Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Neil Young
Transcript
- 0:15Speaker 1: Pushkin. Even if you've only listened to Broken Record a
- 0:22Speaker 1: few times, you've likely heard Rick Rubin absolutely gush about
- 0:26Speaker 1: Neil Young. Neil has been on the show three times now,
- 0:30Speaker 1: and his legendary body of work has been brought up
- 0:32Speaker 1: by more musicians interviewed on this show than likely anyone
- 0:35Speaker 1: else except for maybe Joni Mitchell. That's because Neil is
- 0:39Speaker 1: a true artist. He's been writing and singing songs since
- 0:42Speaker 1: the early sixties, and his creative output has been near
- 0:45Speaker 1: constant and in my opinion, virtually flawless for the last
- 0:49Speaker 1: six decades. Neil recently stopped by Shangri La following the
- 0:53Speaker 1: release of Crazyhorse's latest album, World Record. The album was
- 0:57Speaker 1: produced by our own Rick Rubin, and on today's episode,
- 1:00Speaker 1: Neil talks to Rick about the remarkable way the new
- 1:03Speaker 1: songs were conceived. Neil also reminisces about recording after the
- 1:07Speaker 1: gold Rush and Harvest and lanes, how THHC changes his
- 1:11Speaker 1: relationship to music. This is Broken Record Liner notes for
- 1:18Speaker 1: the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Rick Rubin and
- 1:22Speaker 1: Neil Young. Thank you so much for coming and talking
- 1:25Speaker 1: to me today. It's my favorite thing. It's a favorite
- 1:27Speaker 1: of mine too. Rick. We're like a couple of birds
- 1:30Speaker 1: of a feather here and sitting here in your studio,
- 1:35Speaker 1: this beautiful place that I was in almost fifty years
- 1:39Speaker 1: ago with Robbie and Rick. And tell me about that. Well,
- 1:44Speaker 1: you know, the board was smaller, it was a quad eight.
- 1:48Speaker 1: It was up against the wall more that way. There
- 1:51Speaker 1: was no area here. It was a little too crowded,
- 1:54Speaker 1: but it wasn't bad. We had a good time. You know.
- 1:57Speaker 1: I wasn't making music with him or anything. I was
- 2:00Speaker 1: down here with I was with Bob. He was in here,
- 2:04Speaker 1: Dylan was in here, and I played him a couple
- 2:06Speaker 1: of songs. I played him Cortez, and he liked Cortez
- 2:12Speaker 1: and he played in the recording and you played it
- 2:13Speaker 1: for him. I just played it, just played it on
- 2:16Speaker 1: the guitar. Yeah, in a little room down there. Yeah,
- 2:19Speaker 1: And I was playing it for him, and I played
- 2:20Speaker 1: it and then I played him, you know, I mean,
- 2:23Speaker 1: the guy is so great. I just had to play
- 2:25Speaker 1: these songs. So I played this other song. Uh, it's
- 2:29Speaker 1: called Hitchhiker, and it's it's a song about every drug
- 2:34Speaker 1: I ever took. And it tells a story of you know,
- 2:37Speaker 1: being straight and get you know, just everything all the
- 2:40Speaker 1: way through it chronologically, through this whole long story. And
- 2:45Speaker 1: at the end of the song he said, he looks
- 2:47Speaker 1: at me, he goes, that's a very honest song, Neil,
- 2:51Speaker 1: And that was it was. It wasn't good, It wasn't bad.
- 2:54Speaker 1: But yeah, have you seen his new book? Yep, it's cool. Yeah.
- 3:03Speaker 1: I started listening to the audio version of it. It's
- 3:05Speaker 1: really cool. I'd like to listen to the audio. Did
- 3:08Speaker 1: he do it? He did parts. He did parts in
- 3:12Speaker 1: a bunch of guests. But it's cool. It's cool the
- 3:14Speaker 1: way it's put together with the different people and his
- 3:16Speaker 1: voice cool. Yeah, it's amazing. I've been doing interviews, you know,
- 3:20Speaker 1: for the record. Yeah. I don't usually do interviews like this,
- 3:23Speaker 1: but I love this record. I love it so much
- 3:26Speaker 1: and I want people to know that I'm alive. Yeah,
- 3:29Speaker 1: you know, it's a very basic thing. Well, I haven't
- 3:31Speaker 1: heard from Neil Young in a long time. Where is
- 3:35Speaker 1: Neil Young? What happened? Well, I stopped playing a couple
- 3:38Speaker 1: of years ago, and so I haven't been anywhere. There's
- 3:41Speaker 1: been three farm aids in a row I've missed, and
- 3:45Speaker 1: the same with the Bridge School and all that, But
- 3:50Speaker 1: I don't really miss it that much. I liked playing music.
- 3:53Speaker 1: I've made a lot of records. I've made many records
- 3:56Speaker 1: during that period of time, three brand new ones, and
- 3:59Speaker 1: you know, so I feel really good about that. What's
- 4:03Speaker 1: the longest you've ever gone not playing with Crazy Horse?
- 4:08Speaker 1: Probably a year and a half or something. So it's max.
- 4:12Speaker 1: It's been a constant in your life for fifty years. Yeah,
- 4:16Speaker 1: amazing since nineteen seventy sixty nine seventy. When you write
- 4:22Speaker 1: new songs, do you always know in advance whether this
- 4:26Speaker 1: is something you want to record with Crazy Horse or not? No,
- 4:29Speaker 1: I really don't. I don't, but usually you know, I'm
- 4:32Speaker 1: hanging out with them when I write it, and you know,
- 4:35Speaker 1: it's just happens like a song that I would anything
- 4:40Speaker 1: that's spacey, anything that's got any cosmic vibe to it
- 4:45Speaker 1: at all, it's got to be Crazy Horse because that's
- 4:48Speaker 1: the loosest that it can be, and simple and loose,
- 4:52Speaker 1: and that's what I like. When you play with other musicians,
- 4:56Speaker 1: does it change the way you play? Oh? Yeah, how
- 5:00Speaker 1: does it? I don't know, but I'm different. I don't.
- 5:03Speaker 1: It's not the same as playing with the Horse. Yeah,
- 5:06Speaker 1: I mean I've become I think I just I play
- 5:08Speaker 1: the song, then I deliver the song, and I try
- 5:11Speaker 1: to immerse myself in it. I'm playing with promise of
- 5:13Speaker 1: the reels. A lot of fun. And we even done
- 5:17Speaker 1: some stuff here in this studio that was pretty cool.
- 5:20Speaker 1: And uh, there's one that I laugh in. I don't
- 5:23Speaker 1: know what I'm laughing in it, and we recorded it
- 5:26Speaker 1: right here at Changer Law and it has to do
- 5:28Speaker 1: with going to a fair or a circus or something,
- 5:32Speaker 1: and it's wild. Do you always know what the songs
- 5:37Speaker 1: are about when you're writing them? No, Usually I don't
- 5:41Speaker 1: even care. I don't. I just start, you know. And
- 5:44Speaker 1: with the new songs on this record, there's no there's
- 5:48Speaker 1: no thinking. I mean, everything was just the flow was
- 5:51Speaker 1: just all I wasn't trying to do anything. That's why
- 5:54Speaker 1: it was so special. That's why I think it came
- 5:57Speaker 1: out the way it did because there's no there's no
- 6:00Speaker 1: preconception of it. I remember when you first talk to
- 6:04Speaker 1: me about it before before we recorded it, do you
- 6:07Speaker 1: explained that the melodies came in a way that none
- 6:10Speaker 1: had ever come to you before they were delivered. They
- 6:14Speaker 1: came through me whistling while I was walking. And I
- 6:19Speaker 1: realized as I was walking along and I was whistling
- 6:22Speaker 1: a different song every day, because I'd go in these
- 6:24Speaker 1: long walks every day through the forest and stuff in
- 6:29Speaker 1: the snow and just whistling along. And then I remember it, Wow,
- 6:34Speaker 1: I really had a nice melody. I was whistling yesterday
- 6:37Speaker 1: and I could hardly bring it back. And because I
- 6:40Speaker 1: was whist seeing a new melody, and that's what made
- 6:42Speaker 1: me think, Wow, it was a different melody from yesterday's melody.
- 6:46Speaker 1: What was that melody? And I liked it. As I
- 6:49Speaker 1: approached the part of my walk that was the same
- 6:52Speaker 1: place I remember seeing whistling it, I remembered it. So
- 6:57Speaker 1: I remembered it, and then I started whistling it again,
- 7:00Speaker 1: and I got out my flip phone and recorded it
- 7:02Speaker 1: on my flip phone, but I used a movie, you know.
- 7:06Speaker 1: So I got this partly my thumb and partly the
- 7:09Speaker 1: sky and some trees going by and dogs running and
- 7:14Speaker 1: footsteps and stuff. But I'm whistling along with it. That's
- 7:17Speaker 1: how I got all those melodies. And every day after that,
- 7:20Speaker 1: I kept walking, and most days I'd have a new melody,
- 7:24Speaker 1: and I just pulled out the phone and I even
- 7:27Speaker 1: had harmony parts or bass parts and things like that
- 7:30Speaker 1: that I put on the phone too, that I imagined them,
- 7:33Speaker 1: you know, like on that one the world is in
- 7:36Speaker 1: trouble Now there's a bass part, and we went through
- 7:41Speaker 1: it in the studio. I remember it was like, Wow,
- 7:43Speaker 1: this is a part. We have an idea. It was
- 7:45Speaker 1: like because none of the other ones even had that. No,
- 7:48Speaker 1: at what point did you realize this could be a
- 7:51Speaker 1: collection of songs to record? Well, you know, I was.
