by Neil Young
I went on to Nashville at the end of the tour to do the Johnny Cash television show, which was new and really hot at the time. Bob Dylan had just done the first one, and everyone wanted to do it. James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt were doing the second show, and so was I. Everyone loved Johnny Cash; he was the real thing. The show was all about music, and it was cool, very real.
While I was there I met Elliot Mazer, the record producer, and we went into the studio to try some studio versions of all my new songs. Tim Drummond was there, and he put together a great band, with Kenny Buttrey, John Harris, Ben Keith, and another guitarist who played some tasty things like the harmonics on “Heart of Gold.” This was a great-sounding band. James and Linda came in and added some vocals; James even played banjo on “Old Man.” That session was a solid beginning for Harvest. Then, a few weeks later, I was in London and recorded “A Man Needs a Maid” and “There’s a World” with the London Symphony Orchestra, produced and arranged by Jack Nitzsche. After hearing the playback in Glyn Johns’s truck, where the pieces were recorded outside the Barking Town Hall, Jack said, “I think it’s a bit overblown.” We knew it was over-the-top, but we had done it and we loved it.
Later, when Carrie and I were seriously getting together and she was moving to the ranch, I wrote the rest of Harvest, and we went back to Nashville for another session. We did “Out on the Weekend,” “Journey Through the Past,” and a few other ones, including “Harvest” itself. Then I asked the band to fly out to the ranch with Elliot Mazer to record a little in my barn. That was where we got “Alabama,” “Are You Ready for the Country?” and “Words.”
“Words” is the first song that reveals a little of my early doubts of being in a long-term relationship with Carrie. It was a new relationship. There were so many people around all the time, talking and talking, sitting in a circle smoking cigarettes in my living room. It had never been like that before. I am a very quiet and private person. The peace was going away. It was changing too fast. I remember actually jumping out the living room window onto the lawn to get out of there—I couldn’t wait long enough to use the door! Words—too many of them, it seemed to me. I was young and not ready for what I had gotten myself into. I became paranoid and aware of mind games others were trying to play on me. I had never even thought of that before. That was how we did Harvest, in love in the beginning and with some doubts at the end.
The album was received well, and I suppose that was my commercial peak, at least my first and biggest one, although I didn’t do the math. Some people liked it a lot and it was a big thing for them in their lives. It was for me. But my Crazy Horse fans were not knocked out. There is a line there. I suppose it matters to them, but it doesn’t matter to me. I just like to make all kinds of music and do what is coming naturally to me. Nobody told me to make Harvest. No record company told me what to do until a lot later—and that didn’t work.
But this was not the end of my back problem.
Eventually surgery was required. My left side was chronically weak from my childhood polio, and I was too active for the sort of long careful recovery that limited my movement for the rest of time without surgery.
I met with Dr. Lindstrom, who advised me that surgery was the only option and I should get ready to leave my pain behind. He came to see me in the hospital in San Francisco. He asked me how I was feeling, and I told him, “Not too good.” Then he looked at me and said that after the surgery, he would come back and get me out of bed to walk around the room without the brace and the pain.
I said, “Really?”
He said, “Yes, but first we have to do the operation, and that will be tomorrow morning at six.”
The next day I went to surgery. All I remember is lying on the gurney, the ceiling rolling by on my way to the operating room. And the next thing I knew, there he was, asking me to get up and walk around my room. I did it. He thanked me and said he would check in on me regularly for a few days and then I could go home. He was an amazing doctor. He told me to swim and exercise and do everything gently for a while. No football or hockey, he laughed. Then he made some graceful moves imitating a tennis player in slow motion. Nothing too fast, he said. Forty-two years later, I am still fine. Thank you, Dr. Lindstrom; what a gift.
Maybe the combination of Michelob and Soma was such that my thoughts were completely jumbled—and perhaps my love affair with Carrie was part of that process. I was never really happy during it, with the excessive amount of analysis and psychodrama that was spawned. And I have never been in that type of relationship before or after, so there is just something about my time with Carrie that I am unsettled about.
It is important for me to say that I initiated our relationship based on an article about her I read in Newsweek or Time and a beautiful picture the magazine ran. Falling in love from a picture in a magazine, however, is not a very calculated thing; nor are the effects of loneliness on one’s decision making. It is a great thing to write a song about, though. I am just trying to make sense of the thought process and emotional landscape that resulted, and I suppose that would be a fruitless endeavor at this point, an emotional Band-Aid.
Carrie had a lot to give, but it didn’t work with me for very long. I can take the blame for that. A lot of people were telling me that I had ruined her acting career by taking her to the seclusion of the ranch. That may be true. Because of Carrie, I have my wonderful son Zeke Young, who I love. So I would never change what happened. About eighteen months after Harvest was released, Carrie and I broke up and started sharing Zeke.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Religion
Religion is not one of my high points. I really don’t subscribe to the stories surrounding each one, because they are just stories, remembered by men. I do feel the Great Spirit in all that is around me, and I am humbled. I do pray with others if that is what they do. I don’t judge them for that. That is their way. I join them. Then I move on. The moon means a lot to me, as does the forest. All things natural speak to me with a rhythm that I feel. It is this that probably makes me a pagan.
