of cool old guys there: an old Italian construction guy called Big Frank whom I really liked, and another guy who was very old and had MS or something. Those were some real people and I liked it there. I would see them regularly and sometimes we hung out and talked in the parking lot when I arrived or left in the old Special Deluxe.
I noticed this young guy in the gym regularly who had a VW. He was a trainer and worked with some of the clientele. His name was Mike “Munsen” Johnson and eventually he started training with me on the days when Frank did not come up. After a while, Frank just supervised from LA, flying up once a week, but eventually the cost of him coming became too high compared to using Mike, so we started working with Frank when I was in LA and Mike when I was at the ranch in San Francisco.
That was the beginning of a long relationship. Mike “Munsen” Johnson, also known as “Abs,” is still my trainer today. He goes on all my tours and we have a semitrailer that is outfitted as a gym inside so I can work out in private with my own equipment, staying in shape while on the road, because I really don’t enjoy the public hotel gyms with disco music. This has helped me immensely with my music and my life. I weigh 175 now, although it is most certainly not all muscle! We still check in with Frank every once in a while. I try to work out with Mike five days a week, first thing in the morning. We are all good friends.
One summer day in the nineties, I visited the car barn to work out with Mike in a unique little gym Jon McKeig had built out of scrap and corrugated metal on the second level, overlooking the cars. It was always settling to look at the cars in the morning, remembering all of the things we had done together. Seeing the Plymouth parked down below, I decided to take it home and leave my old Jeepster there at the barn.
When I got inside, fired it up, and started moving, I heard a sound I had never heard before. It was a crackling sound, not a mechanical sound, just the sound of things rubbing together. The sound only happened when the car was moving; it was starting and stopping immediately with the car’s movement. I got out and looked around. The car was clean, like it had just been detailed. I started the car moving again, seeing nothing unusual, and the sound started right up. I called Jon, who came over and stood near the car. “What is this sound?” I asked, and demonstrated it for Jon, who couldn’t hear it. “Come on. Get in,” I said. “I’ll take you for a ride.” Then he heard it. He didn’t know what it was, either.
When we started going over what had happened to the car since the last time it had been driven, he remembered using a can of rubber preservative that was supposed to stop the decay of rubber right in its tracks. Thing is, it turned rubber into a hard shiny material with none of its original attributes. So all of the rubber around the doors and windows had been sprayed with this junk and now the car crackled as it was driven. A small thing to some, but not to me with my hyper-auditory sensitivity. I hated the sound. The whole car was different now that it had lost its quietness. It went on like that for years, crackling away. Atypically, I slowly learned to live with it. Maybe t
hat happened because I was getting old and becoming more accepting. Maybe I just had other things to do and couldn’t focus on it. Eventually I even started thinking it was getting quieter.
At some point, the Plymouth started to lose power. It became hard to start. I was working with a master mechanic named Bruce Ferrario whose shop, Four Star Truck and Auto Repair, had done an excellent job for me on a few other cars. He always backed up his work and was a true perfectionist, and I liked him.
I brought the Plymouth to Bruce and he made it run like a dream, plus he replaced all the rubber and got rid of the sound! The old Plymouth was back to normal, maybe even a little more responsive. I have driven it everywhere in the Bay Area, but never out of town to another city or state. I found this car to be comfortable for short trips, especially in the hills and local areas, whereas I liked to use big Cadillacs, Buicks, or Lincolns for longer trips to LA, Sacramento, or Lake Tahoe.
In spring of 2012, when Crazy Horse was rehearsing for our first tour in nine years to support our recent album, Americana, and our next, Psychedelic Pill, the Plymouth Special Deluxe was parked right in front of the stage, ready for any challenge. A new Indian blanket seat, one of the last things designed by Jon McKeig before he retired, was looking beautiful as part of the all-new interior he installed. The motor, still humming along, was now started by an improved nine-volt battery system. It had been straining with its original six-volt system. Seemingly reborn, the Special Deluxe sprung to life again at the turn of a key. The paint was worn through to rust in some areas, but the body and chrome were still nearly perfect, just as they were the day I first laid eyes on this beauty.
Driving the Plymouth home from the Redwood Digital mixing studio one night after hearing the final mixes of Psychedelic Pill, I was thinking about the playback. I did a lot of work on these tracks with Johnny Hausmann and Jeff Pinn, my two engineers. Work went on for over a month to make the tracks as great as they could be. Most of the time was spent on editing the long instrumental passages, balancing the numerous vocal parts, and preserving the feeling and vibe of each song. Part of the process called for my co-producer, John Hanlon, to come in and do a final pass of all the mixes with fresh ears. Sometimes this can greatly improve the original passes.
Billy, Ralph, Poncho, and Mark Humphreys, our monitor mixer, were all there with me, listening to our choices and voicing their opinions. It was real group listening and evaluation. Briggs was there with us in spirit. In the end, we took a couple of John’s remixes and replaced the originals I had done with John Hausmann and Jeff. There were two songs where we decided on combining my mixes with John Hanlon’s and then there were three big long songs where we all felt the original mixes we had done during the month’s work contained more of the original feeling of the music.
One of John’s original mixes of a twenty-six minute track, “Driftin’ Back,” is my favorite. It had been done right after the recording. We never even wanted to try mixing it again. Another one, “Twisted Road,” he had improved remarkably by rebalancing it. I was really impressed with the difference he had made. So we developed a new process and worked closely together. The band was involved in the final decisions. We were all happy that we did it together, but John Hanlon and I still missed Briggs. A day never went by when we would not think of or mention Briggs, and we talked about him all the time during those sessions.