- 7:55Speaker 1: It was last April, and I was thinking I had
- 8:00Speaker 1: that song Break the Chain, which I wrote before I
- 8:04Speaker 1: did my previous album barn I wrote that just as
- 8:07Speaker 1: COVID started. It was about COVID. So I was walking
- 8:12Speaker 1: in the same general area, but this time I'm walking
- 8:15Speaker 1: and I'm writing the words on a piece of paper
- 8:18Speaker 1: and the melody's really kind of a blues melody, so
- 8:22Speaker 1: you can't you know, you don't need to write it
- 8:24Speaker 1: or whistle it or anything, and you kind of know
- 8:25Speaker 1: it from the from I just remembered it. So I
- 8:29Speaker 1: did that, and then later that winter, I was in
- 8:33Speaker 1: Canada and I have a piano there that was in
- 8:36Speaker 1: the house I was in and I wrote Chevrolet on
- 8:39Speaker 1: the piano, which is interesting because it's this huge, long
- 8:43Speaker 1: guitar song. I did it totally on the piano over
- 8:47Speaker 1: the period of about a month, where I passed by
- 8:49Speaker 1: on the piano and stopped and play a minute and
- 8:51Speaker 1: then keep on going. And well, I was there the
- 8:54Speaker 1: last time. I noticed all the lyrics are still sitting
- 8:56Speaker 1: there on the piano, and it reminds me I should
- 9:00Speaker 1: get those. But so anyway, yeah they did. And then
- 9:07Speaker 1: the other eight I'm thinking. I was thinking, hey, I'd
- 9:10Speaker 1: like to make a record. It'd be fun horses available,
- 9:13Speaker 1: and I said, I don't have any songs. And when
- 9:16Speaker 1: I talked any songs, then I started thinking, uh, wait
- 9:20Speaker 1: a minute. I got all those melodies whistling, and then
- 9:25Speaker 1: I got the flip phone out and recorded all of
- 9:29Speaker 1: the recordings from the flip phone. I put the phone
- 9:32Speaker 1: down on top of the computer and made another movie
- 9:36Speaker 1: of just the you know the yeah, yeah, the phone
- 9:43Speaker 1: is seeing to a microphone yea, and yeah, there's no
- 9:46Speaker 1: phone speaker to the microphone of the computer. So I
- 9:50Speaker 1: put it down and I remember and I copied all
- 9:53Speaker 1: of the whistling and they were like fifty eight tracks
- 9:57Speaker 1: but I had multiple tracks for each song, and each
- 10:00Speaker 1: day was different, and so I had to organize it.
- 10:03Speaker 1: And then I found out at the end I had nine,
- 10:06Speaker 1: maybe ten or eleven different melodies, and eight of them
- 10:10Speaker 1: seem to be pretty darn close to, you know, a
- 10:13Speaker 1: whole thing melody wise, but to just whistling, no idea,
- 10:18Speaker 1: what the chord changes are, no idea, no instrument. So
- 10:22Speaker 1: that's really different for me to have the whole melody
- 10:25Speaker 1: and be sitting there writing words to a melody and
- 10:30Speaker 1: not knowing the chords, any chords, or the instrument or anything.
- 10:34Speaker 1: So I did that in two days. I wrote all
- 10:37Speaker 1: of the words. It sounds funny, it is. It's funny.
- 10:42Speaker 1: It happened so fast, and I never rewrote anything, I
- 10:46Speaker 1: never fixed anything. Everything came out right the first time,
- 10:50Speaker 1: and that's very rare, as it never never like that.
- 10:54Speaker 1: But it was like that this time. So you got
- 10:57Speaker 1: these two unheard of things that I'm you know, for
- 11:00Speaker 1: me that I'm doing, And then I had to figure
- 11:03Speaker 1: out what instrument to do it on and what the
- 11:05Speaker 1: chords were. And as I was doing that, it was
- 11:09Speaker 1: easy for me to make a video of a verse
- 11:13Speaker 1: and chorus for Billy, so he'd have the changes for
- 11:18Speaker 1: the base, so I'd do a FaceTime video thing to him,
- 11:23Speaker 1: which I did. I don't know how I did it.
- 11:24Speaker 1: I think I did a quick time file and then
- 11:26Speaker 1: I sent it to him or something, but I I
- 11:29Speaker 1: just did that. At six o'clock in the morning, I
- 11:31Speaker 1: get up and I go to the organ and put
- 11:33Speaker 1: the computer down, press record and play what it was
- 11:37Speaker 1: that I thought it was with the one verse and
- 11:39Speaker 1: one chorus. So we use those things too in the movie. Cool.
- 11:44Speaker 1: So we got the whistling in the movie, and then
- 11:46Speaker 1: that and then the studio and then we're in then
- 11:49Speaker 1: we do it with the band, so we have the
- 11:51Speaker 1: evolution of these melodies. It's so cool that it can't
- 11:55Speaker 1: you know that it just came. It was wacky. You can't.
- 11:58Speaker 1: You can't. You can tell that it's mindless when you
- 12:02Speaker 1: see the footage, it's crazy. And when you listen to
- 12:06Speaker 1: the Our experience of listening to the album has been
- 12:10Speaker 1: every every time I hear it, I hear different things
- 12:13Speaker 1: than I heard before. Yeah, or if I hear something
- 12:15Speaker 1: that sounds wrong, and then go back and listen to
- 12:18Speaker 1: it again, that's gone. That happened with us several times
- 12:22Speaker 1: we'd have a thing. We'd be together and we'd hear
- 12:25Speaker 1: something and we said something gla and then it happened. Yeah,
- 12:30Speaker 1: well we'll fix that, well, make a you know, make
- 12:32Speaker 1: a note. We'll come back and the next day we
- 12:34Speaker 1: come back and we couldn't find it. No, So it's remarkable.
- 12:39Speaker 1: The whole process was strange. Yes, the whole process was strange,
- 12:43Speaker 1: really different. It was like a gift. It was like
- 12:45Speaker 1: a gift for us. We didn't have to do any work. Yeah,
- 12:48Speaker 1: we just you know, we thought. We both made records
- 12:51Speaker 1: for years, and we both like making records and we
- 12:55Speaker 1: love music, and we know about the ways of making records.
- 12:59Speaker 1: Things that we do, you know, like with me, it's
- 13:01Speaker 1: like occasional double tracking one line or a couple of
- 13:05Speaker 1: words or something like that to punch them out a little.
- 13:08Speaker 1: So I just kind of sing along and sing a
- 13:10Speaker 1: little more when I want it and a little less
- 13:12Speaker 1: when I don't. And so you understood that right away.
- 13:16Speaker 1: And bang, when I said let's do a double track,
- 13:18Speaker 1: it wasn't like I'd go in and I'd do it,
- 13:20Speaker 1: and it was like I was only singing part of
- 13:22Speaker 1: the time and kind of half singing the rest of
- 13:24Speaker 1: the time. But it was cool. It wasn't like, hey,
- 13:26Speaker 1: well you know, I try to sing the whole thing.
- 13:30Speaker 1: That never happened. Yeah, So on the only purpose I
- 13:33Speaker 1: think you ever double tracked anything was if you couldn't
- 13:36Speaker 1: understand here or understand the words the first time. It
- 13:39Speaker 1: was so loud in the room when you're playing and
- 13:41Speaker 1: you're singing live with the band, Yeah, it's hard to
- 13:45Speaker 1: get the yeah everything, every little nuance. Yeah. So we
- 13:48Speaker 1: picked out a couple of things and backed them up
- 13:52Speaker 1: and mixed it in and it came out really great.
- 13:56Speaker 1: I'm just really happy with the record. It's one of
- 13:59Speaker 1: my if it's one of my favorite processes, and the
- 14:03Speaker 1: music is some of my favorite music I've ever made.
- 14:05Speaker 1: I mean, how I listened to it. It's good, it's
- 14:08Speaker 1: really and it's really the way that it happened was
- 14:12Speaker 1: so magical. Even after the way that it happened to you,
- 14:16Speaker 1: once it got to the studio, it was weird. Yeah,
- 14:19Speaker 1: It's like I remember the first week the band was
- 14:23Speaker 1: learning the songs, and the feeling I got by the
- 14:25Speaker 1: end of the first week was they might not ever
- 14:28Speaker 1: be able to play the songs. That was the feeling
- 14:30Speaker 1: was like, this is like not really happening. Yes, And
- 14:34Speaker 1: then I thought, okay, well they played through everything, even
- 14:37Speaker 1: though they couldn't play them, they played through them. So
- 14:40Speaker 1: probably next week is going to be better because now
- 14:42Speaker 1: it won't be the first time. And then and I
- 14:44Speaker 1: remember when you called out the song to start the
- 14:47Speaker 1: second week with, and Ralph said, well, we already played
- 14:49Speaker 1: that one. Why would we play that? And then we
- 14:53Speaker 1: went back and we listened to it and it was
- 14:55Speaker 1: pretty good. Yeah, Ralph was right. Ralph was right. Turns
- 15:00Speaker 1: out yeah, it's crazy. We didn't think we got anything. No,
- 15:05Speaker 1: it turns out we got I think maybe the whole
- 15:07Speaker 1: album was recorded when we didn't think any of it.
