by Neil Young
A day or so later, I watched Lincvolt burn on a closed-circuit Internet camera that recorded the car 24/7. It was devastating. Three and a half years of work gone because one of the team had left it plugged in and forgot to go back and unplug it. It was not ready to be left plugged in to charge alone yet. It was still in development. That part of the system was untested. Operator error. I started to rebuild the car immediately (having a new regard for insurance that I had not had previously). The filming of the rebuild continues. This time it went forward with new people on the team. They are the best that the world has to offer.
With regard to the three fires, draw your own conclusions. Here are mine: I am betting three is the charm and we’re done, what goes around comes around. I am gratified that the Great Spirit has chosen to make material examples. I am always in awe of Her power.
Chapter Ten
I suffered a temporary delusion. I thought I was the chosen one. Somehow I thought I could accomplish what no one else had been able to do. I wrote that phrase, chosen one, somewhere, and Pegi told me that was a wrong way to think about myself. She sure was right. It was ego-based. I was thinking it was all about me. Wrong. I thought I was the one who could solve the world’s energy problems, just by persevering and following my dream.
I have sometimes become so infatuated by a goal that I can visualize myself doing unbelievable things. I learned about men who had powered cars on water, and met some very interesting garage mechanics and backroom scientists who shared both the dream and a lack of knowledge of physics. I thought these folks were brilliant, and backed them all the way. That was not to be. Maybe they are brilliant, but they weren’t in their work with me.
I have made a lot of mistakes, and that was a big one—something is not so just because you believe in it and wish it to be so. What if it had worked? The planet would have been safer without the oil wars, cleaner without the pollution, but that was not to be. At least not yet. But I have faith in the human spirit and innovation, creativity and determination. Someone or some group will eventually figure it out.
The Lincvolt project has been my longest-running to date, and it is still a work in progress. In the beginning, Larry Johnson and I set out to make a movie about a couple of regular guys, with no experience, trying to repower the American Dream. We just kept moving, changing teams, and continuing. Then, with the sudden passing in 2010 of Larry, my co-conspirator, partner, and friend, coupled with the spectacular fire that almost completely destroyed the car, it seemed like all was lost.
Thankfully, Lincvolt was not destroyed. We rebuilt it. We added rear quarter panels and the deck from Miss Pegi, a 1958 Lincoln Continental that Pegi gave to me for my birthday to use for parts. Can you see why I love her so? That is part of life. Now it’s part of the movie Larry’s son Ben and I are finishing together. But Larry is bigger than that. His spirit will live forever in the films he has made and the people he has touched, in his children who now work alongside me with the same endless energy, optimism, can-do attitude, and brilliant minds. Our Lincvolt film will be finished, and our car will travel this country with Larry’s spirit in it alongside me. That was the dream, and it will be the life.
Lincvolt will be clean, powerful, and sexy. This has to happen. It is going to. After four years looking at alternative fuels, I have learned a lot. Lincvolt’s generation system will be powered by biomass when the car hits the road again. That is where the car’s electric energy will originate. Look at all the waste we have in this country. We are number one. Biomass is everywhere. According to U.S. Department of Energy studies conducted by Argonne National Laboratory of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by eighty-five percent over reformulated gasoline. We need to change the way we get around. That is obvious. Checked the weather lately?
I am going down to São Paulo, Brazil, to speak at the SWU Festival. It is an environmental festival. SWU stands for “Starts with You.” I hope I do a good job. Yes, it is scarier to do this than to play in front of thousands of people. I am cashing in some of my fame now to try to make a difference with it. What else is it good for? I have never really considered myself to be an activist. I just want to have a voice. You can call me whatever you want. Rock star? I have never really spoken in public before except once. It was at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) show in Las Vegas, when we showed Lincvolt one week before the fire nearly destroyed it.
