by Neil Young
One fine summer day Briggs and I were out by Mulholland Drive, cruising in the hills, smoking a joint. It was a nice sunny day and we were grooving with the top down. California really is beautiful if you’ve never been there. It’s worth a visit for sure. Anyway, we were driving along, Briggs, Danny Tucker (another good Topanga friend), and I, when a cop went by going the other way. He turned around and started following us. Briggs reached into his pocket and slipped me his license.
The cop pulled us over and asked me for my driver’s license, looked at it, looked at me, and said, “I’m going to have to cite you for no brake lights. Get that fixed.”
“Thanks, Officer,” I said as coolly as I could.
I was scared shitless. Something happened later where I fucked up and Briggs was left holding the bag. I am not sure exactly what it was or how it was resolved, but I do remember Briggs saying that I had to get those lights fixed so the cops wouldn’t be coming after him . . . Anyway, that was just another Briggs story, and there are a million of ’em. Point is, Briggs and I were brothers. He saw that cop coming and just slipped me his wallet without saying a thing. He was my best friend. Nobody can take that away from me. I always try to pay him back in any way I can. When he died years later, I did exactly what he asked me to do after he was gone, just like he asked me to do, some personal things that I know he would not want me to share with you. They had to do with how he felt about some people and how they should be dealt with.
The Black Queen leaving the Sunset Marquis Hotel parking garage en route to the Roxy nightclub to debut Tonight’s the Night live in West Hollywood, 1973.
As I said, I didn’t have a California driver’s license for a long time. I couldn’t get one. I was illegal. I needed a green card. I couldn’t even leave the country without a green card, because I would have to sneak back in if I did. Remember? The “United States has better roads” story?
Thank God capitalism saved me, and I was able to buy a green card. A real one! Through my lawyer! It took a long time to find the right lawyer in New York with the correct connections in the INS, but by the end of the sixties, I had a real green card! America is great, and capitalism rocks! Most folks don’t know how hard it is to get one of those cards. An American could do the job I am doing. There are plenty of other guitar players. I don’t really know how the lawyer did it, but it cost $5,000. I don’t know if that was his fee or whether he did it for nothing and the money was paid to someone else. But it was capitalism at work, I can tell you that. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be free in the USA without worrying about being deported at that time!
I felt so free when I got my first driver’s license in California that I was floating on air! Not looking around for cops all the time, not hoping I didn’t get stopped and busted, deported. I was one paranoid person before I got my license. That was two or three years of looking over my shoulder. FREEDOM ROCKS! Hey. Is that a song or what? I might be having a breakthrough moment . . .
Chapter Twenty-Two
A Note About Ronald Reagan
Let’s have a word or two about Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America. I don’t know what you think of him, and it doesn’t matter that much, really. What matters to me, though, is when people get an attitude about somebody and paint that person all one color.
I was sitting on my bus in New Orleans, backstage at a concert in the mid-eighties, recording what turned out to be A Treasure. We were playing music that I was getting sued for because it was deemed “uncharacteristic of Neil Young” by my new record company. My new record company was run by people who liked to get their way. Success was measured in sales. My first record for them, Trans, was a bit of a departure from what they expected. First off, the owner of the record company, David Geffen, listened to the record Island in the Sun, which I thought was done, and told me to do more. I wanted to get started on a good foot, so I added another dimension, vocoded (electronically synthesized) voices, that made it into Trans.
Logically to me that would have been my second record for them, but they didn’t want the first record I gave them, which was a fucking great record. I knew it was a great record, but then I wouldn’t have wanted to release it if I didn’t like it. I was used to Mo Ostin, who understood art. My new record company wanted me to make a hit as big as Harvest and thought that I had ripped them off by not repeating myself and making them look like a great record company. I have never thought it was my job to make a record company look great. I thought it was the other way around. The record company has to recognize when something is a statement by the artist or whether it is commercial enough to be a hit and do a good job of presenting either option to maximize the release.
