by Neil Young
I left the AC on and had the engine running, but I locked the car as I went into the convenience store for water. It was 106 degrees. When I got back in the car she was ready for a walk, so we went over to the parking area and I let her out on some grass. She looked around and did nothing. After a while, we got back to the car and I noticed it was losing water from the radiator. I cruised around looking for a faucet and couldn’t find one. In the whole complex I could not find water. I decided to keep going and find some water down the road at the next oasis.
Nina and I resumed our trip and headed south at about seventy-five miles per hour. I was looking for another exit for water, and we were about ten miles out when every alarm known to man started going off! The Eldo was talking to me. I turned off the AC right away and kept limping along at about forty-five miles per hour. No signs of an exit were forthcoming. The alarms kept flashing and buzzing. I decided to pull over and see what was up. There wasn’t much room on the shoulder, and I was right on the side of the freeway with trucks roaring past at seventy miles an hour. The sun was high in the sky and it was really hot out there. Getting out, I left the windows down for a little ventilation. Nina got down on the floor. Raising the hood, I noticed it created a little shade, which I got into, although that was also where the engine heat was.
After a few minutes, I called Bruce Ferrario, my mechanic in South San Francisco, and told him what had happened. Bruce told me to wait for an hour before I tried to take the radiator cap off because it would be too hot and could scald me. Some folks I recognized from the last rest stop stopped and gave me some drinking water. That was kind of them. They said they knew Daniel Lanois and knew I had been recording at his home in the previous year. What a small world.
They also said they had seen fluid coming out from under my car at the area near where Nina had her little walk. I remembered a large puddle of dirty water about ten feet away from the car and I put it all together. I gave the fresh water to Nina and kept some for myself. She appeared uninterested in the water. About forty-five minutes remained until I could open the radiator and relieve the pressure, and it was really hot out there. I took off my shirt. Then I put it back on, fearing sunburn. I got out my wallet and called AAA. I finally got an operator and found out my card was expired. I told the operator that was not possible and to check further. I had all my cards out on the seat of the car, spread out everywhere. Cards from my whole life seemed to be appearing randomly from some source I was not aware of.
The heat was becoming quite intense, and the phone was losing its charge. For some reason it did not occur to me to charge the phone from the car. I waited for AAA to call back, but they didn’t. I worried about the phone. Then I went through the procedure again to get someone on the phone. I finally did, and they discovered I was a “discontinued premier member.” I told them to look further, and lo and behold! They discovered my card was not expired, though it would be in a month and a half. They informed me a truck was on the way. I stood in the shadow of the hood of the car. The heat would hit like a gust every time a semi went by, two feet away. A car pulled over in front of me and stopped about two hundred yards along the road. They sat there for a while. Then they took off farther down the road. I wondered who they were. Another truck flew by at about eighty! Credit cards and receipts went flying in all directions! One of the greatest collections of expired AAA cards ever known was lost. I was thinking to myself that this was the beginning of a seriously bad situation. I had a new awareness of heat stroke and the ramifications of that. I knew I was not thinking as clearly as I usually do. Nina had a credit card on top of her. She seemed unfazed.
Another half hour passed. Nina and I were beginning to get very uncomfortable. She was not moving, staying low, and panting a little. She would not drink water. A truck coming in the other direction crossed the median behind us, passed us, and pulled over in front of us. It was AAA. I had been sitting there a little over an hour. He backed up and got out of the truck, came back and told me I was a premier member so he could take me all the way to LA if I wanted. It was within the two-hundred-mile range.
Looking at my card further, he asked, “Are you Neil Young?”
I said, “Yes I am.”
He asked, “Who is Cinnamon Girl?”
I told him he would meet her in LA—she was my wife and had the most beautiful eyes in the world.