- 15:10Speaker 1: We didn't think anyone was happening. Yeah, and it certainly
- 15:14Speaker 1: nothing like that's ever happened to me before. For sure,
- 15:17Speaker 1: nothing like that. No. I mean I'm used to the
- 15:19Speaker 1: horse getting things on the first or second take. Yeah,
- 15:22Speaker 1: but this was like I had no idea. You didn't
- 15:27Speaker 1: know the songs. No, I didn't know the songs. I
- 15:28Speaker 1: was learning how to play it on the pump organ
- 15:30Speaker 1: or on the piano. And uh, because I did want
- 15:33Speaker 1: to play guitar. Remember, we'd say to Nils. You know,
- 15:36Speaker 1: Nils sounds like a guitar lick, you know, and we
- 15:40Speaker 1: don't really don't want to hear. Yeah, you know, we
- 15:43Speaker 1: know it's great and you played it, but it made
- 15:45Speaker 1: it sound ordinary when't Yeah, but when we when we
- 15:48Speaker 1: heard it was like, we really don't want to hear
- 15:50Speaker 1: a guitar. And then on one or one or two songs,
- 15:52Speaker 1: I mean you can hear it in the room. Yeah,
- 15:55Speaker 1: but you only thing we featured was between the riffs
- 16:00Speaker 1: where it'd be a clunk and scratch on the thing
- 16:03Speaker 1: and you know, the pick guards all these weird sounds
- 16:07Speaker 1: that he was making as he was playing between when
- 16:09Speaker 1: he played his thing. Yeah, and we take his thing
- 16:12Speaker 1: off and just leave the other things up real loud. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- 16:15Speaker 1: We we took out the playing and left the noises
- 16:17Speaker 1: in between. Yeah. So it would go from the noises
- 16:20Speaker 1: to the leakage of something too. It was like we
- 16:23Speaker 1: broke every rule that wasn't crazy, and we were enjoying
- 16:28Speaker 1: it very much and seem normal. I mean no, but
- 16:30Speaker 1: it sounded good. It's like you can't argue with the sounds,
- 16:33Speaker 1: Like if it sounds good, it's right. You know. It
- 16:36Speaker 1: was wild and then we got what was that one? Uh,
- 16:40Speaker 1: I think it was The Wonder Won't Wait? Or either
- 16:42Speaker 1: that or the World is in Trouble now one of
- 16:45Speaker 1: those two where I was. We started doing the harmonica
- 16:50Speaker 1: through the octave divider with the organ on certain notes
- 16:55Speaker 1: to create this instrument that was like, and I get
- 16:58Speaker 1: kind of picture, who are these guys playing these instruments
- 17:01Speaker 1: because I don't even know what that kind of instrument
- 17:03Speaker 1: that it is. It sounded like an old organ but
- 17:08Speaker 1: with an elect drake funky part of it, like two
- 17:12Speaker 1: or three notes were just jamming, and it was weird.
- 17:16Speaker 1: It wasn't working exactly properly either, I don't I don't think,
- 17:20Speaker 1: no nothing, that fictional instrument was not at its best. No, No,
- 17:25Speaker 1: it wasn't. But it didn't matter. No, So you know,
- 17:29Speaker 1: we had a blast. We had a really good time,
- 17:32Speaker 1: the time of a lifetime. Actually, I thought, I there's
- 17:36Speaker 1: nothing I can look at that compares to it. Everything
- 17:38Speaker 1: else is they're all great, And there's a lot of
- 17:41Speaker 1: really cool things that we did. Yeah, and you know
- 17:44Speaker 1: that I did with with Crazy Horse in the past
- 17:47Speaker 1: and everything, and the stuff we did in the studio
- 17:50Speaker 1: in the nineties was cool too. I mean, I've still
- 17:52Speaker 1: got that and actually getting ready to put it out
- 17:55Speaker 1: in the archives because it's some of it's really cool. Yeah,
- 17:58Speaker 1: there's a couple of really cool songs there, but they're
- 18:01Speaker 1: not like this, this was what is this? Yeah, it's
- 18:05Speaker 1: definitely new music. Yeah, it's new very old music, very
- 18:10Speaker 1: old new music. Because something is like if the song
- 18:14Speaker 1: sounded like a folk songs from the forties, or they
- 18:20Speaker 1: sound like songs from before you ever wrote songs. Somebody
- 18:23Speaker 1: else wrote these first, and here I am and and
- 18:27Speaker 1: I don't know, he kind of got us mosis or something.
- 18:31Speaker 1: It's strange, it really is, man, So we gotta we
- 18:34Speaker 1: just gotta be thankful because we got a gift and
- 18:36Speaker 1: we will find out if other people think so. Yeah,
- 18:39Speaker 1: either way, I think it works out fine. We got
- 18:44Speaker 1: to experience it and we did. I'm glad people get
- 18:46Speaker 1: to hear it. Yeah, I am too, And whatever they
- 18:48Speaker 1: think is fine. I think they're gonna like it. I've
- 18:50Speaker 1: got a couple of reactions from people who are like whoa, whoa,
- 18:56Speaker 1: and I'm going, well, you know, it's it's me and
- 18:59Speaker 1: crazy Horse and we're just doing what we do. And
- 19:01Speaker 1: if you listen to it, that way you can say
- 19:03Speaker 1: that's what it is. But the fact that I only
- 19:05Speaker 1: play guitar on what three songs I think, Oh, I
- 19:08Speaker 1: did overdubbed a note or two on another song that's chords,
- 19:13Speaker 1: power chords I put on one of the I don't
- 19:16Speaker 1: think it ever really sounds like guitar. No, No, we
- 19:20Speaker 1: had a great time. We ought to be thankful. Let's
- 19:24Speaker 1: be thankful. So cool. Have any new songs come to
- 19:27Speaker 1: you since now? Do they typically come in bunches like
- 19:31Speaker 1: that over the course of your life. Well, there's nothing
- 19:34Speaker 1: typical about this bunch. But usually what happens is as
- 19:39Speaker 1: soon as I finish an album, I'm starting to think
- 19:42Speaker 1: about other things, and other music starts coming in my head.
- 19:45Speaker 1: Finishing this album, not being able to play it and
- 19:48Speaker 1: have it come out for six months after we finished
- 19:50Speaker 1: it because of the way things are with vinyl and
- 19:53Speaker 1: everything else. That was very weird. But I haven't got
- 19:58Speaker 1: any new songs. I have not thought of any new songs.
- 20:02Speaker 1: All I think of is the songs that we did
- 20:04Speaker 1: and for months I was still listening to it, and
- 20:08Speaker 1: I'm going one of my do it, let's do this,
- 20:10Speaker 1: I did this. Could you imagine how you would play
- 20:12Speaker 1: these songs live because it kind of is its own thing.
- 20:15Speaker 1: I don't even know how you do it live. I
- 20:17Speaker 1: don't know either, but we did it live. Yes, No,
- 20:21Speaker 1: I know that, so we yes. I just can't imagine
- 20:25Speaker 1: that they would sound you know, pump organ, electric guitar,
- 20:29Speaker 1: bass and drums, pump organ accordion. But I think though
- 20:35Speaker 1: that probably would sound good if we if we got
- 20:38Speaker 1: to do them. We'll see what happens, yeah, I hope.
- 20:42Speaker 1: So I'd be curious to see what that is. Yeah,
- 20:45Speaker 1: I would be too, I would be. But things move
- 20:48Speaker 1: along and they move on, you know, and Nils is
- 20:51Speaker 1: you know, Nils is part of the Eastet band, so
- 20:54Speaker 1: Bruce is probably going on a megatour. So Nils is gone,
- 20:59Speaker 1: and Nils is like what I'm I can't be in
- 21:04Speaker 1: two places at once. Yeah, because he was, you know,
- 21:07Speaker 1: really into this. I mean, we were all really into it.
- 21:10Speaker 1: So actually I feel I feel for Nils a little
- 21:14Speaker 1: bit because I know he wants to be here with us.
- 21:17Speaker 1: You know, he's with Bruce, and that's Bruce has been
- 21:20Speaker 1: there for him for years and years, and that's an
- 21:22Speaker 1: old old thing. Now. It was amazing to me that
- 21:26Speaker 1: you played with Nils before Bruce did. I didn't. I
- 21:28Speaker 1: wasn't aware of that until this. Oh yeah, this project
- 21:32Speaker 1: Nils is on after the gold Rush Wild. Yeah, he
- 21:35Speaker 1: plays piano on After the gold Rush. And you wanted
- 21:39Speaker 1: him to play piano because he couldn't play piano, Is
- 21:41Speaker 1: that correct? Yeah? Well he played accordion, right, so I
- 21:46Speaker 1: knew he could play piano, right, And I knew, you know,
- 21:49Speaker 1: he's a music he's everything, you know, So I just
- 21:52Speaker 1: didn't want him to sound like he really knew what
- 21:54Speaker 1: he was doing so sure of himself, you know, because
- 21:58Speaker 1: that wouldn't go with everybody else. We had a good time.
- 22:06Speaker 1: It's amazing that you found guys who you can play
- 22:08Speaker 1: with for fifty years and still sound like maybe it's
- 22:12Speaker 1: not going to happen. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Well, Nils
- 22:16Speaker 1: is a great, great musician, and we'll miss him when
- 22:20Speaker 1: he's out there with Bruce, but he'll be back for sure,
- 22:22Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we'll just wait around, let's see
- 22:26Speaker 1: what happens, and uh, if I do anything anything else
- 22:30Speaker 1: in the meantime, yeah, I've asked Micah, Mica and Nelson
- 22:34Speaker 1: and he'll step in and be with the horse. So
- 22:37Speaker 1: you know we were ready to rock. If we decide
- 22:40Speaker 1: to go out, we're gonna take a quick break and
- 22:43Speaker 1: then we'll be back with Rick Rubin and Neil Young.
- 22:51Speaker 1: We're back with more from Rick Rubin and Neil Young.
- 22:54Speaker 1: Is it different writing a song on guitar versus piano?
- 22:58Speaker 1: For you? You know, they're all the same. It's just
- 23:02Speaker 1: wherever I am and whatever it is. I don't have
- 23:06Speaker 1: much method. I just I'm just there in it, and
- 23:10Speaker 1: I never try. I only do it if it happens.
- 23:13Speaker 1: If I hear a melody and I start seeing a
- 23:17Speaker 1: keyboard or a guitar or listening, then I'll pick it
- 23:20Speaker 1: up and try it, and then I'll stay with it
- 23:22Speaker 1: until I don't hear it anymore. Usually that's how a
- 23:24Speaker 1: song arrives. But in the last six months since we
- 23:27Speaker 1: finished this, I haven't heard anything. But over the course
- 23:30Speaker 1: of your life, there's been no rule of how and
- 23:32Speaker 1: when it comes it comes. At first, it was all
- 23:35Speaker 1: guitar because I could hardly play piano. At any point,
- 23:38Speaker 1: did you pack this piano, like, did you decide I
- 23:40Speaker 1: want to be able to play pianomore? Yeah, when I
- 23:42Speaker 1: was in high school or there was a piano downstairs,
- 23:44Speaker 1: and we lived in a triplex and my mom and
- 23:48Speaker 1: I were on the top floor, and then in the
- 23:50Speaker 1: basement there were some college guys. Outside of their room
- 23:55Speaker 1: was a piano. So the piano wasn't really in their room.