Not every record made by me is designed to be a hit. Some are expressions in an artist’s life. They tried telling me what to do so they could have their hit. They told me they wanted rock and roll, so I gave them Everybody’s Rockin’ by Neil and the Shocking Pinks! Then they tried canceling my sessions and interrupting my creative flow to show me they meant business. Then, in their apparent frustration, not being able to have their own way, they decided I was purposefully making records that made them look like losers. Then they sued me for making records that were “uncharacteristic of Neil Young.”
This, of course, made me look like a hero.
Anyway, in that climate, a pair of AP reporters came to my bus to interview me. I did quite a few interviews during that tour. Elliot had set up another one. These guys were supposed to be good. They came on the bus and started right off making derogatory remarks about Reagan. They were presumptuous; I could see they thought they had me all figured out. I was that hippie who wrote “Ohio” and “Southern Man” and sang with that group CSNY. The more they said to ingratiate themselves, the more I didn’t like them. I asked them if they’d ever met Reagan. They hadn’t. Neither had I, I reasoned. I told them I did not believe in painting someone with one brush, that there must be more to a person than that, and I liked Reagan for some things he had said. Reagan had talked about the need for communities to come together to help themselves in ways that I thought were reasonable, and I told them that I did not believe that he was the villain so many had painted him to be. Just because you don’t believe in some things a man says does not make him a bad man. There is good to be found in most people.
I also said that the guy is the president, so someone must think he is all right. Not everyone is against him.
I could tell they weren’t buying it. Reagan was an asshole as far as they were concerned. So they wrote a story that made it sound like I was some all-out Reagan supporter, and I heard about it everywhere I went. One of my peers, who I respect, was calling me a buffoon, saying I didn’t know what I was talking about and raving away about Guatemala.
Since the moment I met those two AP jerks, I have been trying to straighten out what they said. What they said I said. So in the end, I hate interviews, although I still do them every once in a while. I want people to know what I am up to if it supports my music in some way and brings awareness that a new recording exists. Sometimes that is the only way to get it out there. That certainly was the case in the eighties, although I don’t think it is now. Things are better now, because we have tools to get information out there, and if you’re smart enough, you don’t have to talk to two dickheads on a bus anymore. And that’s all I have to say about Ronald Reagan.
Original Crazy Horse guitarist/vocalist Danny Whitten backstage at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, where I performed with Crazy Horse, February 1970.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Danny and the Memories was the band at the root of Crazy Horse. They were a vocal group with Danny Whitten, Ralphie, Billy, and a guy named Ben Rocco. When I recently saw their old video of “Land of a Thousand Dances” on YouTube, I realized that is truly the shit. You know, I looked at it maybe twenty times in a row. Even though Danny was amazing and he held the Horse together in the early days, I did not know how great Danny was until I saw t
his! The moves! What an amazing dancer he was. His presence on that performance is elevating! He is gone, and no one can change that. We will never see and hear where he was going. I am telling you, the world missed one of the greatest when Danny and the Memories did not have a NUMBER ONE smash record back in the day. They were so musical, with great harmonies, and Danny was a total knockout! I am so moved by this that it could make me cry at any time. This is one of those many times when words can’t describe music.
Danny and the Memories eventually transformed into the Rockets; they were playing in this old house in Laurel Canyon, and I somehow connected with them while Buffalo Springfield was at the Whisky. We had a lot of pot jams in that house. Later on I saw Danny and the guys at somebody’s house in Topanga. After that I asked if Danny, Billy, and Ralphie would play on a record with me. We did one day, practicing in my Topanga house, and it sounded great. I named the band Crazy Horse and away we went. The Rockets were still together, but this was a different deal.
At that time, I thought Danny was a great guitarist and singer. I had no idea how great, though. I just was too full of myself to see it. Now I see it clearly. I wish I could do that again, because more of Danny would be there.