He loaded the old Eldorado onto the back of the truck and chained it down. Nina and I climbed up into the cab. It was air-conditioned. We stopped somewhere near the Grapevine, a mammoth grade that climbs out of the valley. I got a sandwich at Subway and took Nina for a little walk. Along the way my mind drifted to dreaming about making that trip in Lincvolt someday, pulling into the hotel in LA silently, without a motor running, in a beautiful 1959 Lincoln Continental. I knew the dream was going to come true.
We got into LA at night, pulled up to Sunset Sound studios, where Pegi was recording, and just as I had promised, there was Cinnamon Girl, waiting by the curb.
With Ben Keith at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, California, October 2007.
Chapter Fifty-Two
“Good ’Uns”
Today is one year from the day Long Grain died in 2010 at the age of seventy-three.
Ben “Long Grain” Keith was a close friend for forty years. I was cruising along in the bus with some of the boys, including my brother, Bob, and Dave Toms. The phone rang. It was Pegi crying and crying. I knew something was really wrong, so I went to the back of the bus with the phone. “It’s Ben!” she cried. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Neil. He’s gone.”
I let out what Dave described as a primal scream. I was consoling her, thinking that she was talking about our Ben Young, when she finally said something that told me it was Ben Keith, Long Grain. I felt a sigh of relief, but then a different sadness came over me.
Long Grain was always there. He was such a friend, such a cohort. I could do anything if he was with me, any kind of music at all, and have a lot of fun at the same time. His death settled in on me. The giant bus rolled along over the Manitoba prairies.
It was time to call Heidi, Ben’s beautiful daughter, the mother of a wonderful family that Long Grain loved. He was Grandpa. She answered. I told her and she cried. We talked and I comforted her as much as I could. I can never forget the feeling of that moment.
Ben was a wonderful man, gentle as the rain. The bus rolled on. He was a magical musician. It sank in and in. I realized right then that this was the end of an era. I could never play “Heart of Gold” or “Old Man” or any other songs from Harvest with anyone else on steel. That would not be right. I was so used to looking over and seeing him there, giving and giving. We spent so much time together.
Long Grain never understood why I would keep on mixing and mixing some of the records we made. “Let it go, Neil. It’s a good ’un!” he would say as he walked out of the studio. “Call me if you are going to do any more.” The bus kept rolling and the wheat fields floated by. Ben Keith was revered by all steel players as the original. His style was known around the world. He arranged horn sections, produced records, and played guitar, dobro, Autoharp, finger cymbals, piano, horns, and bass. He was a great singer. There will never be another like him. I still feel sad today that he is gone. He was taken too soon.
The silver bus rolled along, approaching the outskirts of the city of Winnipeg. He was not ready to go. I know he had accepted it in his heart, but he was not ready. Then we got to Winnipeg, which was the next show, and parked downtown near the theater. I went outside and sat in a little park on some grass behind the theater. I went inside. There it was, the stage I would walk out on, knowing I was more alone than I had ever been before. He was like a big brother to me, and he had been ill, but not that ill, I thought. I know his death could have been avoided with a doctor who was really on top of it. He had so much life in him. It was wrong. I played my way through that first show and did “Old Man” for Ben at the end. I looked over to my right and he was out there
somewhere, but not next to me anymore.
—
In January of 1971, I was doing a solo tour of Canada and a few U.S. cities. It had started in Vancouver. Joni Mitchell sent me a hat she made for me. It was a beautiful knitted tuque with a seashell hanging on the front of it, made of wool in soft earth tones. I could feel the love in it. I wore it a lot on that tour. I was taking some Soma Compound to loosen up my back and drinking a little Michelob. My brace was with me everywhere I went, and I used to hurt a little at night and in the mornings from the slipped disc, but it wasn’t too bad. The show in Vancouver went fine, and we flew to Edmonton or Regina after that. I remember the parking lot of the gig had all of the plugs for block heaters lined up on posts in front of the parking spaces so folks could plug in and not have their engines freeze up during the shows. Winnipeg was next, but my mother was down in Florida. She would have been there if she was in town, proud as could be and telling all of her friends. I met a girl named Nancy Eaton at the show there. She was one of the Eaton family, owners of a large chain of department stores across Canada. (A relative of hers was the backer for the Mynah Birds when I played with them.) Nancy and I liked each other, had a good time, and planned to hook up again down the road.