- 23:58Speaker 1: It was at the bottom of the stairs, understood, And
- 24:01Speaker 1: then then you went into their room. It felt like
- 24:04Speaker 1: their space or kind of. But that's how I learned
- 24:07Speaker 1: to play what's the name of that song by the
- 24:11Speaker 1: Marquis Dana Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, do
- 24:18Speaker 1: not last dance something? Let me check on Marquis, Yeah,
- 24:22Speaker 1: Marquis check. Maybe I can even play it, let's see. Anyway,
- 24:25Speaker 1: I learned how to play that on the piano and
- 24:28Speaker 1: kind of a very vanilla fashion because they were pretty funky.
- 24:31Speaker 1: What the heck is the name? And that's I think
- 24:33Speaker 1: they might have been from New Orleans last night last night.
- 24:37Speaker 1: That's it. Let's see. So would you have heard that
- 24:50Speaker 1: on the radio? Yeah? So I learned how to play
- 24:53Speaker 1: that on the piano. It's the first song I learned
- 24:54Speaker 1: how to play. And it sounds like if you could
- 24:56Speaker 1: play that on the piano, you could play a lot
- 24:58Speaker 1: of songs because it was all of the songs that
- 25:00Speaker 1: I can play. Now, that's basically all I know how
- 25:04Speaker 1: to do. Luckily, a lot of songs go like that.
- 25:08Speaker 1: Yeah they Yeah, now that was fun. So that's how
- 25:12Speaker 1: I started when I was in high school of playing
- 25:14Speaker 1: a piano on that thing. Yeah, I just thinking about
- 25:17Speaker 1: the h the process of having a melody and figuring
- 25:21Speaker 1: out chords. Did you figure out all the chords using
- 25:24Speaker 1: the pump organ or or different instruments to find them?
- 25:29Speaker 1: Pump organ was mostly what I used sometimes, the upright piano.
- 25:33Speaker 1: The song Chevrolet I learned on the guitar from the piano.
- 25:40Speaker 1: And then the other song that I did was Break
- 25:44Speaker 1: the Chain, and I just played that on guitar because
- 25:48Speaker 1: it was, you know, obviously a guitar song. But really
- 25:53Speaker 1: the first time I played it was well, we played it,
- 25:57Speaker 1: and that's the one that's in the record. Yeah, you
- 26:00Speaker 1: can tell it's it's we just pick up the beat
- 26:03Speaker 1: in the beginning, it kind of finds itself, and that
- 26:06Speaker 1: was the first time we played it. We played it
- 26:07Speaker 1: a few times after that, but on them were anything
- 26:10Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I mean they were good. We got
- 26:12Speaker 1: through it, yeah, but it wasn't like that one that
- 26:14Speaker 1: is a thing that normally you know how to play
- 26:18Speaker 1: the song and the band maybe has never heard it. Yeah,
- 26:21Speaker 1: so they can follow you because you're solid and they're
- 26:25Speaker 1: they're accompanying your performance. Yeah. And then but you get it. Yeah,
- 26:30Speaker 1: but in this case, you don't really know the songs
- 26:33Speaker 1: because you didn't write them the way they normally come now.
- 26:37Speaker 1: But both Chevrolet and Uh and the other song that
- 26:40Speaker 1: we were just talking about, both those songs break the
- 26:43Speaker 1: Chain and Chevrolet, we're both take one, Yeah, I mean Chevrolet.
- 26:48Speaker 1: We did six more versions after that. Yeah, but they
- 26:51Speaker 1: weren't better. They weren't like, they weren't better than that one.
- 26:54Speaker 1: There were a couple of minutes and a couple of
- 26:55Speaker 1: the other ones. That's an interesting thing too, that sometimes
- 26:58Speaker 1: you gotta go past it to know which is the horns,
- 27:01Speaker 1: like you never you never know until you go. You
- 27:04Speaker 1: gotta go buy it exactly and experience well, just as
- 27:08Speaker 1: good as that was. Yeah, And we know from past
- 27:12Speaker 1: experience that coming in the next day and trying it
- 27:14Speaker 1: again does work. Yeah, that's hardly ever works with me.
- 27:19Speaker 1: We try to get it. I try to get them
- 27:20Speaker 1: so I know the songs well enough to do them
- 27:24Speaker 1: and so I had all the lyrics, I had everything
- 27:27Speaker 1: done it. You know, everything was ready, you know, I wasn't.
- 27:29Speaker 1: You know. Chevrolet was a big song with a lot
- 27:32Speaker 1: of changes, and I jammed on the changes with the
- 27:35Speaker 1: band for a while without singing it. You know, we
- 27:38Speaker 1: did that before we played it. And then the good
- 27:41Speaker 1: thing about that is, you know, when you start playing
- 27:44Speaker 1: the stuff and you're playing it, it's the first time.
- 27:47Speaker 1: It's the first time I heard it, yeah, and the
- 27:50Speaker 1: first time they heard it, and we were all playing
- 27:52Speaker 1: it together, and it just grows and there's something there is.
- 27:57Speaker 1: There's something to that that I really enjoy. And that's
- 28:00Speaker 1: the way I try to make records. There's definitely an
- 28:03Speaker 1: excitement when you don't know what it's going to be
- 28:05Speaker 1: when you get to hear it, yeah, and it's exciting.
- 28:09Speaker 1: It's got to go into your playing, you know, you
- 28:12Speaker 1: have to play it differently when you're feeling the thrill
- 28:15Speaker 1: of experiencing it for the first time. Yeah, Like in Chevrolet,
- 28:20Speaker 1: when we get to the second instrumental after the intro
- 28:23Speaker 1: and then the first verse and it comes back and
- 28:26Speaker 1: this is now worth three and a half four minutes
- 28:28Speaker 1: into the song and the first repetition happens. Yeah, and
- 28:33Speaker 1: so you figure it's got three verses, so it's like,
- 28:37Speaker 1: you know it. You know it's going to be a journey.
- 28:39Speaker 1: So we started playing that and I was playing the
- 28:42Speaker 1: guitar riff and I can hear it, and I'm going this,
- 28:45Speaker 1: it's cool, this is good, and we just keep doing
- 28:49Speaker 1: them and just advancing along, and it's like a long
- 28:53Speaker 1: trip in a car, you know, sometimes the road is great,
- 28:56Speaker 1: sometimes it's not. Yeah, it's real, it's real. It's real.
- 29:01Speaker 1: That's why I think that hangs in there for whatever
- 29:04Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. Yeah. It's also after like some of the
- 29:08Speaker 1: solo sections are so long and deep that when you
- 29:13Speaker 1: come back and singing, it's strange like that, there's still
- 29:17Speaker 1: there's a song going on it because we've do you
- 29:19Speaker 1: know what I mean, it's a new verse. This it's like, wow,
- 29:22Speaker 1: there's still a song. Yeah, because where we've gone a
- 29:25Speaker 1: long ways away. Yeah, that's right. That's a special. It's
- 29:29Speaker 1: a special in that song because of that. The verses
- 29:33Speaker 1: are over two minutes each verse. That's a long verse. Yeah,
- 29:37Speaker 1: And you know that came from writing it on the
- 29:39Speaker 1: piano and developing all the chord changes. And I just
- 29:43Speaker 1: didn't feel like it was time to repeat anything. I
- 29:45Speaker 1: didn't want to go back. I wanted to keep on going.
- 29:48Speaker 1: And the parts are cool, like one part after another.
- 29:50Speaker 1: It's a cool part, that another cool part, and another
- 29:53Speaker 1: cool part. If you don't analyze the music of it,
- 29:56Speaker 1: it doesn't feel strange or like it's long. It doesn't
- 29:59Speaker 1: feel long, No, it does. It just flows really naturally. Yeah,
- 30:03Speaker 1: we're lucky. We were very fortunate. We got a gift,
- 30:06Speaker 1: that's how I look at it, and we're we're in
- 30:09Speaker 1: the right place at the right time. At what point
- 30:12Speaker 1: in your life would you say you listen to the
- 30:14Speaker 1: most music. Probably I'd say I listened more in the
- 30:19Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. You think because it was just new
- 30:23Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, I think so. I used to like
- 30:28Speaker 1: to listen to things over and over again and hear them.
- 30:31Speaker 1: Now I just uh, if I hear it once, I know,
- 30:35Speaker 1: you know. But these songs I like to listen to
- 30:38Speaker 1: over and over again. Yeah, I think because it's so
- 30:42Speaker 1: abstract what's going on. I mean, it's funny way to
- 30:44Speaker 1: describe it, because it's they are as songs. They're pretty
- 30:48Speaker 1: straightforward songs, pretty straight ahead. Yeah, but for some reason.
- 30:52Speaker 1: The paintings of them are pretty abstract. Yeah, yeah, I
- 30:56Speaker 1: don't know how that happened, man, I just I just
- 30:59Speaker 1: know that we're here and we were all together, and
- 31:02Speaker 1: I remember i'd look at Ralph after we finished, because
- 31:04Speaker 1: that's the barometer. You just look at Ralph and you
- 31:07Speaker 1: can tell whether you got it or not. And it
- 31:09Speaker 1: was not because he's going, hey, that was great. It's
- 31:11Speaker 1: not like that. No, it's a body thing, you know.
- 31:15Speaker 1: And uh, at the end of Chevrolet it ends, and
- 31:21Speaker 1: then there's a break and nobody's saying anything much, and
- 31:24Speaker 1: then Ralph says to Billy, how long was that song?
- 31:30Speaker 1: And Billy looks at Ralph and goes, not long enough.
- 31:38Speaker 1: It's crazy. Yeah, it's still high school for a crazy horse.
- 31:41Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's unbelievable. And then oh yeah. And then
- 31:45Speaker 1: somewhere in there Ralph's Ralph told Neils, he said, you know,
- 31:49Speaker 1: I think you're playing a little timid, and Neils went
- 31:54Speaker 1: off to Timid. You know, it's funny, but only in
- 32:00Speaker 1: a you know, in a high school kind of group
- 32:02Speaker 1: way would you have these comments. And you know, this
- 32:06Speaker 1: ship and it's all so real with these guys, so
- 32:09Speaker 1: it's amazing. I enjoy it, man, I really truly do.