I have made an Early Daze record of the Horse, and you can hear a different vocal of “Cinnamon Girl” featuring more of Danny. He was singing the high part, and it came through big-time. I changed it so I sang the high part and put that out. That was a big mistake. I fucked up. I did not know who Danny was. He was better than me. I didn’t see it. I was strong, and maybe I helped destroy something sacred by not seeing it. He was never pissed off about it. It wasn’t like that. I was young, and maybe I didn’t know what I was doing. Some things you wish never happened. But we got what we got.
I never really saw him sing and move until I saw that “Land of a Thousand Dances” video. I could watch it over and over. I can’t believe it. It’s just one of those things. My heart aches for what happened to him. These memories are what make Crazy Horse great today. And now we don’t have Briggs, either, for the next record, but we have the spirit and the heart to go on. And we have John Hanlon, taught by Briggs, to engineer this sucker. It will rock and cry. Please let’s get to this before life comes knocking again.
So we are getting into this now. There may have to be more than one book. I read up on this sort of thing, and the worst thing you can have is a book that is too long. That doesn’t help the publisher. There is a lot here to cover, and I have never done this before. Also, I am not interested in form for form’s sake. So if you are having trouble reading this, give it to someone else. End of chapter.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pains
Along the way, I have encountered many doctors. One of my favorites is Dr. Petter Lindstrom, who was well-known for performing laminectomies. He came to me highly recommended and coincidentally was a former husband of Ingrid Bergman.
I had a double laminectomy by him in 1971.
But let me back up.
I had just signed with Reprise as a solo artist and got a big enough advance to buy my first house in Topanga Canyon. 611 Skyline Trail was all mine, a really wonderful redwood house built with a view of the whole canyon.
I used to go to the Canyon Kitchen every morning for breakfast. Susan Acevedo, the beautiful Sicilian hostess/owner, would bring me a one-eye and bacon. I got to look at Susan Acevedo every day at breakfast! Morning on the deck began with coffee overlooking the canyon, watching everything start to move below as the day unfolded. The scene in there was always stimulating, full of the color of the canyon, with the artists and other local characters, drug dealers and beautiful hippie girls, and I really enjoyed my breakfasts.
Eventually I met Tia, Susan’s daughter. She was a cute little girl about five or six years old with a pretty little round face. Although Susan was a little older than I was, I found myself becoming more and more attracted to her. Eventually we fell in love. Susan introduced me to a lot of great artists in the canyon: Wallace Berman, Roland Diehl (who painted my first album cover), George Herms, Dean Stockwell, Russell Tamblyn, Kiel Martin, to name just a few. Susan was active in the Topanga Players, a local theater group, and I remember going to see George Herms’s play Egg of Night and many other theater presentations there with her. She made all of my patchwork clothes, creating a style that spoke to the times, really the only time I was anywhere near fashionable. That was all Susan’s doing, and it was so beautiful.
Susan and I were married in my new Topanga house, perched on the top of Skyline Trail, overlooking the canyon, and George Herms performed the ceremony. Our house was on a steep hill with the garage at the lowest point on a steep drive. One time Susan loaded my Mini Cooper with pies in the garage, preparing for a catering job she was doing with her company, Scuzzy Catering. Somehow after the pies were fully loaded, the emergency brake came loose and the Mini and its pies rolled down the hill and straight into the neighbor’s garage, knocking out the support posts for his house. Pies were splattered all over the inside of the Mini. The neighbor, a gay man, was yelling at Susan, and she was going right back at him. It was quite a moment, full of expletives. Susan was quite a spirited lady, and I don’t think the poor guy knew what he was in for!
Sadly, I was not mature enough to be a very good father to Tia, and I regret that I missed the boat there, but she sure was a sweet girl. Eventually Susan and I broke up. I don’t think I was mature enough for her, either. The instant fame that came with After the Gold Rush and CSNY were too much for us. I have a lot of respect for Susan. She never asked for anything from me that was unreasonable, and she gave all she had to our short marriage. I was too young, and the pressures were too great for who I was at that time. The marriage lasted about a year. Sometimes I hear little tidbits about her, and I am always hoping she is doing well with her life. She was seen in Mexico recently and looking very good, was my last report. Love you, Susan. Thanks. You, too, Tia. Maybe we will meet again someday.