I think pagans have taken a bad rap from Christians. I feel, although I was not present when it started, that the Christians were threatened by the pagan beliefs and lashed out at them, attacking them and striking them down as witchcraft or something bad and evil. I suppose evil is necessary to justify the existence of organized religion. It seems to be the focus of a lot of sermonizing and preaching.
There is no evil in the forest or the moon. Or if there is, I don’t see it. Somehow these things, the moon and the forest, move through space or survive on their own. I read a book called The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which retells the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the female characters, especially Morgan le Fay, who fought to save her Celtic culture from the encroaching Christianity. There is a lot in that book that I relate to personally. Being alive may just be part of God, but not all. The Great Spirit, as I like to call her, is in us all and in everything that lives or used to live, in everything that exists or used to exist. So I have no story to tell that proves anything, but I think it was Pegi who gave me that book.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Stories from Topanga
When I came to Topanga Canyon to live, I think I was still in Buffalo Springfield, but it was near the end. There was a lady, Linda Stevens, who was a friend of mine who put me up in her house. She knew both Stephen and me. It was 1968, because I remember during the time I was there at her house, my dad came down to cover the aftermath of the assassination of Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. My dad was working as a columnist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto, and the paper sent him down on special assignment.
I went into town to see him, and we hung for a few hours; then he went back to work. It was nice to see his face. That may have been the first time I saw him since I left Toronto two years before. We talked and may have shared a meal. He was just as shy as I am, so there wasn’t a lot of heavy communication. Just being
together and seeing each other was enough for both of us.
Anyway, it was pleasant living in Topanga with Linda and her daughter. My cats from Laurel Canyon were there. They were two orange kitties, and one of them was named Duck Egg and the other Orange Julius, for the beverage. There were a lot of Orange Julius stands in LA at the time. Orange Julius was a mixture of OJ and an egg, whipped to a frothy liquid with some ice. It was pretty nourishing and quite good. I don’t know what happened to that franchise. Now I have a distinct memory with a taste and smell, of no interest to anyone but me. It is a memory of that era that is unique to me because it has a taste associated with it, along with the smell of LA air at that time in history. It was sometime around then when I was busted for pot in Stills’s house in Topanga. That house, which Stephen called the Old Topanga Ranch, was an old rock structure with a barn of sorts behind it. There were a lot of people there, and it was a big party. Eric Clapton was there with Stephen, and we were all smoking pot, which was odd because Stephen has never been a big pot smoker. Linda Stevens was there, and so was Susan Haffey, one of Stephen’s girlfriends from his days hanging with Peter Tork (Thorkelson) of the Monkees.
I was in a bedroom by myself, not being very social at the time, because I probably had smoked too much weed and was paranoid. Things got pretty quiet, and Stephen suddenly came through the room I was in and went out the window! I am not sure he saw me there. The cops had come in, and everyone was arrested and taken to jail. We were all in the LA Times the next morning; it was a big deal because Clapton was a pretty famous musician already. I don’t know how we got off, but it had something to do with our managers, Greene and Stone.
I recently spoke to Stephen about this, and he remembers it differently. He says we both were sitting on the bed together because we had smoked too much weed and were too paranoid, so we were talking each other down. We heard something change in the room where the party was. It got quiet. I bolted out there to see what was wrong. He heard what he thought was a cop’s voice and reached out to stop me, but he caught air. I was gone. Stephen went out the window and went next door to call Ahmet Ertegun, our friend and the president of Atlantic, our record company, to get help from some lawyers, so he escaped and I got busted. Ahmet told him maybe his actions would be misunderstood by everyone else who got caught when he didn’t. So he says he has reflected on that.
Soon after, but not for any reason connected to the bust, the Springfield broke up. The success and legendary impact of the Springfield was not really apparent at the time. We were beginning to go our separate ways. Everyone was moving out to Topanga from Hollywood. Topanga was like an art colony. Art was everywhere, and the place was crawling with musicians, rebel actors, and associated culture. A few months later, one morning I was walking into town to the Topanga Village Shopping Center. I was just walking along, and this army truck pulled along beside me. It looked like a personnel carrier or something. A couple of guys were in it wearing hippie/army clothes. They stopped and picked me up. I guess there was a kind of hippie camaraderie that existed then and is nowhere to be found in today’s culture. They may have picked me up because I looked like “one of them”; I don’t think I was hitchhiking.