Next came Toronto at Massey Hall. That was the biggest gig. It was a homecoming. When I walked out onstage, the place got really loud. It was a feeling like no other. It was where I had worked at Coles Bookstore, played at the Riverboat Hootenannies, lived on Isabella Street in my little flat writing songs, gone to school, experienced my mom and dad’s breakup, bought records by Roy Orbison, delivered newspapers. It was a big moment in my life to be sure.
My dad was there for the first show, at six-thirty P.M., which was added because the originally scheduled show was sold out. I saw him and we chatted briefly. He said it was a lot different from the last time I had been in Toronto. Remembering the job at Coles and the little flat I had on Huron Street, eating macaroni for dinner every night, the uneasy feeling I had in his house when I first arrived in Toronto from the west, and the help he had given me finding a rehearsal space for my band, I agreed. It felt good to see him. It had been a long time. I played my heart out.
An announcement in the Toronto Star of the added show at Massey Hall, 1971.
Briggs was living in Toronto at the time and had started a studio called Thunder Sound. He recorded the Massey Hall show. He thought this live show should have come out right away, and was disappointed and disagreed with my decision to instead put out Harvest—he thought it was not as good as the Massey Hall recording.
“It’s great, Neil,” Briggs said. “Put it out there.” But that was not to be.
When I heard the show thirty-four years later while reviewing tapes for my archives performance series, I was a little shocked—I agreed with David. After listening, I felt his frustration. This was better than Harvest. It meant more. He was right. I had missed it. He understood it. David was usually right, and when I disagreed with him, I was usually wrong. Every time I go into the studio or onstage, he is missed.
—
After Toronto, I went on to the States, played in Stratford, Connecticut, at the Shakespeare Theatre, and ultimately to Nashville to play The Johnny Cash Show on TV. It was an opportunity to perform with my peers, but I felt I did not do as well there as I might have, for whatever reason. I played “Journey Through the Past” on piano. I’m really not that good on the piano. Maybe I should have done a different song, something where I played guitar. But something extraordinary came out of this trip.
While I was in Nashville, I wanted to do some recording. We met Elliot Mazer, a record producer who helped us get a session together. We went to a studio called Quadrafonic that he had recommended. He was going to record us. Elliot had a whole new group of musicians I had never met before waiting there.
We got Kenny Buttrey on drums; Kenny had played on many hits. Tim Drummond on bass had played with James Brown, JJ Cale, and Conway Twitty, among many others. Tim was responsible for finding the musicians, I found out later. There was a guitarist named Teddy Irwin. He played the beautiful harmonics on “Heart of Gold.” John Harris was on piano. He was quite an original, obviously a genius live-wire player with an amazing touch. Then, as we started, a tall guy walked in and set up his steel. Ben Keith was his name. He was very quiet. As we started playing, I mentioned to Ben to just play some simple pads under certain sections to separate them and to also play some long, wide tones very spaciously, not like regular country-oriented licks. He made a few sounds and we talked some more.
“Ben,” I said, “can you play the same note on a couple of strings and sort of phase them against each other instead of a chord?”
“Like this?” he replied, and played a long, deep, wide note that rang forever.
“Yes,” I said. “That is definitely what we are looking for.”
Then we recorded “Old Man” with the signature Ben Keith sound that went down in history. What a musician! Over the next few hours we played “Heart of Gold” and many other tracks that are on Harvest, and some that are not. “Journey Through the Past,” in particular, is a great take that did not make it onto Harvest. (It is included in the Harvest section of the archives.)
Ben and I played together for forty great years, and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything on earth. I was so lucky to meet Ben and Tim and Kenny and John on that memorable day. Thanks, guys! What more can I say? I loved playing with you all.