- 32:12Speaker 1: I'm glad we got to share that. Is there every
- 32:14Speaker 1: time with the songs that happen over the course of
- 32:17Speaker 1: your life, When you're writing them, you don't really know
- 32:20Speaker 1: what they're about. Is there ever a time later where
- 32:25Speaker 1: it's like, oh, maybe this is about this. Do you
- 32:27Speaker 1: ever have insights into the songs later? No, I really don't.
- 32:32Speaker 1: I don't have any insights in the one song I
- 32:36Speaker 1: was thinking of when you started saying that was I
- 32:38Speaker 1: did a song called will to Love and I did
- 32:42Speaker 1: it on a cassette player sony cassette, sitting on the
- 32:47Speaker 1: hearth of a fireplace with the fire burning, and I'm
- 32:50Speaker 1: sitting there in the middle of the night, playing my
- 32:52Speaker 1: guitar and playing this song which I just had written,
- 32:55Speaker 1: which I was writing. So I wrote the words and
- 32:59Speaker 1: had them all written out, and then I started playing it.
- 33:02Speaker 1: And I only did it once and that was it.
- 33:06Speaker 1: And then a couple of months later, I was here
- 33:08Speaker 1: in Malibu up on that Indigo ranch. Yeah, I was
- 33:14Speaker 1: up there with Briggs and we did the recording up
- 33:18Speaker 1: there of where I overdubbed all the other instruments, you know.
- 33:22Speaker 1: I played drums. I played bass in a certain area.
- 33:26Speaker 1: Suddenly kind of a jazz band joins in and plays
- 33:30Speaker 1: for maybe four or five or six bars and then stops.
- 33:33Speaker 1: It's very weird. It's like a big sketch the whole thing.
- 33:36Speaker 1: And so I sketched in background vocals that I couldn't
- 33:39Speaker 1: sing the same thing at two parts at the same
- 33:42Speaker 1: time that I knew they had to be there for
- 33:44Speaker 1: it to make sense. And the song was about a fish,
- 33:49Speaker 1: a fish swimming, a salmon trying to make its way
- 33:52Speaker 1: up the river. So I really didn't know what I
- 33:55Speaker 1: was thinking about, but it was just that the salmon
- 33:59Speaker 1: had had the will to love. The salmon wanted to
- 34:02Speaker 1: go and get to this place, and that's that was it.
- 34:06Speaker 1: So that's that's the whole thing. What was it like
- 34:09Speaker 1: working Briggs? Briggs was great, brings a lot like you.
- 34:13Speaker 1: He was. You guys are very similar. Briggs is different,
- 34:17Speaker 1: you know, definitely his own unique guy. But he wasn't
- 34:22Speaker 1: shy about what he knew how to do, wasn't shy
- 34:25Speaker 1: about organizing things, telling people what to do. And uh, well,
- 34:30Speaker 1: Briggs was a good engineer. Yeah, he was at the
- 34:33Speaker 1: board at Hyder all the time. When we recorded it
- 34:35Speaker 1: on Selma and Coega there and we recorded. Everybody knows
- 34:40Speaker 1: he was at the board. He was at the board
- 34:43Speaker 1: during my first album. And we went out and I
- 34:47Speaker 1: remember recording somewhere out in Glendale. I was a pipe
- 34:51Speaker 1: organ in a building and I used it on a
- 34:54Speaker 1: song called I've Been Waiting for You and went out
- 34:57Speaker 1: and recorded that pipe organ. That's an amazing thing. And
- 35:01Speaker 1: then we came back to Hiders and we did that
- 35:05Speaker 1: whole trip with it. But Briggs is great. Briggs is great,
- 35:08Speaker 1: and you know, so I look at you. Two guys
- 35:10Speaker 1: are like brothers as far as I'm concerned. Her brothers
- 35:13Speaker 1: who never met. How do you first meet Briggs? I
- 35:16Speaker 1: was walking down to Panga Canyon Boulevard Old to Panga
- 35:20Speaker 1: on my way to go to the Canyon Kitchen to
- 35:24Speaker 1: have breakfast. And I'm walking along and this World War
- 35:30Speaker 1: two army vehicle drive spy and that stops in front
- 35:35Speaker 1: of me and I walk up to it and there's
- 35:38Speaker 1: two guys in there, and one guy says he want
- 35:40Speaker 1: to ride. I said, sure, I'm just going down to
- 35:43Speaker 1: the Canyon Kitchen that we'll give you a ride down there.
- 35:46Speaker 1: So that's how I met him. Had you ever recorded
- 35:48Speaker 1: at this point? Oh? Yeah, I made the Buffalo Springfield Records.
- 35:53Speaker 1: I had not made my first solo record. I was
- 35:56Speaker 1: at the point where the Springfield was breaking up, and
- 35:59Speaker 1: I was living at a girl's house, Linda Stevens was
- 36:04Speaker 1: her name, and I'm around a mile and a half
- 36:08Speaker 1: walk from where she us to that place, and somewhere
- 36:10Speaker 1: along there along comes this old you know, it's like
- 36:13Speaker 1: it's not like a Humby or something that was, but
- 36:15Speaker 1: it was an open military vehicle, like a giant jeep, huge,
- 36:21Speaker 1: big tires and everything. And it was Briggs and somebody
- 36:25Speaker 1: else I can't remember who it was. That's how we met.
- 36:28Speaker 1: And then on the way back, they showed me where
- 36:31Speaker 1: they lived, where he lived. He took me in there
- 36:34Speaker 1: and I looked at it and I said, wait, this
- 36:37Speaker 1: is where Stills used to live. Stills was having a
- 36:41Speaker 1: party out there we were, and we all got busted,
- 36:44Speaker 1: and so we ended up going to jail for smoking weed,
- 36:48Speaker 1: and we all got you know, we got out and
- 36:50Speaker 1: everything was okay, but that's a Springfield days. Then Briggs
- 36:55Speaker 1: is living there and I recognized the place, and sudden
- 36:59Speaker 1: I'm going, hey, I've been here before and then, uh,
- 37:02Speaker 1: you know, I would since it was just down the road,
- 37:04Speaker 1: I'd go visit him, and he was doing Murray Roman.
- 37:09Speaker 1: I don't know Murray Room. He was a comedian and
- 37:12Speaker 1: Briggs was recording him, and he also was getting here.
- 37:15Speaker 1: I think he recorded Spirits first album, How Cool, And
- 37:19Speaker 1: you know he was doing stuff like that and just
- 37:21Speaker 1: getting started. And we just started talking about Megan Records
- 37:26Speaker 1: and we made my first record and many many more
- 37:30Speaker 1: after that. Was it obvious when the band broke up
- 37:35Speaker 1: that you wanted to make solo records as opposed to
- 37:37Speaker 1: putting together a new band. Yeah, I wanted to do
- 37:40Speaker 1: a solo because I didn't want to be hindered by
- 37:42Speaker 1: held back by other things, other opinions. Yeah, I had
- 37:46Speaker 1: a lot of ideas, too many songs. I don't enough time.
- 37:51Speaker 1: Did you feel held back in Buffalo Springfield? Not really.
- 37:54Speaker 1: That was a great band. I just had more songs
- 37:57Speaker 1: than I could put in the band because there were
- 38:01Speaker 1: you know, Stephen was writing, Richie wrote, and I was writing,
- 38:05Speaker 1: and Bruce and Dewey didn't write. But I could write
- 38:09Speaker 1: enough songs for an album myself. And the time that
- 38:11Speaker 1: it would take the Springfield to get ready to record
- 38:14Speaker 1: an albums, So I wrote a lot of songs. Do
- 38:19Speaker 1: you remember the first time you heard Crosby Stills in Nash?
- 38:24Speaker 1: I think it was after that record came out. I
- 38:26Speaker 1: listened to some of it, and and I because Stephen.
- 38:30Speaker 1: I always missed Stephen, and what's Stephen doing? You know?
- 38:33Speaker 1: And I could hear him, what are you doing? I
- 38:36Speaker 1: could hear he was producing and playing a lot of
- 38:38Speaker 1: instruments and doing that. And I could hear that in
- 38:41Speaker 1: the tracks for the first CSN album, And I knew
- 38:46Speaker 1: he could do that, But I like playing with him
- 38:49Speaker 1: live better. Yeah, he's a great musician. Yeah. He had
- 38:53Speaker 1: a lot of great ideas, and he had big, big ideas,
- 38:58Speaker 1: big beautiful ideas. Yeah, he was an amazing talent. A
- 39:06Speaker 1: lot of respect for Stephen. Do you feel like he
- 39:08Speaker 1: would push you to be better or was his greatness
- 39:12Speaker 1: something that would make you better? Oh? Definitely. He was
- 39:15Speaker 1: just so naturally good. Yeah, kind of singing was great.
- 39:20Speaker 1: What a singer. He was learning how to play guitar
- 39:24Speaker 1: and singing great, and learning how to play piano, and
- 39:28Speaker 1: he just never stopped growing, just kept growing. And that
- 39:33Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. How did you end up
- 39:35Speaker 1: joining that band, a CSN band. Yeah, Stephen came out
- 39:40Speaker 1: and asked me if I wanted to join and do
- 39:43Speaker 1: a CSMY thing because they wanted to go on the road.
- 39:45Speaker 1: And I think almeded To suggested to Stephen that Stephen
- 39:51Speaker 1: and I play really well together and if that was happening,
- 39:54Speaker 1: that would hold the whole thing together. So they never
- 39:58Speaker 1: toured without you. No, I don't think that would have happened,
- 40:02Speaker 1: or it might have happened, yeah, But the history is
- 40:05Speaker 1: they put out an album, then decide, Okay, if we
- 40:08Speaker 1: want to play live, it'd be better to do it
- 40:10Speaker 1: with you. Yeah, And then you play live with them,
- 40:14Speaker 1: and did you play songs from the first album. I
- 40:16Speaker 1: didn't play live with them until after we'd done Deja Vu. Wow.
