Special Deluxe

by Neil Young

  The big car glided through the forest back to the ranch slowly and almost silently after that, the big V8 purring, finally off the two-lane. I stopped at the gate and entered the keypad combination, then it slowly creaked open. Down the steep hills we descended, the Skylark and I, until we finally parked in front of the house in just the right place for a morning viewing from across the pond with my coffee. Remembering my near miss, I felt good to be alive and straight. Maybe being straight helped me; maybe not. I drove slower when I smoked weed. I mulled that over and stood there for a while, marveling at the great beauty and engineering of General Motors in 1953 basking in the light of the moon. Some things never change.

  1962 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ne day in the mid-eighties, just after Mike and I had been working out at the club, heading home in the Special Deluxe I saw a big silver-gray sixties car parked on the street in Burlingame. I stopped and checked it out.

  It was a 1962 Imperial LeBaron, a huge formal sedan with a special rear window unique to that model. It featured the classic Imperial taillights, which stood distinctively on a chrome support above the rear fender. The four headlights were also very unusual, standing in sculpted coves on chrome mounts. This was a very distinctive car. The interior was worn leather, and the design of the dashboard was very advanced, reflecting a futuristic view, as was the incredible steering wheel, which, rather than being round, was a soft rectangular shape. This kind of design belonged in a museum as far as I was concerned. I see these cars as reflections of the American dream through the ages, a mirror of the culture. They are the art of their time, a mirror through which you can see the American story.

  Inside the windshield on the dashboard was a small sign reading FOR SALE $750, with a phone number. I called it as soon as I got home, and purchased the car without driving it.

  Turning the key, it jumped to life and lived up to its name in every respect. The car ran like a top. There was a little body rot, though, and eventually Jon McKeig cut away at the beautiful lines, creating a rectangular hole in the quarter panel. The car sat outside before I started storing it in my warehouse, and it deteriorated slightly after that. I vowed to get it back into decent shape. It’s still there.

  The gaping hole left by Jon was still in the car as it sat years later, sadly awaiting a rescue mission that seemed to be lost and derailed. Too bad it was so easy to cut something up and then abandon it. It should be harder. Maybe in that way things would last longer. Still, there it sat. Last time I saw it I thought to myself that someday I would repair it and bring it back to a reasonable condition. It was in better shape before I had my way with it.

  There is a responsibility to a car if you buy it, and I have not been a very good owner so far with that one, but the game is not over yet. I even thought of repowering the Imperial to electric at one time, but that may be for another lifetime. Maybe, maybe not. I would love to make it live in a clean way. I always hold out hope for a miraculous success in one of my endeavors, yielding a fortune and allowing me to perform miracles. I can always use more money to employ people to do wondrous things. That is a dream I have; a series of dreams I am having. For now, this gorgeous example of American automotive design sits with the body and many parts of Nanu in a warehouse, residing with old stage sets from various tours, obsolete PA systems, monitor amplifiers, and forgotten furniture.

  1959 Lincoln Continental Mark V Convertible

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  riving on El Camino Real in the early nineties, through an area that later became famous as Silicon Valley, I saw a gas station on the corner, and as I passed I noticed a very large convertible parked at a gas pump with no one in it. Curious, I pulled into the station for a second look. As I walked toward it, the more outrageous it looked. It was the same model as the turquoise basket case I had seen at Henry’s Auto Dismantling years before. I had never seen another one on the street. This one was a dark color, and it was a heavy metal monster, very heavy metal.

  The vertical rear breezeway window, similar to the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser I had seen on my way home from school back when I was a kid, was rolled up and the glass was cracked. I was in awe as I looked at this convertible. There is something exciting about seeing a rare model for the first time. I walked over and looked inside.

  It was not in great condition and had a dashboard that seemed to be brushed aluminum or stainless steel. “Engine turned” is the name of that metal finish, the kind you might find in an old hot rod. I looked at this car for a long while, stepping away and taking in the lines. When I got home I researched it and found it was a 1958 Lincoln Continental. The car stuck in my mind. I started learning about it. Made for three years, from 1958 to ’60, with this basic body, it changed a little every year, adding here, taking away there, to give it a new look. I found that the 1959 model was probably my favorite, kind of like the Jetsons’ car with angular lines accentuating the shape. The 1958 version was about two inches shorter and more rounded, kind of sculpted, and it frowned at me with a defiant grille and slanted headlights. I could not immediately decide which one I really liked best. They both had attitude.

  • • •

  ON JULY 24, 1989, I found a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark V convertible listed for sale in the newspaper. It was located somewhere off the freeway near Sacramento, and I drove out there with Paul Williamson to take a look. It was a fine day for a drive, and I was anticipating this car greatly, having only seen it before in pictures from my research.