This is a time for reflection. There is no time like the present.
As I sit here reflecting on my good fortune to have met these guys and made music with them, I miss them. I wish we were still together, and a lot of them are gone now. “There are very few of us left,” as Waylon Jennings liked to say. “The mighty few,” as Tim Drummond would say. What a great bass player and character Tim Drummond is! As deep as the sea! I just called him, and he told me I should have a mai tai for him. I didn’t tell him I don’t drink anymore. He still does. At least I can still talk to him.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Near the end of 2010, I did a leg of the Le Noise tour that dipped down to the Gulf of Mexico to play for the people who had been hit hard by the oil spill and Katrina. The economy down there had taken a tremendous hit. At the time, I thought it was the last leg of that tour. We lowered the price of the shows to an amount that let everyone come who there was room for. Johnny Tyson, an old friend of mine from many years back who is a music lover and a man who likes to do good things for people, followed us around with a semi of Tyson poultry products for the food banks.
The devastation from BP’s Gulf oil spill disaster, plus Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, lingering for years, was an incredible load on those folks. I just wanted to go down there and help. I took Lincvolt, and after each show we would jump in the car and go. Ben Young, Zeke Young, Ben Johnson, Dave Toms, and I piled into Lincvolt with the top down and rode into the Gulf night. The warm air and gentle breezes make the Gulf area one of the most inviting places on earth. It was such a rush to cruise along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in a big electric convertible with the laughter of friends and the wind in our hair! We were in the zone.
The shows were very close together, and it was easy to make it to the next motel or rendezvous area with the buses. Lincvolt would then ride in the semitrailer that we brought along. It doubled as a gym in the front and a garage for Lincvolt in the back.
We met with folks along the way who told us of the planes going out at night under cover of darkness to drop chemicals on the Gulf and disperse the deadly oil slick to the bottom, where it was out of human sight and, therefore, out of mind. These people were very upset at the deception being perpetrated by the media that everything was being cleaned up. Some of the coverage that actually reported the cover-up and night flights of dispersants dropped on the Gulf was indeed good, but a lot of coverage reporting that the Gulf was cleaned up was total fiction, according to the locals.
In Mobile, Alabam
a, we met a young man who would only tell his story if we filmed him from the neck down and didn’t show his face. He was scared of recrimination. He told us how they were working on a fleet of boats paid by BP that had been working on cleaning up the spill for weeks, and suddenly had been given three days off. When they came back to work the oil slick was gone. Everyone working knew it had to have been dispersants from airplanes. Locals told us the planes flew over all night for three nights in a row. The oil was dispersed to the bottom, killing untold sea life.
A lot of folks were greatly intimidated by the oil power that controls so much of the area. People were down, frightened, yet strong. They are not going anywhere. This is their way of life, their roots and family history. Fishing families with four and five generations of history working the Gulf are not going easily. These things don’t change.
The shows along the Gulf went great. I was so happy to play the casinos and smaller halls. Old theaters full of happy folks who I would likely never have played for were enjoying the night and the music, the togetherness and the moments of laughter and tears. You could see it in their faces.
Around the back of the venues after the show, people came to look at the old electric Lincoln, defying preconceptions of what a car like that could do. It silently glided out of the backstage lot, full of our family and friends, Ben Young being gently and easily held in the front seat by a giant Dave Toms, whose long white hair was streaming in the breeze, Zeke Young and Ben Johnson holding down the backseat. At nineteen and a half feet, Lincvolt can hold a lot of happiness.
We played Panama City, Clearwater, Hollywood, Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola, then we headed north to Farm Aid in Milwaukee. Farm Aid was a departure from our normal shows on that tour because of the forty thousand people and a stadium, but it was a good ’un! It’s all about the music. If the music soars and you feel good, then the show is good. If for whatever reason the music does not soar, then it is not a good show. There is no way to tell what it will be like. It’s like the weather.