- 40:21Speaker 1: So they never toured for their first album. I don't
- 40:24Speaker 1: think so that's amazing. We went right in and did
- 40:28Speaker 1: another one, wow, although we did. I think the Greek
- 40:30Speaker 1: theater was. I remember doing I've Loved Her So Long,
- 40:34Speaker 1: which was on my first solo album. I did it
- 40:37Speaker 1: with Graham Nash, but I don't remember doing Helpless, so
- 40:43Speaker 1: maybe we hadn't done Helpless yet. It might have been
- 40:47Speaker 1: one gig. Yeah, you know before we got out there
- 40:50Speaker 1: and recorded Deja Vu. But I'd have to look on
- 40:54Speaker 1: If I looked at my archives, I'd be able to
- 40:56Speaker 1: figure it out right away because Woodstock, the gig, happened
- 41:01Speaker 1: in between right at that time, also, so that it'd
- 41:04Speaker 1: be the separator. I think Woodstock was between Deja Vu
- 41:08Speaker 1: and CuSn, But it was also one of the first
- 41:11Speaker 1: times I ever played with CSN, So if it was
- 41:15Speaker 1: that I was playing with them live before we did
- 41:19Speaker 1: Deja Vu, that would be a gig in Chicago, maybe
- 41:24Speaker 1: the gig in la at the Greek Theater and a
- 41:29Speaker 1: Chicago auditorium gig, and then Woodstock. I think that's all
- 41:34Speaker 1: we did, so I may not when we did Woodstock,
- 41:38Speaker 1: we may not have recorded Deja Vu yet because Woodstock
- 41:44Speaker 1: the song is on Deja Vu. Yeah, Joni wrote it
- 41:48Speaker 1: after Woodstock. Yeah, so that's probably the chronology. Do you
- 41:53Speaker 1: remember what it was like recording the Deja Vu album
- 41:56Speaker 1: at all? We recorded a lot of it up in
- 41:58Speaker 1: San Francisco at Hiders, and it was pretty cool. It
- 42:02Speaker 1: was fun. Good to be playing with Stephen again. Yeah,
- 42:05Speaker 1: great to be playing with Stephen again and in the studio,
- 42:07Speaker 1: and those guys were great, and they were great in
- 42:10Speaker 1: the studio. I think that was about the time that
- 42:13Speaker 1: did Crosby started getting into the free base and kind
- 42:17Speaker 1: of got out of it, but it got him. It's
- 42:21Speaker 1: too bad. But anyway, he you know, we had a
- 42:24Speaker 1: good thing going on there for a while, but that
- 42:27Speaker 1: after the drugs and all that stuff happened. Maybe that's
- 42:31Speaker 1: when we tried to do another album that he had
- 42:34Speaker 1: taken the drugs. But I don't know, you saw hazy back.
- 42:38Speaker 1: You always planned on continuing your solo career, regardless of
- 42:41Speaker 1: whatever whatever else he would. I mean, you know, I
- 42:43Speaker 1: had too many songs. Yeah, it was just it was
- 42:46Speaker 1: a project essentially. Plus I'd already done. I think I
- 42:49Speaker 1: already done. Everybody knows it is nowhere by then. I
- 42:52Speaker 1: don't know how at all evolved, but it feels like
- 42:56Speaker 1: there was a stark change from your first solo stuff
- 42:59Speaker 1: to everybody knows or yeah, or even after the gold
- 43:04Speaker 1: Rush is like really, it feels like after the Goldish
- 43:07Speaker 1: in some ways is the first Neil Young sounding record,
- 43:11Speaker 1: you know, for do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah,
- 43:14Speaker 1: how do you think that happened? Well, I built a
- 43:18Speaker 1: studio in my house into Panga and that's where we
- 43:21Speaker 1: recorded after the gold Rush. Before that, I was going
- 43:25Speaker 1: into the studio and recording more more professional, professional studios,
- 43:29Speaker 1: like kind of like from Buffalo Springfield type of thing. Yeah.
- 43:34Speaker 1: And then when I got together with Crazy Horse, we
- 43:38Speaker 1: practiced in the house into Panga, but we went into
- 43:41Speaker 1: Hiders and that's where we played all those songs and
- 43:44Speaker 1: that was so much fun. Still remember looking at Ralph
- 43:47Speaker 1: when we were doing down by the River and he
- 43:50Speaker 1: was playing, and he just looked at me for a
- 43:52Speaker 1: second and he just shook his head and looking up
- 43:54Speaker 1: in the air and uh. And he never likes anybody
- 43:59Speaker 1: to ever look at him. Don't ever look at Ralph. Stop,
- 44:03Speaker 1: don't look at me. He just wants to play, doesn't
- 44:05Speaker 1: want to make any contact. He just wants to be
- 44:07Speaker 1: in the music. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, it's a great Drummer's
- 44:12Speaker 1: amazing field drummer. So yeah, feel it's all it is. Yeah.
- 44:17Speaker 1: So some of these songs he stops playing, Yeah, but
- 44:20Speaker 1: it's works for the song. It's like a big Phil Yeah,
- 44:23Speaker 1: there are no drums. Then he comes back in. Yeah,
- 44:27Speaker 1: that's pretty wild. He really is one of a kind drummer.
- 44:30Speaker 1: He really is. Yeah, and Billy is a one of
- 44:32Speaker 1: a kind based and they groove together incredibly well. Yeah,
- 44:37Speaker 1: Crazy Billy is great one note at a time, and
- 44:43Speaker 1: each note is like a universe, yeah of soul and sound. Yeah,
- 44:48Speaker 1: he definitely means it. Yes, he really means every note. Yeah.
- 44:54Speaker 1: So in some ways it sounds like the album you
- 44:57Speaker 1: recorded at home that sort of set the stage for it.
- 44:59Speaker 1: Seems like most of what's happened since. Yeah, even when
- 45:03Speaker 1: you're in a professional place, you're still approaching it in
- 45:06Speaker 1: this same way, homemade, personal, not concerned with the technically
- 45:14Speaker 1: right way to do anything. No, that's what was so
- 45:17Speaker 1: different about Harvest, because there was I had no idea
- 45:20Speaker 1: what I was doing. I had never met the musicians
- 45:23Speaker 1: before Elliot Maser put that all together and we went
- 45:26Speaker 1: in the studio in Nashville. He was in a barn
- 45:29Speaker 1: or in a studio in Quadraphonic Nashville on sixteenth. Yeah,
- 45:34Speaker 1: it was this house studio with a house with the
- 45:37Speaker 1: studio and yeah, a lot of studios like that in Nashville.
- 45:42Speaker 1: A great studio, really good sound, and that was a
- 45:47Speaker 1: lot of fun. Elliot Maser did a great job, and
- 45:50Speaker 1: you know, so there were four or five six songs
- 45:52Speaker 1: recorded at that time and then but that was in
- 45:55Speaker 1: the studio and we were sitting there playing like we
- 45:57Speaker 1: were making a session and more like the Springfield. But
- 46:00Speaker 1: those for those songs, you knew the songs at that point.
- 46:04Speaker 1: I knew him really well. I was playing them on
- 46:05Speaker 1: the road. Great. So you're playing them as a solo
- 46:07Speaker 1: ARTI like solo acoustic and the band had never heard them,
- 46:12Speaker 1: and they started playing him right away. They learned him
- 46:14Speaker 1: real fast. Those guys were really good. They were like
- 46:18Speaker 1: great studio players from Nashville. That was that was unique.
- 46:22Speaker 1: It sounds like that probably happened really fast. If you
- 46:24Speaker 1: knew this das well it did. I knew the songs
- 46:27Speaker 1: really well. As soon as they had the chart they
- 46:31Speaker 1: were playing what they played. Battery wore a great drummer,
- 46:34Speaker 1: amazing drummer, Tim Drummond, great bass player Ben Keith. Ben
- 46:40Speaker 1: played with me from that moment until when he died. Yeah,
- 46:44Speaker 1: made a lot of great records with Ben. I think
- 46:47Speaker 1: there's that BBC concert that you did solo with those
- 46:51Speaker 1: songs before you made the album. It seemed like it
- 46:53Speaker 1: was before you made the album. Yeah, that was during
- 46:56Speaker 1: the time of the album. If I remember correctly. One
- 47:00Speaker 1: of the songs he played was not the whole like
- 47:02Speaker 1: it was a part of one of the songs that
- 47:04Speaker 1: ended up being a full song on the album. I
- 47:06Speaker 1: can't remember specifically, but something like that. The timing of that,
- 47:10Speaker 1: I'll have to check that out in the archives and
- 47:12Speaker 1: see how it worked. But that's all part of the
- 47:14Speaker 1: Harvest fiftieth anniversary. So Carvest Time movie, it's got all
- 47:20Speaker 1: that stuff in it. And when does that happen? That's
- 47:22Speaker 1: happening off immediately. Really, this is the fiftieth anniversary of
- 47:26Speaker 1: Harvests now probably the fifty first. I mean we're probably oh,
- 47:29Speaker 1: that's unbelievable. I know, well, yeah, it was seventy one,
- 47:33Speaker 1: so this is twenty two. So explain the archive. That's
- 47:39Speaker 1: a good one. You know. I collect things so and
- 47:44Speaker 1: I like the idea of things being in order. And
- 47:48Speaker 1: then when I thought learned about a website, I thought, wow,
- 47:51Speaker 1: I could just put this all in a build a
- 47:53Speaker 1: file cabinet and put everything in the file cabinet like
- 47:55Speaker 1: an old school And I just came up with all
- 47:59Speaker 1: these ideas for how to do it. And it's the
- 48:01Speaker 1: same system that any archival thing would be just in
- 48:05Speaker 1: a giant file cabinet, but each song has got its
- 48:08Speaker 1: own index cards and everything about the song is there,
- 48:12Speaker 1: so you know, it's chronological. Everything from the beginnings of
- 48:16Speaker 1: the end is all of this time going by, and
- 48:19Speaker 1: it's your personal archive. But it's accessible by everybody. Yeah,
- 48:24Speaker 1: anybody can go and look at it. Check it out
- 48:26Speaker 1: if you want to listen to all of my music
- 48:28Speaker 1: and high res I think you have to subscribe to
- 48:31Speaker 1: do that, but it's all there, and I think it's
- 48:35Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five a year. I just don't want to
- 48:38Speaker 1: charge for it, you know, I just I just don't think.
