by Neil Young
—
One day Bob Dylan called me, which was a surprise. He doesn’t typically call. It was after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and I had done some TV with many other artists to help raise funds for the victims. New Orleans music is sacred. I was playing on the Nashville Network, and he heard us do “Walking to New Orleans” and wanted to tell me what a good performance it was. That was really cool, and it meant a lot to me.
I was in New York doing something, walking on the street, and it was a real surprise to hear from him out of the blue. He was also pointing out what a cool hat I had on during the telecast and that I looked good. Bob is always looking sharp when he performs. Once, we had Bob and Elliot for dinner at the ranch house, and he and Pegi had a conversation about my look. “Comfy” was one word that came up! So I think I made a big advance there.
It is always a struggle for me to get dressed up to play with the Horse. It seems incongruous with the music to me for some reason. Who knows, possibly the next time we play it will be the “Clothes Horse.”
My love for plaid shirts goes back a long way. Susan, my first wife, made all those cool patches I wore back in the day when even I was fashionable. The pants on the back cover of After the Gold Rush were Susan’s work. She was very artistic and put so much of her love into it. She even made me a beautiful patchwork vest with a blue velvet back. She sewed the patches on with some strands of her own hair. After we broke up, I wanted to keep it carefully tucked away forever. It was beautiful. I wanted to always remember her by it. One day I came home and Carrie had taken it apart and used the patches to cover holes in a pair of my jeans that I never wore. That was pretty numbing. I am not sure I am over that. Clothes make the man.
Pegi Young, with Larry Johnson in the background. In partial view on the left is Eric Johnson; on the right is Keith Wissmar (both part of my team).
Chapter Thirty-Two
I like bands for different reasons, and the reasons are not consistent.
Pearl Jam is a band I have a lot of respect for. Nirvana and Sonic Youth I feel the same way about. Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, Givers, and Foo Fighters are just some of my favorites. I respect bands that give me something of themselves that I can feel. (“Posing” bands turn me off, generally speaking.) It all has to do with a feeling I have about them. That is what music is to me, a feeling. It’s similar with people, too.
In 1995, I went to Seattle to record with Pearl Jam, minus Eddie, just after I was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I knew I had a small window to get a record done because of their availability and mine—and I like working like that. When I got there, I wrote a song every night in the hotel so I would always have new material for each session. I still sometimes think Briggs should have been involved, but he wasn’t, because I thought at the time that he might be too abrasive a producer for PJ. We used their producer, Brendan O’Brien, who was a fast-moving guy and who played keys on some of the tunes. We just kept rolling along, and soon Mirror Ball was recorded. We did an impromptu gig in a Seattle nightspot where local bands played.
Pulling up outside the place, I noticed an alert-looking guy standing on the loading dock who seemed to be in a leadership role. Later, I met him and found out he was working for PJ as a road manager. We got along well, and my enduring relationship with Eric Johnson began. After that PJ was not working for a while, so Eric came with us and ultimately stayed. It was not a rocky change where I stole somebody, although I did steal him, I suppose. It just seemed so right we all just fell into it. Eric still has deep feelings for PJ, and if they needed him, he would be free to go. But I need someone like him to go with me and make sure I am secure when I travel.
Times have changed. I can’t go to public airports like I used to. Now when I arrive at an airport, there are professional autograph people all over me. I don’t know how the hell they know what I am doing seemingly before I do, but there they are, bugging me in the security line and at the curb.
It costs me to avoid them, but so be it. They bother me. They pose as real fans and try to make me feel guilty if I don’t sign something. They are so obvious and deceptive, feeding on my love for my real fans. I think either the travel agency or the hotels notify the autograph hounds’ representatives when I am coming to town.
Eric tries to filter through them to get to the real fans so I can sign for them. He tries to get me nice rooms when I stay somewhere, books a lot of charters, coordinates the ins and outs of my appearances. I have also used his artistic talents extensively. He played the Devil in my stage and film productions of Greendale. He was the Painter in Trunk Show. Eric is my go-to guy for everything on the road. He is the “artist in residence” on my tours, does all the associated design that I ask him to do, from T-shirts to programs, anything having to do with art. He is always drawing on napkins and leaving them behind. I grab them up and Pegi and I save them.
When our dog Bear was really old, Eric would carry him through hotel lobbies to get to the elevator so Bear’s feet wouldn’t slip on the polished marble floors. Eric calls ahead so everything is ready for Pegi and me when we arrive somewhere. We are not exposed in the lobby, waiting for anything. He is a great artist and a fine person. I am proud to call him my friend. Plus, he is one of the funniest people I have ever met, along with Elliot, of course, who is the master.
Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and me, with Elliot Roberts in the background, backstage before a CSNY show in Denver, 1974.