We went to the Topanga Center, and I remember we liked one another, ’cause they invited me back to the place they were staying. One of them was named David Briggs. David took me back to their house, and it turned out to be the Old Topanga Ranch where Stephen had lived and we had been busted! David and his wife, Shannon, were living there. Briggs and I became great friends, and I immediately learned he was a record producer. He had just finished making a comedy record with Murray Roman and he was producing some of the guys from Spirit in a new band. He was wonderful to hang with, with an extensive and interesting vocabulary. (I had never heard the word nomenclature before.) We really got along well, and it was the beginning of a deep friendship that lasted many years. Not to mention the records we made together.
The Topanga Center was a real melting pot of hippie and art activity, a cultural center for art and music in the sixties. In the very center of the Center was the Canyon Kitchen, a small restaurant that served food all day but specialized in great breakfasts. That’s where, as I mentioned, I first met Susan Acevedo, the proprietress I was soon to marry.
I remember once I was at Topanga Days, a fair that happened annually. A flatbed truck was parked in the parking lot with Canned Heat jammin’ along at their peak on the back of the truck. Al Wilson was holding down the vocals. The whole band was classic. It didn’t get any better than that. The bass player, Larry Taylor, was crazy good, holding down a huge groove. Later he played with Bob and was still masterful. That was so cool! What a great band! Next up there was Taj Mahal playing with Jesse Ed Davis right there in the Topanga Center on the back of that truck. I still remember Jesse Ed Davis, the amazing guitarist, with his Telecaster, so slinky and bad.
People were everywhere. Local art was on display. Artisans sold their wares. Lance Sterling, a leatherworker Susan knew and introduced me to, was often there with his gypsy wagon and female apprentices making leather sandals and bags. I still have my bag. I got it at that time and it goes everywhere with me; I think Susan gave it to me. That was a wonderful time in my life. All was good. I was about to start my solo career after the Springfield, which had been a long time coming. My need to make solo records was one of the big contributing factors to the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, along with a need to be more independent and sing more of my own songs. I had so many of them.
I had met Briggs, and we were planning my first solo record.
The songs were gathered from the past and the future, mostly dreams, nothing concrete; they were mostly created as vehicles for record-making, like “Here We Are in the Years,” or personal expression and longing, such as “I’ve Been Waiting for You.” Some of them were stream-of-consciousness, like “The Last Trip to Tulsa,” with no preconceived thought behind them. They were just songs. There was no big pressure on me at that time to top anything I had already done. That came later. The sky was the limit. I had no idea what was coming my way.
—
One more note on this period.
Elliot Roberts, my manager, was planning my first solo tour and coffeehouse gigs. I first met Elliot with Joni Mitchell at Sunset Sound. I already knew Joni from Canada; Elliot was managing her now. He wanted to manage the Springfield, and had actually just started. He had accompanied us to a gig in San Diego we were playing with the Turtles and some other groups. The Turtles were at their peak. It was a huge show for us. I was sick in the hotel room with the flu and wanted something. Elliot was gone, playing golf with somebody. I decided at that moment he was never going to work as our manager and insisted we fire him. I was a spoiled brat! But what did I know? So we fired Elliot. The next week I quit the Springfield for good.
A few days later I called Elliot and asked him to manage me. Was I making sense or what? That is the weirdest sequence of events I can imagine. I was totally committed every step of the way and had no idea what I would be thinking the next day. This was not planned. I was just completely crazy and fluid, changing from day to day, adapting to my feelings and acting on them immediately. Much of what I did then is the foundation for where I am today.
He took me on. We got started, and he negotiated a great deal for me at Reprise Records, where I still record today. I am a Warner Brothers artist. Reprise is a Warner label. I will probably always be on Warner-Reprise as long as it exists. And Elliot will be representing me as long as we both live. That is the plan. It makes me sad to think this could all end, so I hope it doesn’t. I love my life and the people around me. But as you know, nothing lasts forever. We know life, don’t we? Maybe that is why people need religion (please see previous chapter). That might be it. I just might have figured it out.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
And Now, Another Word from Our Sponsor, PureTone
It has come to my attention that a lot of the people we are reaching
out to in the PureTone project are scared of Apple and what would happen to their businesses if we were to provoke Apple in some way. It is disconcerting to feel the fear in others that what I am trying to do would somehow provoke Apple into a destructive action against someone trying to serve a quality product. I have consistently reached out to try to assist Apple with true audio quality, and I have even shared my high-resolution masters with them so that they could show me what they could do with them to make their iPod sound great. I guess there would be an area of concern if what they think is great is not great in my opinion, yet they wanted to market it as studio quality or master quality while it contained only five percent of the data of some original hi-res digital recordings I and others have made.
In the end, the record companies have the power to control the quality that is served online. Online service has been problematic in that it actively or discreetly promotes trading and duplication of music. It is not offensive to me that the MP3-quality sound is traded around. It is, in my opinion, the new radio and serves a great purpose: making music lovers aware of the content that is out there to buy. If the consumers want it, let them take it, whatever quality they prefer. Ultimately, nothing can stop absolute quality from making a big comeback. The stage is well set. I believe in what I am trying to do and that good karma will come from it.