So as I said, I am going down there to São Paulo to speak and motivate young people to think about what they can do in their day-to-day lives to make a difference in the health of the planet. I guess that is one thing I can do now that is useful. I hope so. I want to do a good job, and I hope my part of the program is solid and constructive. It’s a new ball game for me. I need to prepare. I can’t just go down there and run off my mouth for half an hour. I can’t just talk about the car. I need to go deeper. Into the conscience, the inner spaces where people can be empowered to do what they only have dreamed of doing before. Young people are prime candidates. They are wide open. Note to self: Prepare.
Chapter Eleven
Last night I saw a movie about Conan O’Brien on cable. It was a documentary about his tour of America during the time between when he ended his network show and the start of his TBS show. This was a road movie, and it made me uncomfortable. I saw Conan, a friend of mine (I played on his last NBC show), on the road falling into every pothole it had. His people were doing their best, but they did not know what they were doing. The shows were not the problem. He was just not handled correctly. Nobody knew how to preserve and protect him on the road. The road is not easy under the best of circumstances.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong on the road. If you get sick, you still play, but people think you are losing your edge. If you have half a house, people don’t feel that they are part of something. If you don’t have a great crew, your shit doesn’t sound right. If you don’t have the best equipment, your show may not sound as great as the last one or the next one. If you have a reputation, it is on the line. If you forget what you are doing, it shows up on YouTube. If you remember what you are doing, it shows up on YouTube. If you do something new that isn’t ready, or something old that you screw up, it is on YouTube. If snot comes out of your nose while you are playing the harmonica and slithers down the harmonica rack onto your T-shirt, it is on YouTube. If you say something stupid . . .
It is a lonely job out there performing. I have to do it because I always have. I probably always will. I love the music part. I like it when the sound is right and the audience is into it and the music is relevant. If one of those elements is missing, you are screwed. You are killing yourself slowly. You need all three elements. At this age, I think relevancy is the big challenge. With Crazy Horse, I need to perform new songs on the next tour for me to feel anything other than ancient history up close. So that is why we will record at the White House before we book anything. We need to be sure the new songs and music are ready and are meaningful to us. They are our ticket, our vehicle to the future, and without the new songs we are just reliving the past.
We need a real reason to believe in what we are doing. I hope it’s there. It always has been, and we are all still breathing. There is a lot of love, a lot of baggage, and a lot to give. I think we will make it and it will be great. I will be so thankful if we have another shot at being great. There is nothing to prove, other than the fact that we still care enough to not just run through our hits and misses. We just want to give ourselves the opportunity to show our audience who we are. It is a very special thing we have, the way we play off of one another, the real deal. But it all comes from the songs, the images in our minds and hearts, the lyrics and the way they resonate. That is the fuel for the band. That is what will make the music relevant.
Poncho is my neighbor in Hawaii. When I get there, we will talk it over and I’ll see if he is in. Ralphie is in already. If Poncho is in, I will talk to
Billy next. Ralphie, Poncho, and Billy. Drums, guitar, and bass. I am looking forward to the whole trip. Recording, writing, playing, doing it straight. That will be new and different.
Chapter Twelve
And Now, a Word from PureTone . . .
It would be a historical moment for recorded sound if all of the recording companies would bring their labels together and agree on a concept for the good of music. Create the new gold standard. In trying to present PureTone to the leaders of all of the music groups—WMG, Universal, EMI, and Sony—I need to present an image. Here is an illustration I made to show what it is like to listen to different types of digital sound—if you are Jacques Cousteau!
I believe this accurately represents the experience! It is important to understand that we cannot descend much further in quality or we will hit rock bottom. Cloud music streaming will get very close to stirring up whatever sediment may be down there. Right now, we all live in a yellow submarine.
Music is now like a game. Turntable.fm, Spotify, and all the rest are the new radio. If someone likes a song or album they hear on the new radio, they would have a new option to purchase this music for listening. In my dream, the listening option would be PureTone—the new gold standard.
PureTone resolutions are 192 kHz and 384 kHz. Although 192 is here today, 384 is on the horizon, and both could be presented by PureTone in the future. PureTone is the best it can be in the digital realm, signed by the artist and certified to be studio master–quality recording.