  When I first saw it I wished it was in better shape. It had imposing lines and a really well laid-out dashboard and instrument panel, in much better condition than the two I had seen previously. The steering wheel was beautiful, sculpted in a wonderful aged ivory color with a nice chrome ring and a beautiful Lincoln emblem in the center on a black background. The car was a piece of art. Its rear lights were much more graceful than the ’58, sculpted and styled compared to the 1958’s plain round ones. The front end looked happy, while the front end of the ’58 looked sultry and a bit pissed off, or at least sad. I immersed myself in the details and got a feeling from the car. The front end of a car has a lot to say about the design, and I liked the ’59 because it felt bright and optimistic.

  I could easily envision Marilyn Monroe with her long scarf, sitting in that backseat with her girlfriends, wind blowing in her hair, those big dark sunglasses protecting her eyes from the breeze. This car seemed destined for greatness. It spoke to the American dream like no other car I had ever seen.

  Cars always tell a story and, as you will see, this one had a lot to do with women. As I walked around the great Continental’s stylish form, I could feel its history. I noticed that the convertible top had curiously been painted with a brush by a previous owner. It was white, as was the body, and the top had shrunk a little so that it did not line up perfectly with the structure that held it. This was a complicated structure, as it had to power the rear vertical window and the raising and lowering action that hid the top completely under an expansive rear deck. The Lincoln Continental was a unibody construction, not built on a frame as other cars were at the time; it was all in one piece. It had its own integral design, drawing incredible strength from its shape. All in all, it was an astounding vehicle in every respect—magnificent power, unique styling, groundbreaking mechanical design in the convertible top mechanism, and a luxuriously spacious interior.

  • • •

  AN UNTOLD STORY lurked in what I saw. I looked and looked at the car until I came to an inevitable question. It had an okay paint job, and there was some denting and small damage here and there, nothing big, but every panel was marred by a continuous streak of corrosion in the paint, something I had never seen before. This damage had been done purposefully. Who could have done that and why? The owner, a guy about fifty years old, could see that I had noticed this flaw and was waiting for my question.

  He looked at me w
ith deep gray-blue eyes that hid some sad memories. “My girlfriend did it,” he said quietly. He revealed that she had taken a container of highly corrosive brake fluid and poured it slowly and carefully over every surface, irreparably damaging the paint wherever it landed. The damage went right down to the metal. Something must have really made her angry. Surely she knew how much he loved his car.

  In an effort to make it look better, he had touched it up with a similar, although not perfectly matched, ivory paint, trying in vain to remove the malicious and hateful attack. It almost worked, and you could barely see the damage from more than twenty feet or so away from the car. He had softened the blow. From a distance, only the car’s beautiful lines stood out.

  “Good from far, but far from good,” as the saying goes.

  The combination of inflicted damage and the cracked hand-painted canvas roof gave the car a personality and a soul all its own. It was a true survivor. I took the keys, put them in the ignition, and started the engine. The Continental’s monster V8, 463 cubic inches of very powerful iron, roared to life and rumbled toughly as if it anticipated a long trip, perhaps an escape.

  I purchased the car right there and drove it to its new home. It was perhaps the most remarkable car I had seen, and it would play a huge part in my life. I had absolutely no idea what I was in for with that car or what a catalyst for change it would be.

  • • •

  RAW POWER. Cheap fuel at thirty cents a gallon. No cares about pollution in the fifties. Designs in the year 1959 were the most outrageous examples of the great American transportation dream and remain so to this day. There may be another carefree time like that in the future for America, but it will take some work.

  General Motors introduced the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, outrageous with its giant fins and taillights, chrome and stainless-steel trim, a pounding V8 with triple carburetion, leather interior, and every option imagined and some unimagined. That car was a reflection of the times, a statement.

  Ford Motors answered in kind with its own flagship model, the 1959 Lincoln Continental convertible. I was now the proud owner of both of these pieces, part of American history that will surely dwell in museums forever. Freedom of expression and a feeling of world leadership in culture, whether perceived or real, shaped those days in American automotive history.

  But nothing is perfect. The Cadillac Air Ride didn’t work well. The Autronic Eye, a device that automatically dimmed the bright headlights when an oncoming car was approaching, was buggy. The Continental’s convertible top didn’t work all the time, and sometimes the mechanism destroyed itself, at great expense to the owner. The Lincoln’s brakes, too, were problematic, very problematic. Living deep in the country, on the ocean side of the Santa Cruz mountain range, I had a long decline to make into my ranch on a narrow, paved road. It was steep and got steeper as it got closer to the house, so brakes were important. The brakes in my Continental had to be rebuilt several times. Weighing more than three tons, this giant convertible was a test for any brake system, and I tested it.

  Once, I was out on a date with Pegi, and on the way home huge plumes of black smoke started billowing from under the car. An absolutely stunning blackness came from the undercarriage. I thought it was burning up. We had to abandon it at a gas station and call for help. It was the most smoke I had ever seen coming from a car! Pollution was becoming a big deal in California and this development was definitely not politically correct. Later, we discovered the cause was brake fluid leaking onto the exhaust line and burning under the car. The service station that had done the most recent brake job had not been very careful and had left something loose. It was a long time before I drove the car again. When I did drive it, it had brand-new brakes, which I knew from my previous experience would not last long.