- 48:42Speaker 1: I just wanted to be there. Yeah, and I probably
- 48:45Speaker 1: could make more money from it if I charge more,
- 48:48Speaker 1: but I don't know. So far, so good. Yeah, people
- 48:53Speaker 1: could listen to anything in the same quality that they
- 48:57Speaker 1: could hear it in the world for free. Yeah that's
- 49:02Speaker 1: only Yeah, you can only you're only paying to hear
- 49:05Speaker 1: it in a way that you can't hear it anywhere
- 49:07Speaker 1: else in a higher quality. Yeah. Or you can hear
- 49:10Speaker 1: it on Amazon, yeah, and you can hear it on Apple,
- 49:13Speaker 1: and you can hear it on cobuzz. Those are the
- 49:16Speaker 1: three high res services and apples. Not all high res.
- 49:20Speaker 1: But and they're not even like in that thing anymore
- 49:23Speaker 1: like they were. I don't know really what they're doing,
- 49:26Speaker 1: but they do supply music and you could get to
- 49:29Speaker 1: stream all kinds of stuff and you can get it
- 49:31Speaker 1: from them. So they sell my stuff high Amazon does
- 49:35Speaker 1: high res. So anybody who does hi res, I'm there
- 49:38Speaker 1: for them one hundred percent, yes, because I think that's
- 49:40Speaker 1: what the music. That's the only saving grace of digital
- 49:44Speaker 1: is that it has high res and we need that.
- 49:47Speaker 1: We need it to sound good, we need it to
- 49:49Speaker 1: sound as great as it can. We'll be right back
- 49:52Speaker 1: with the rest of Rick Ruben's conversation with Neil Young.
- 49:55Speaker 1: After a quick break, here's the rest of Rick Ruben's
- 50:02Speaker 1: conversation with Neil Young. Tell me about when you first heard,
- 50:05Speaker 1: because you made a handful of albums in digital and
- 50:09Speaker 1: digital first hit, Yeah, do you remember what the first
- 50:11Speaker 1: one was? It was around in the eighties. After US
- 50:16Speaker 1: Never sleeps afew was Trans after that, Yeah, Trans was definite.
- 50:21Speaker 1: Trans was on the edge of that eighty two. We
- 50:24Speaker 1: recorded in on analog tape and then we mixed it
- 50:28Speaker 1: to analog. Trans is actually almost a whole analog, but
- 50:31Speaker 1: it came out on CDs. You know, it was getting
- 50:35Speaker 1: to be the end of vinyl. After that was everybody's rocking. Yeah,
- 50:39Speaker 1: that was that was all digital. That was Mitsubishi thirty
- 50:43Speaker 1: two track, you know, sixteen bit forty four one CD quality.
- 50:50Speaker 1: And if anytime you'll listen to that for very long loud,
- 50:53Speaker 1: your head hurts. That's what I discovered because I always
- 50:57Speaker 1: listened loud and long, and that's that's when I realized
- 51:01Speaker 1: something was wrong. When did you switch back to recording analog?
- 51:06Speaker 1: Probably in the nineties again, Yeah, I started going back
- 51:11Speaker 1: because I wanted to have the analog source. And then
- 51:14Speaker 1: Vinyl started making a comeback. Here's an idea. I got
- 51:18Speaker 1: an idea, let's go check this out. Vinyl very popular
- 51:23Speaker 1: because people when they hear a good Vinyl, they love it. Right,
- 51:26Speaker 1: So there's only one other way to get that. It's radio.
- 51:30Speaker 1: Remember those old analog transmitters on top of the buildings
- 51:34Speaker 1: in New York and Chicago, Cincinnati and Boston. Yeah, and
- 51:40Speaker 1: they went far, long way yeah analog. Yeah, So you
- 51:45Speaker 1: could play a Vinyl record on an analog radio station
- 51:50Speaker 1: and you never went digital, and it would go to
- 51:54Speaker 1: everywhere everywhere that they had a radio that wasn't a
- 51:58Speaker 1: digital radio. So you'd have to have an analog radio
- 52:02Speaker 1: that can play can pick up a digital station, but
- 52:05Speaker 1: it's not a digital radio picking up a digital station.
- 52:10Speaker 1: But that's could be the future of great sound is radio, AM,
- 52:16Speaker 1: radio or FM, whatever, as long as it's analog because
- 52:21Speaker 1: it can be broadcast. Imagine vinyl quality. You say how
- 52:24Speaker 1: hard it is it to get vinyl, but a radio
- 52:27Speaker 1: station could send it to millions of people. Yeah, and
- 52:32Speaker 1: it's one step away. It's one step away from being possible. Yeah,
- 52:37Speaker 1: that'd be cool. It would be cool. The difference between
- 52:41Speaker 1: play and what they play? What is it? MP three's
- 52:44Speaker 1: most of the time on the radio? Yea. At the
- 52:47Speaker 1: best it'd be a CD, yeah, which is not very
- 52:50Speaker 1: good compared to analog. It's like really not good. And
- 52:54Speaker 1: if that was coming through people's radios. But you know
- 52:57Speaker 1: people are now, they're they're in this thing about well
- 53:00Speaker 1: they did the cars digital. This is digital ads digital
- 53:05Speaker 1: and it still don't realize how much gets lost. Digital
- 53:09Speaker 1: loses it all. I'm really a great amount. Like I'm
- 53:12Speaker 1: looking out this window and looking out of the beautiful
- 53:14Speaker 1: green wand and a blue sky and beautiful trees and
- 53:18Speaker 1: all the detail of every little part of everything is
- 53:22Speaker 1: all there. And if this was a digital picture, it
- 53:25Speaker 1: going to be like there was a screen up, yeah,
- 53:28Speaker 1: and I was looking through each little hole in the screen,
- 53:31Speaker 1: But that's been averaged out to the dominant color in
- 53:35Speaker 1: that hole. So instead of seeing a universe of color
- 53:39Speaker 1: when I move up and look through it, I get
- 53:43Speaker 1: up because that thing and it's all like one shade
- 53:46Speaker 1: of blue or one shade of green. And that's why
- 53:49Speaker 1: our bodies don't feel. That's why we don't feel the
- 53:52Speaker 1: music like we used to, because it's not there. It's
- 53:57Speaker 1: only a reconstitution of something that sounds like it for
- 54:00Speaker 1: ones and zeros. But businessmen love the ones and zeros
- 54:06Speaker 1: because they can say, well, the cheap stuff is less numbers.
- 54:11Speaker 1: The most expensive and best stuff is the high numbers.
- 54:16Speaker 1: So we'll only sell the good stuff to the people
- 54:20Speaker 1: with the most money. You know, it's not really a
- 54:23Speaker 1: common thing for everybody to have that, so basically yet
- 54:27Speaker 1: because of that thinking, yeah, the floor went to the
- 54:30Speaker 1: bottom for quality and music. That happened about nineteen eighty five.
- 54:35Speaker 1: So the regular people get the low quality, yeah, instead
- 54:38Speaker 1: of regular people used to get the high quality. That
- 54:41Speaker 1: was analog. Everybody got the same thing. That was music.
- 54:45Speaker 1: That's what happened. That's a sad thing. As I said,
- 54:48Speaker 1: we're having a moment of silence for the music. Yes,
- 54:54Speaker 1: there was a high fi store in Santa Monica that
- 54:57Speaker 1: I would go to sometimes and listen to vinyl and
- 55:00Speaker 1: it would frustrate me so much because it sounded so
- 55:03Speaker 1: good there. And I decided I can't listen to vinyl
- 55:07Speaker 1: because I spent all my time. I'm making music for
- 55:09Speaker 1: other people to hear it, and they don't have vinyl.
- 55:12Speaker 1: And if that's my reference point, it's not achievable. Do
- 55:18Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's like, it's not it's
- 55:19Speaker 1: a different animal. Yep. We got to start a radio
- 55:22Speaker 1: station in La Man and broadcast on off and down
- 55:26Speaker 1: the West coast. Would be great, pirate station. Pirate station, Yeah,
- 55:29Speaker 1: pirate analog. But you'd have to sell people. I'd have
- 55:33Speaker 1: to make analog radios. I wonder if anyone still makes them.
- 55:36Speaker 1: They may someone, But that's the missing thing. That's so easy.
- 55:43Speaker 1: Had a cool old car that had a AM tube
- 55:48Speaker 1: radio in it. Oh yeah, and then I wanted to
- 55:51Speaker 1: listen to music I was working on, so I replaced
- 55:53Speaker 1: it for a new super duper sound system. Never sounded.
- 55:57Speaker 1: It is good. It really never sounded as you gotta
- 56:02Speaker 1: get that other one back. Yeah, that's what the world
- 56:06Speaker 1: ought to do. It's a cool idea. It is a
- 56:10Speaker 1: cool idea. Yeah, radio could be the future. We can
- 56:13Speaker 1: do that. I mean, we can do it at very
- 56:15Speaker 1: least for ourselves, yes, easy. Yeah, So maybe we start there, yeah,
- 56:20Speaker 1: and then maybe it grows. Yeah, Malibu radio, you know
- 56:25Speaker 1: it's it's possible. Yeah. And you you just play analog
- 56:29Speaker 1: sources through this thing and it sounds great and people
- 56:34Speaker 1: are going, why is my radio sounding so good? It's
- 56:38Speaker 1: like I got a record player in here. That's pretty wild.
- 56:42Speaker 1: And all the time I spent talking to people about
- 56:46Speaker 1: this record, and I've done a few interviews and some
- 56:49Speaker 1: of them. I did one with some guy and it's
- 56:51Speaker 1: supposed to be this big thing and everything, and he
- 56:54Speaker 1: starts talking about Love Earth like it's the melody of
- 56:57Speaker 1: Love Earth's actually did you know it's shaboom by the
- 57:00Speaker 1: crew cuts? And he said it's the same changes in
- 57:03Speaker 1: the same thing and the whole idea of the song
- 57:08Speaker 1: and everything, and that's all he said about the music.