Of all of the projects I have undertaken, this one most closely affects my music. Technology is supposed to make life better for everyone. That is its aim. This goes a long way toward doing that. There is a feature in the PureTone user interface called the Revealer. It enables you the listener to take a PureTone recording and instantly degrade it to CD or MP3 quality so you can show your friends why you listen to PureTone. This is a way to share the knowledge without the need for long philosophical and abstract discussions over what can be heard and felt and what the human ear cannot comprehend. There is no need for that discussion with the Revealer. It is true that I like this sound of music better than Apple’s iTunes, but I think iTunes and the other MP3 dealers and the new streaming services that provide musical discovery play an important part in getting music out to listeners. The listeners can decide whether they would like the PureTone version of any particular recording. PureTone players play MP3s from iTunes, too, but they will sound better than the other players because of the digital-to-analog conversion at the heart of PureTone technology. It has to be better to play back the high resolution of PureTone masters, and so that helps MP3s sound a lot better, too. PureTone players will be portable, everywhere players, usable at home, in the car, or in your pocket with earphones. Additionally, PureTone home players could be bigger and better, with more memory and audiophile features galore for the extreme listener, but basic PureTone is for the masses, for music lovers. “Quality whether you want it or not,” as Larry Johnson used to say.
With the Stray Gators in the barn at Broken Arrow Ranch, 1971. Left to right, Tim Drummond, Jack Nitzsche, me, Kenny Buttrey, Ben Keith.
Chapter Thirteen
In 1970, when I was twenty-four years old, I visited Northern California, and CSNY’s road manager Leo Makota told me about a piece of property that was available. I wanted to see it right away. I was ready for a change from Los Angeles where I was living and had seen this beautiful area of land from the airplane on my trips to the Bay Area. Looking out the window, I saw rolling hills above the ocean with the grass a wheat color, looking like velvet on the hillsides. In the canyons, redwoods had stood for centuries.
There used to be an airline called PSA that had stewardesses who dressed in short, short skirts and white go-go boots. That was a great airline. You could fly between LA and San Francisco for $9.95. Flights left every half hour. I flew up one day from LA, got directions from Leo, and went down to see the property in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I knew I liked the place even before I got to it. It was on a long road through the forest, actually at the end of the forest, where it opened up into pastureland and a breathtaking view of the Pacific coast. I knew I couldn’t get on the property, because there was no realtor involved yet. I loved the place, though I only got as far as the outside gate.
Later I found out that wasn’t even the right place! The place Leo had pitched me was even farther down the road! The realtor and I made arrangements, and I went down there and saw the whole thing. A ranch foreman named Louis Avila was living on the property. He lived there with his wife, Clara. Louis gave me a ride around the ranch, all 140 acres’ worth, in an old blue army jeep I still have today. The property had two lakes, two houses, and a beautiful old barn. It was owned by a couple of lawyers, Long and Lewis, and was called the Lazy Double L.
“How does a young fella like yourself have the money to buy a place like this?” Louis asked.
“Just lucky, I guess,” I replied.
Later, while I was living there in my first months, I wrote the song “Old Man” about Louis. My dad thought it was written for him, and I never told him it wasn’t, because songs are for whoever receives them. It was a beautiful place to live. I was absolutely in love with it. I decided to call it Broken Arrow Ranch.
Driving up north to the ranch from Southern California to move in to the house was a great trip. I had a ’51 Willys Jeepster that I had purchased in Santa Ana, California. It had a top speed of only fifty-five miles per hour. Loaded with all of my worldly possessions, mostly gold records and musical instruments, I took off north from LA. I had been living in the Chateau Marmont hotel for a while because I had broken up with my first wife, Susan, and it felt good to get on the road to start again in a new place. Johnny Barbata, CSNY drummer (and former member of the Turtles), wanted to live up north, too, and was going to look for a place, so he was riding with me. As we left LA, there was a fire burning on both sides of Highway 101. Through the smoke and flames we went heading to the future!