  • • •

  A LOT OF TIME PASSED and Briggs and I, although we didn’t know it at the time, made our last album together, Sleeps with Angels, in 1993 and ’94. Jim Jarmusch, a friend and great filmmaker, made a movie called Dead Man in 1995 and asked me to do the soundtrack. Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer played the two main characters in this epic film about an Indian named Nobody, who was played by Farmer, and a cosmic-searching character played by Depp.

  When I saw the film, it only had dialogue, and I told Jim it was a masterpiece. It was. It was a strange classic, in a world alone. It already looked like a silent-movie classic to me, the kind where someone would play live music in a theater on an organ or piano while the movie was projected, although it did have dialogue so it was not precisely a silent movie. Jim really wanted me to do the music and convinced me that it was needed.

  I drove the Continental to the sessions. For my approach to the Dead Man project, I decided to duplicate the feeling of a musician playing music live to accompany a film in a movie theater. I rented an old stage in San Francisco from Mike Mason, a friend who I had met while filming Human Highway in 1980, and set up with about twenty different TV monitors in a circle around me in the middle of the room. The monitors ranged from seventy inches to seven inches in size. I set up my guitar, Old Black, my amplifier rig, and my old piano dead in the center of the room surrounded by all of the TVs. Everywhere I looked, I saw the movie. It was inescapable. When I felt like playing to it, I picked up an instrument and played live. I played Old Black, my electric guitar, solo for most of the movie, making sound effects and developing a theme called “The Wyoming Burnout” that I had written years before for a cinematic idea of my own. I developed another theme I used for one of the supporting characters. I played it all live. We recorded three passes through the whole movie without stopping. I chose to use the first half of the second pass and the second half of the first one.

  That project was a huge success for me personally. Some people think it is Jim’s best film, still others found it to not be. To me it is a triumph, and I am thankful just to have been included. When that was done, I got in the old Lincoln and drove home. It was a good ride, flush with a feeling of accomplishment.

  Later, the time came for the movie to be released and Jim wanted a soundtrack album. Working with my friend John Hanlon, we created a Dead Man soundtrack, which featured the sound of the Lincoln as a vehicle moving from scene to scene, with Johnny Depp reading the poetry of William Blake, the great poet who was referenced in the story. Although there were no cars in the movie, just horses and trains, the soundtrack featured the Continental cruising through the empty back roads on a summer night with the sound of crickets at roadside as the rumbling passed by.

  To get the sound, we lowered the Continental’s convertible top and filled the car with microphones and recording equipment. That summer, the crickets were extremely loud, and several passages include the crickets under dialogue or Depp’s recitals of Blake’s poetry. With the music, dialogue, rumbling car sounds, and Johnny Depp’s great readings, we weaved the web of a story for the album. The throaty sound of the Lincoln’s V8 is as prominent in the film as the twentieth-century horse.

  The Continental also played a part in the film Greendale, where all of the members in the Green family had big gas-guzzling cars. One of the characters was Jed Green. Jed’s car was the Lincoln Continental convertible. One wild and rainy night, the Lincoln’s windshield wipers flew off on Highway 1 at about sixty miles per hour, but that was not in the movie. We were moving the car to a new location. It was just scary as hell.

  The Continental was a star, photogenic and totally unique. Jed, played by Eric Johnson, was a drug dealer who had gotten stopped by the police while driving the Continental on Highway 1. The car’s big scene in Greendale involved Jed shooting a local cop. One of the Continental’s other big scenes was Jed’s arrival at the Green family’s Double E Rancho. That car looked phenomenal on film, and it was a movie star, at least in my mind.

  After Greendale, back in the car barn where I was storing my growing collection, the old Lincoln rested once more. Memories of albums I had made floode
d through me as I looked at the cars I had rewarded myself with when I finished a particular album, movie, or session.

  I bought my cars for their soul. They all had stories. I would sit in them and feel the stories and then write songs from those feelings. Cars carry their memories with them. To me, my cars are alive. All cars are.

  1948 Buick Roadmaster Flxible Hearse “Shit Happens”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  aylor Phelps, who you have already met, died of AIDS when he was too young.

  When Taylor passed away in 1995, he left me two cars: Hernando, the 1950 DeSoto Suburban that I wrote “Like a Hurricane” in, and an unnamed 1948 Buick Roadmaster hearse, exactly like Mort. Taylor had owned this hearse for about a decade and now I have it in my warehouse. It is kind of quiet, all by itself in a corner. The warehouse is the home of many things that I can’t let go of yet.

  I drove the hearse to Taylor’s funeral after carrying his body over his ranch’s old roads in a 1950s jeep truck he loved, one last time. We, some close friends of mine and Taylor’s, had just taken him in his coffin up to the top of the hill that overlooked his country home, beautiful Tunitas Creek Ranch. We sat up there, smoking a joint with him. It was something that he liked to do and a place where he had loved to go. His partner, Gary, was with us. Then we slipped the coffin over the rollers into the hearse and headed for Half Moon Bay, a little town on the coast that we had often visited together, making one last trip down the Pacific Coast Highway.