Chapter Thirty-Three
In 1969, when I joined CSN and it became CSNY for a while, I was at an interesting point in my life. I was working with two bands at the same time, recording with Crazy Horse and rehearsing with CSNY. David, Stephen, and Graham had their own sound, and I was brought in by Ahmet and Stephen to add something else to the mix for live appearances, more rock and roll, I guess.
For a while at the beginning, there was a short debate among some about whether I should be included, i.e., whether to add my Y to CSN or not. Thankfully, that never became an issue. Elliot was there and everything worked out fine. Stephen and I were happy to be playing together again and picked up right where we had left off. CSN had a big hit with their first record—they sounded like a new car coming off the assembly line!—and I had Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere with Crazy Horse, which stayed on the charts for two years.
We rehearsed together at Stephen’s house in Laurel Canyon, trying out different bass players, including Bruce Palmer. Bruce, who was great as usual, had gotten back into the States from Canada somehow, and Stephen and I were very high on playing with him again. He rehearsed with us for a couple of days and was totally on his game. Then he got busted for pot and deported again, just like that. That was one of the last times we ever played together, except for once on the ranch years later when I played with him and Dewey, experimenting with getting the Springfield back together.
So CSNY eventually settled on Greg Reeves on bass and went on the road, where we played the Greek Theatre in LA, Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre, the Masonic Temple Theatre in Detroit, and of course, Woodstock. A funny thing happened at Woodstock. I didn’t want cameras onstage distracting me while we were playing. I hated the showboating atmosphere that surrounded the filming and thought it distracted from our music. The music was between us and the audience, and anything that got in the way was taboo in my opinion. So if you listen carefully to the band’s intro, they say “CSN”—they cut out the Y as payback. On the Woodstock record, Atlantic Records used a song of mine recorded months later at the Fillmore East in New York called “Sea of Madness.” That was kind of misleading.
Getting to Woodstock was a lot of fun, though. I remember meeting Jimi Hendrix in a small airport and riding in a pickup truck with Melvin Belli, the famous lawyer, to the gig. We had to take a little charter plane to get close, and then they picked a few of us up and brought us in. CSN were already there. They were anxious to get there early.
There was, of course, a huge cro
wd, and it was a turning point in rock and roll history. It was so big, it was scary. No one could hear. I was really uncomfortable because everyone was very jacked.
There was one other festival worth mentioning: Altamont. Security onstage was provided by the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and there was only one murder at the show. Getting there, starting way in the back, we rode in through the whole crowd in a pickup truck. I was in the cab, and the guys were in the back. Stephen was yelling at the top of his voice, “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young!” in an effort to clear a path through the crowd to get to the stage. The pickup crawled along through the crowd. The yelling continued. I was trying to disappear into the glove compartment of the truck’s dashboard. It was surreal, and Fellini should have been there to film it. We sucked at the performance. It was one of the worst-feeling gigs I can ever remember. What a monster cocaine-fueled ego trip! The music really sucked air.
I had a sick feeling during that show that I never have forgotten and thankfully have never felt again. I could feel the music dying. There were some really fine CSNY gigs, but they were not in big places, they were in concert halls where we could hear and the band focused on the music instead of superstardom. The live record 4 Way Street captures some of that. We had some really great musical moments, and Crosby’s energy was the catalyst. He was so into it that it was infectious. Stephen and I would trade licks back and forth under his singing and Graham’s harmony. Those were some sublime moments. Graham wrote some incredibly vivid songs that suited the harmonies beautifully. It was a great experience I wouldn’t trade for anything, although it had its imperfections along the way, like everything else I have done.
—
One night in San Francisco in the fall of 1969, CSNY was recording the Déjà Vu album at Wally Heider/Filmways recording studio. We were playing “Helpless,” and I had been going over it with Dallas Taylor, Greg Reeves, and Stephen for hours. Although it is a simple song, it requires laying back, which was not really in Dallas Taylor’s musical vocabulary that night. I just kept doing it over and over, waiting for him to settle down on drums and stop playing accents and fills everywhere. It really was a case of wearing him out to the point where he would play it slowly, without pushing it, and without adding little riffs that meant nothing to the song. It was an arduous task.
Stephen played beautiful piano on the track while I sang it live. I was just starting to sing live in the studio; that was one of the first times. Greg, on bass, was always in the pocket, although he played a lot of notes, so getting everyone to relax and just support the song took a while. It got to be the wee hours, and after many tries, we finally got the take. It was worth it. In the end, everyone played a really good performance. Sometimes you just have to stay with it.
The next session, Stephen added a guitar with a volume pedal, and it was really a fine part. Graham stayed with us all night in the control room, adding his support on the night of the original session with Bill Halverson at the console. Graham always stayed no matter what. He was always there providing a steady hand and positive constructive vibe, even if he wasn’t playing. He was making up background and chorus harmony parts as we recorded and was ready with ideas when it came time to overdub with Crosby the next day. Crosby always had great harmonies that he came up with on the spot.