Behind me was Bruce’s white 1958 Caddy limo. It took about eleven hours to reach the ranch. Late that night, on September 23, 1970, we reached the ranch. It smelled unreal, all the plants and the redwood forest; there was just something about that smell I loved. Home. It was the smell of home. I had finally made it.
As soon as I got there with my friends Johnny, Bruce, and Guillermo, who were going to live in the area too, we started tearing the house apart. It was just a little ranch house built on a lake in the fifties out of plywood siding, and it had some pretty cheesy interior features as well. We took down the cheap plasterboard paneling with phony wood grain that was on the old cabin walls. After a few days, we replaced it with beautiful redwood planks I picked out myself at the lumberyard. I went through stacks and stacks of twelve-inch-wide planks of rough-sawn A-grade redwood, choosing the ones with the most beautiful sap and grain. Maybe I took one out of every twelve. I loaded them carefully into the back of my ’51 Willys pickup truck. When we got the redwood to the ranch and inside the house, we cut the planks carefully to length, choosing the exact grain detail we wanted to see on the wall, and then put them up. I chose every piece and placed each one carefully, taking my time to examine the grain, then deciding where to put it. These planks had a lot of sap in them and a unique grain. They were not the best grade for structure, but they were my favorite and I was using them only for a wall covering. Pegi and I still enjoy them in the living room today.
Since we also tore out the low ceiling and exposed the fir roofing and beams, I thought it would be a good idea to stain them with some teak espresso stain. I had learned about this stain because it was used in my first house in Topanga Canyon. That house also had redwood A-grade inside. Anyway, after a little application of the teak espresso stain, I decided it wasn’t working. It was way too dark. I stopped right there. It is still there in one small corner of the living room. It makes me feel good to look at it because it reminds me of how innocent I was. I feel good just thinking abou
t it. That was a really good time for me. I love new beginnings.
The house stayed basically like that for about eight years, until 1978, when Pegi and I were married. We expanded and built on a whole new wing that was designed to house the whole future family. It was four times the size of the original house, but even with all that room, who could have foreseen the arrival of Ben Young, our spastic, quadriplegic, nonverbal spiritual leader, with all of his special support equipment and his team of caregivers? So onward we went, designing a space for Ben and his crew . . .
If there is one thing I love almost as much as making music, it is building things. Houses, boats, cars, buildings of all kinds, control systems, sound playback systems, and model railroads have all been built and rebuilt either by me or people I have commissioned during my time on the planet. Why do the processes of people, artists, designers, and engineers involved in building or developing things fascinate me? I suppose it’s because I am not sure if an idea will work when a project begins. This creativity is fascinating. I love to watch and try to guide what is happening, expanding the goals and reach of a project as it unfolds. Some people think that is the wrong way to do things, but I think it is the true way to discover. Each tangent offers new possibilities for exploration and discovery. A job is never truly finished. It just reaches a stage where it can be left on its own for a while.
—
Next to the ranch there was a place called Star Hill Academy. It was my neighbor Jimmy Wickett’s place, and it was sort of a commune. (California communes, places where hippies lived together on the land, were popular in those times.) I heard about it, and one day I went over to see it. That’s where I met Mazzeo. He was calling himself Sandy Castle at the time. A lot of people were living there in makeshift dwellings. One of the most interesting was Ken Whiting’s tree house. Mazzeo took me over there. It was accessed by going out on a funky gondola type of thing, which was hanging from a steel cable between the tree and a building left behind by the loggers who had used Star Hill as their headquarters while they were harvesting the native redwood growth from the forest. Ken’s tree was way down in a canyon, and the building was up on the rim of that canyon. So the cable extended straight out to Ken’s house, about a hundred feet up in the big redwood tree. It was a straight shot. The canyon was full of big redwood trees, and Ken’s house was in one of the biggest.