That night after leaving the studio, I was heading home. I kept the trusty Plymouth in first gear, slowly making my way back to Pegi under a watchful July moon. We were less than one month from our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary and she was more beautiful than ever. She’s now about the same age as her mother was when she died, and sometimes I can see her mother’s kindness and beauty in her face. I parked right in front of the house so I could see the Plymouth from across the lake when I went for my morning walk. If I park in the right place, the picture looks perfect.
One morning, as I walked past the 1950 Plymouth Special Deluxe’s trunk, I noticed the 2012 sticker on its old California license plate. Like math as a buzzing insect, a quick calculation of years flitted through me. It was over in a split second like a mosquito bite. I settled into the front seat, turned the key, and the Special Deluxe jumped to life immediately. It was a cold day and winter was decidedly arriving on the ranch. The ducks and geese were excitedly conversing about the change of seasons as they always did when the weather got their attention. Change is important to birds.
Motoring across the ranch in first and second gears, I took time to observe the beauty surrounding me and felt blessed for a moment. I was on my way to the train barn to relax and write a little. I was going to start with some Buffalo Springfield research, and seek out the date of a show we did at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara. I had some memories of that experience that I wanted to get down before I forgot. Sometimes those moments are vivid and you can almost smell the air around them. Then they are gone.
When I arrived at the train barn, it was cold inside and I built a fire. There was an old potbelly stove there that used to be in my bedroom in the old cabin when I first came to the ranch. I remember buying it and placing it there on a stone hearth I had built, with a small door beside it that led to a woodshed, where I kept all my firewood. I really loved being able to just open that door and get wood to put on the fire, then jumping in bed to read or whatever. Those were good days. Except for those memories, evidence of the stove in the house is all gone; that area where it was is now part of a hallway of the big house Pegi and I built for our growing family. The old woodshed has become a bathroom.
Picking up some newspaper, I saw the sports pages celebrating the Giants’ win in the World Series over the Detroit Tigers. I crunched up the paper and threw it in the potbelly, happy for the Giants because I lived in the Bay Area, but having rooted for Detroit, I felt the loss. Detroit needed a win. Detroit deserved a win but it was not this year. I will always root for Detroit to come back and win again. The people there, the working men and women, the factories, they all meant something to me, not to mention Motown and Hitsville U.S.A. I struck a match and lit the fire.
Pushing that thought from my mind, I refocused on finding the date of a show the Springfield did in Santa Barbara. Through the search engine, I found the date. But much to my surprise and amazement, every date the Buffalo Springfield ever played was in there with it! All of the shows over a two-year period were lined up with comments about some of them and a list of other groups that played with us. The room was getting warm now and the smell of smoke from redwood burning was coming into the air. I liked the smell. I recalled most of these shows, some clearly, some not, as I read the author’s comments.
The most startling thing to me was the number of times on the list that I quit the group, came back, quit again and again. The other thing that really blew my mind was the number of times the author said I had epileptic seizures onstage. Pondering this, I wondered how the band had put up with me. I am sure I didn’t have seizures during the performances. A seizure is a huge event, especially the kind I had earlier in my life. I thought about this long and hard. I would have remembered having a seizure. The writer was wrong or exaggerating.
The stove was putting out a little less heat, so I piled on some more wood, taking it from a pile on the other side of the potbelly. I sat down again and kept thinking, reading the list of shows and recalling some of the events. I had tremendous anxiety about having seizures and was really terrified that I would have one onstage in front of people, and remember feeling them coming on and panicking more than once. I recalled kind of going into a shell and just standing there, half playing and half maintaining. It didn’t happen all the time, but when it did, it was very intense. I remembered reading about how the Springfield thought I was faking these incidents to get attention. As I thought back over it, I became very uncomfortable and hot. The potbelly was roaring and the chair was warm on the side where the stove was. I could smell the redwood s
moke. I kept looking at the computer screen, scrolling through the shows, thinking about what happened, recalling some shows that we did that the website said were canceled, remembering shows we were late for. The seizure stories continued until one in Florida came along that I remembered some of. I didn’t remember the others, and I’m still not sure they happened. A lot of times people just exaggerate these things when they write, to make it more interesting.
We were on tour with the Beach Boys and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. We did a lot of shows in a row, sometimes two and three in one day, leapfrogging across Florida. The show would be starting in one venue while it was ending in the last venue. We did this multiple-show schedule day after day. It was a tight schedule but we were young and the Beach Boys did it that way. They had us as an opener on more shows than anyone else by far. I think about a third of our shows over two years were with the Beach Boys. They were very supportive. So April 9, 1968, when we arrived in Daytona Beach, Florida, Rassy came to the show because she was living nearby in New Smyrna Beach, the same area where my whole family used to go when we were still together and I was young. In the show list I was reading, it said:
Neil Young suffers an epileptic seizure during this performance. Dewey dove shirtless into the crowd and nearly caused a riot. The police shut down the show just as Young suffers his seizure. The Springfield leave him on the stage and his mother, in the audience, rushes to his aid.
I didn’t remember much about it but apparently that was one of the shows where I had a lot of anxiety and kind of froze. In the show list, they called it a seizure. The guys were getting sick of me by then and just left after the show. It must have been hell for them to have me in the band. That’s all I can say now. What was happening to me was real, but it wasn’t a seizure. It was anxiety about having one. I would feel this sensation in my stomach, kind of a rising feeling similar to what it feels like before you throw up, and I would panic. Then I would freeze.