For some reason I have a vivid memory of that group of sessions. One day after CSN had cut “Teach Your Children,” which they sang perfectly without me, I was in the control room and Jerry Garcia came in and played a steel guitar part on it. It was actually on a regular guitar with a slide, as I remember it. He just sat down with it on his lap in the control room down under the speakers and put that part on. I remember that every time I hear that song, which is one of CSNY’s greatest. I am proud to have my name on it, although I didn’t play or sing a note.
While we were recording in San Francisco, I was staying at a motel called the Caravan Motor Inn just down the street. No one else was staying there but me. I don’t really know where everyone else was. (Stephen was probably at a nicer place. He always finds nice places to stay. Nash had a house there already, I think, or was just moving in to one that he later renovated. I don’t know where David was staying—he had a lot of friends—probably the Airplane House.) Anyway, I was at the Caravan and I had two pets in my room, Speedy and Harriet. They were bush babies, little primates, which I kept in the bathroom. That was really crazy, but I was alone and wanted some company. They were dirty, and I had to clean up after them every time I came home from a session. I wore a leather glove because when I caught them to put them in their cage they would bite me. Imagine coming home from recording “Helpless” at three o’clock in the morning and cleaning up after bush babies in my bathroom. Is that the life of a star or what? I was not really very social at that point, and some of my behaviors must have been curious at best.
One day I visited Butano Canyon near Pescadero, California, with Crosby. It was 1970, and our CSNY lighting director, Steve Cohen, was living in a place right at the end of Butano Canyon Road. Since it was the last house, there was nothing but canyon to see from the deck of the old redwood home. Most of the houses in this canyon had been constructed as summer residences and were old places built totally with redwood, featuring heat from great stone fireplaces made with stones right from the creek. It was a stunning place. Giant redwoods and the healthy creek running by made for a spectacular view.
Crosby had invited me up there to see the place and hang. Leo Makota, our road manager, was there, too. It was Leo, as I mentioned, who first directed me to what is now Broken Arrow Ranch. Cros really wanted to see me living up north. He loved it up there himself. Cros had also taken me to the Airplane House, where Jefferson Airplane lived. There I met Grace Slick, who was beautiful, sang great, was topless, and blew my mind. That was the first time I met her. The whole San Francisco scene was something I had never seen. It was overwhelming. I remember Paul Kantner driving Cros and me to the airport from the city in his Porsche, demonstrating that the airport was only twenty minutes from Haight-Ashbury now that Interstate 280 had been opened. I was scared shitless with Kantner driving that Porsche at astronomical speeds to demonstrate how easy it was to get there fast! I was really not used to any of this stuff. I was shaking when we got to the airport to get on PSA for $9.95 and be served by stewardesses in short shorts on our way back to LA. Holy shit. Was I green!
So anyway, we’re in Butano Canyon at Steve and Leo’s place, and the tragedy at Kent State had just happened. Time magazine had a picture of the girl, Allison Krause, after the National Guard had killed her and three other victims. We were looking at it together. She was lying there on some pavement with another student kneeling down looking at her, as I remember.
These people were our audience. That’s exactly who we were playing for. It was our movement, our culture, our Woodstock generation. We were all one. It was a personal thing, the bond we held between the musicians and the people of the culture: hippies, students, flower children, call them what you will. We were all together.
The weight of that picture cut us to the quick. We had heard and seen the news on TV, but this picture was the first time we had to stop and reflect. It was different before the Internet, before social networking to say the least. So full of this feeling of disbelief and sadness. I picked up my guitar and started to play some chords and immediately wrote “Ohio”; four dead in Ohio. The next day, we went into the studio in LA and cut the song. Before a week had passed it was all over the radio. It was really fast for those times; really fast. All the stations played “Ohio.” There was no censoring by programmers. Programming services were not even around; DJs played whatever they wanted on the FM stations. We were underground on FM. There was no push-back for criticizing the government. This was America. Freedom of speech was taken very seriously in our era. We were speaking for our generation. We were speaking for ourselves. It rang true. The U.S. government has still not apologized to the families of the fallen four of Ohio.
<
br /> The Kent State shooting, 1970.
The band has gotten together for other political causes over the years, and I enjoy it. It’s always fun to hear the singing and feel the love and respect, and there is a lot of that. During the Iraq War, when CSNY went on the road singing the songs of my latest album, Living with War, and a collection of older songs that reflected politics and American life, we had a sense of the old purpose. But things had changed; we split our audience in half with that music rather than bringing it together. It was a sign of the times. We have been through a lot together: the Summer of Love, hell, distrust, and hurt. Life. When we play now our audience still feels it, like a candle that is flickering, like a sun that is setting. A fog is rolling in. It is really all of our lives together.
That was CSNY to me. The connection with our generation was profound, and we could feel it. I loved all those guys. A lot has changed since those innocent times. We are different today. We were not bound by chemistry the same way as the Springfield was. We were all friends, experiencing a phenomenon together.