One day in early ’70, still living in Topanga with Susan, I was working with a hoe in the brush on the hillside outside the house. I don’t know what I was doing. I had thrown a portable TV off the deck and I could see it down there. I may have been preparing for a garden. Anyway, the next day I was in my car and I went to put my left foot on the clutch and my foot wouldn’t come up. It just wouldn’t move. So I went to a chiropractor Susan knew, and he did an adjustment on my back. After that my movement came back pretty much like it was before, but there was a little pain in my leg. That was the end of that.
In September of that year, Susan and I had split up and I was living on Broken Arrow Ranch, tearing my new house apart. At Crosby’s advice, I went to Berkeley to a hardwood dealer and saw some amazing huge slabs of California walnut. There were six big ones. I mean nine-footers, three feet wide and two to three inches thick. I bought them all and wanted to do the walls of my dining room with them. I was so excited that I tried to put them up myself. Doing that, I injured my back again. But the symptoms were worse: My leg didn’t work, and it hurt all up and down the front. So I went to LA to see the doctor there that Elliot had, a Dr. Lipshutz. Walking through the airport to catch a plane to fly to LA was very painful, and I was sweating profusely when the sexy go-go stewardess brought me a Coke on PSA.
Things get blurry now in the memory department. I was told by the doctor to take Soma Compound (a muscle relaxant) and rest in bed so that the swelling would go down. There was no mention of surgery at that time, and I was thinking that if I just mellowed out while taking this Soma and stayed in the hospital bed they had moved into my room at the Chateau Marmont that everything would work itself out.
So there I was in the hospital bed at the Chateau, and it was there and then I first met Carrie Snodgress. After reading a story about her in Newsweek or Time, I had found her number and called her up, introducing myself and inviting her down to the Chateau. She was very attractive to me. What a way to meet. I was taking so much of the Soma Compound that
I could hardly move. I liked her right away.
A few days after that, I returned to the ranch on doctor’s orders to rest in a hospital bed that had been moved into my house there. Lying in bed, taking Soma at Broken Arrow, I found out that Michelob and Soma Compound are a great combination—and eventually I landed in traction at Cedars-Sinai on Melrose Avenue back in LA. The doctors were hoping that traction would solve the problem and there would be no need for surgery.
Anyway, Cedars back then was an old hospital. I was in traction, with wires and weights pulling on my feet to relieve the pressure on discs in my back. (While I was there, I listened a lot to a cassette tape I had from the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C. It was a live tape I had recently recorded with Henry Lewy. It was real good, and I made some notes for an album, and I will eventually release a very cool record of those times. (Now, these years later, I am still finishing some things and looking for closure.) A lot of folks visited me in the hospital. I had friends from Hollywood, and some of them were beautiful ladies. I had a pretty good stay in that hospital!
When I finally got out and went home, I was wearing a back brace. It was still painful, but not too bad. Back at the ranch, I tried to walk up the hill behind my house toward the site of my new pool, but I couldn’t make it. That really depressed me. Two weeks later, I went on the road across Canada with the brace. That was in early January.
I was corresponding with Carrie and writing songs. A lot of songs, like “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold,” “Needle and the Damage Done,” and “Bad Fog of Loneliness.” During that tour, I recorded at Massey Hall, and that came out as a record years later. Briggs was living in Toronto then and produced that. He had gone up there to live and had started a studio called Thunder Sound. The live Massey Hall record is David’s live mix to 7.5 ips analog. You can see the brace and my hunkered-over posture in the Massey Hall video—which is actually a Stratford, Connecticut, picture from a few days earlier with Massey Hall’s sound synched up. I used the sound from one place and the picture from another. “A cheap Hollywood trick,” as Larry Johnson used to say.