- 57:12Speaker 1: And this is a guy with the big magazine that
- 57:15Speaker 1: we do every year that my management told me, oh, yeah,
- 57:18Speaker 1: they've heard this, they heard the record, they love it
- 57:21Speaker 1: and everything. I'm talking to this guy, he has no
- 57:24Speaker 1: idea what the record is. After that, that's when I
- 57:28Speaker 1: figured I'm really doing some heavy screening on these people,
- 57:32Speaker 1: and you know they're gonna have to Then I spoke
- 57:34Speaker 1: to Edna Gunderson, who is great and she's from AARP.
- 57:40Speaker 1: That's how she's interviewing for Okay. So she's great. She's
- 57:45Speaker 1: listened to every song and she says to me, Neil,
- 57:49Speaker 1: what happened to music? I remember about nineteen eighty five
- 57:55Speaker 1: I stopped listening. I just didn't want to listen anymore.
- 57:59Speaker 1: And I said, what that was? CDs? That's when the
- 58:03Speaker 1: digital revolution happened, right about then? Yeah, And she just looked,
- 58:08Speaker 1: you know, she's real And I said, yeah, I mean
- 58:10Speaker 1: check to go back and check the history and that
- 58:14Speaker 1: she came out of nowhere with that date. Yeah, And
- 58:18Speaker 1: she said, I don't know what happened to music? You know,
- 58:21Speaker 1: I think the songs that we used to sing are
- 58:23Speaker 1: the songs that we sing that are songs that have
- 58:26Speaker 1: emotion in them and everything. About them is like echo
- 58:30Speaker 1: and all the stuff that we have that we the
- 58:33Speaker 1: way we blended it, the melodies, the arrangement, all of
- 58:37Speaker 1: the melodic content of the lyrics, the feeling of the
- 58:41Speaker 1: whole thing that requires playback of the recording that is
- 58:48Speaker 1: deep and has a universe of sound in it, so
- 58:52Speaker 1: you can feel all the emotion. Now, those are old
- 58:55Speaker 1: records that we loved were very emotional. New records that
- 58:59Speaker 1: are big hits are clever. Yeah, they're not as emotional
- 59:04Speaker 1: at all. They're clever and tricky, and that's kind of
- 59:08Speaker 1: where all of this stuff that's happening now it lives.
- 59:11Speaker 1: So if you just listen to that kind of music,
- 59:12Speaker 1: you're not going to hear the difference. So everything changed.
- 59:17Speaker 1: It was interesting when you look back at it and
- 59:19Speaker 1: you can't figure out how it happened. I don't know
- 59:21Speaker 1: how it happened, but I know what happened. There's even
- 59:24Speaker 1: an argument that it sounded better before multitrack. You know,
- 59:29Speaker 1: like if you listen to Frank Sinatra recordings from the
- 59:32Speaker 1: fifties where it's him and an orchestra and it's going
- 59:36Speaker 1: down live, that's it, and it's it. That's it. There's
- 59:39Speaker 1: nothing to change. There's nothing to mix, there's no you
- 59:42Speaker 1: can't do better. All it is is that, and there's
- 59:45Speaker 1: something about it that just hangs together in a way
- 59:48Speaker 1: that nothing else does. Yeah, well there's nothing between it
- 59:52Speaker 1: and you. Yeah, it didn't have to be mixed. It
- 59:55Speaker 1: was already mixed, and it went one to one big track,
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: and maybe they recorded it four times and cut the
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: tracks together to get a good beginning and a good end,
- 1:00:06Speaker 1: but it was always one track. Then we went to
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: three track and four track and started doing the same things,
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: ping ponging back and forth between two of the tracks,
- 1:00:14Speaker 1: overdubbing and putting the chorus vocals and doing those kinds
- 1:00:18Speaker 1: of things. But it was still a basic track. Was
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: on two of those. Then they'd mixed to a two
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: track or a mono, so that was a generation away
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: from what franked it in the beginning, from the straight
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: mono live. Oh that's the greatest that stuff. Yeah, there's
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: something about the limitations of all of the information coming
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: together right from the beginning, where the way that it's
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: mixed isn't electronics, it's it's something else. It's it's real. Yeah,
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: it's really what happened, it's really what they or they
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: might have mixed a few microphones up and down, yeah,
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: to get to that mono track in the room. Yeah,
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: and maybe they only had three or four mics in
- 1:01:03Speaker 1: the whole room at the most. Yeah, you know, because
- 1:01:06Speaker 1: they had everybody to stand in the right place. Okay, Frank,
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: when you move in one foot because we need you
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: a little louder, but stay on the right, don't stand
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: on the left because you're going to block the bass.
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: That's the way it was mixed. Yeah, so you know,
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: that's pretty good. That's why when we were doing some
- 1:01:25Speaker 1: backup vocals would be like okay, Billy, take a step back,
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: I'll take a step forward. Yeah. Yeah, and just trying
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: to get that balance with everybody singing on one mic,
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, it's a little too much of
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: the high voice. What's it like if we have a
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: little more bass and the next time none too much bass.
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: Let's go back and move back yeah, and tiny, tiny moves. Yeah,
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: but it all made a difference. Yeah, I did. I'm very,
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: very proud of the of the vocals that we did.
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: Somebody was listening to this record, I mean somebody up
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: in Canada that I played it for and they said,
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: my God, the vocals. When these guys come in singing,
- 1:02:01Speaker 1: they sound great. Who's singing yea? Who's thinking? Yeah? Crazy? Okay,
- 1:02:14Speaker 1: here's a good one. How do you connect to spirit?
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: How do I connect to spirit? Yes? I try not
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: to connect to spirit. Okay, I try to not do anything.
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: If it's gonna come, it's gonna come. I just try
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: to stay open. But I can't get it. You can't
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: stand over a hole with a gun waiting for it
- 1:02:33Speaker 1: to come out. Spirit is there or it isn't. You've
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: got to be in the right place at the right time.
- 1:02:39Speaker 1: How would you say? THHC changes your relationship to music.
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: It enables other things to get lost, so you're only
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: in the music. After the session's over, you can't do
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: anything for a while. But while the session's happening, you're
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: living in the music. And it's not because you're not
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: in the music when you're not high. It's just that
- 1:03:03Speaker 1: because you're high, you can only focus on one thing.
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: I see. It removes the distract removes the distractions you see.
- 1:03:09Speaker 1: You know, that's what it does for me, and I
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: enjoy it. So you get so into it, you enjoy it,
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: you feel it yeah. Yeah, imagine it's different for different people,
- 1:03:18Speaker 1: like everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like math is not good
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: for getting into the spirit. I don't think I would.
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: I would imagine math and spirit not working harmonically. Well,
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: we've seen so much good music being made with hallucinogenic influences,
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: and then when the popular drugs shifted to more other
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: kinds of drugs, music wasn't as good. No, It's like
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: the difference between the sixties and the seventies was different drugs,
- 1:03:52Speaker 1: and you can kind of hear where it shifts. Yeah, yeah,
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: you can. Cocaine had a big effect, and then after
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: that as things rode along, But in the beginning, it's
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: it's interesting to look at music that way, the way
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: it's developed over the deckcades, and I think we're you know,
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: we were lucky to be there, because if you're just
- 1:04:15Speaker 1: getting here now, it's hard to pick up on it.
- 1:04:18Speaker 1: You have to go back in time and check it out.
- 1:04:21Speaker 1: It almost feels like it's a different thing now. I
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: don't know what it is. Yeah, but I'll say I'll
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: say it's not that it's bad, it's just different. Yeah,
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: it's just different. Really is different? Yeah, No, it's what
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: people need now it's what they it's in the neighborhood
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: that where people are accepting it, which is basically as
- 1:04:44Speaker 1: wallpaper almost. I mean, it's like in the background, it's
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: part of everything. There's so many other distractions. Music used
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: to be the big thing. Now tech is the big thing.
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: Tech is how you get involved. People are on their phones,
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: they're just lost in the little box and they so
- 1:05:01Speaker 1: they don't have that time in their day where there's
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: nothing to do but listen to music, because as soon
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: as they start listening to music, they got a call.
- 1:05:09Speaker 1: All then they're on the online trying to figure out
- 1:05:12Speaker 1: what that person in the call was talking about, googling
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: something to find out what it is. Yeah, when we
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: think of folk music now, we think of it as
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: music from the sixties, and those songs were old songs
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: or songs from writers in New York, from writers that
- 1:05:29Speaker 1: wrote pop songs, and people would do them. But it
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: wasn't like the singers of the songs were writing their
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: own songs or the band was writing a song. You
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: never did many cover You did a few cover songs
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: over the course of your life, but not many. You
- 1:05:44Speaker 1: did it four strong wins that I loved. Yeah, that
- 1:05:47Speaker 1: was like one of my favorite songs of all time.
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: It's a beautiful song. It's a great song. Yeah, Ian
- 1:05:53Speaker 1: and Sylvia. I used to pour coins into a Nickelodeon
- 1:06:00Speaker 1: and listen to that song over and over again by
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: Ian and Sylvia four Strong Wins. That's how I I
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: got familiar with it. I think in sixty two sixty
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: three or something. I loved that song, so that felt
- 1:06:13Speaker 1: really good to do that. Do you ever meet those
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: guys Ian and Sylvia matter in And I've met Sylvia too.
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: It not for long, just very casual. And did you
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: know Janie from Canada? Yeah, from the coffee house scene.
- 1:06:26Speaker 1: We met in the coffee houses. When I met her,
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: she was with Chuck Mitchell, Chuck and Joni Mitchell. It
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: wasn't even the thing. Then she came back as Janie
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: and I played Sugar Mountain for her when I met her,
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: I'd already been to Toronto and came back and I
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: met her and I played Sugar Mountain for her, and
- 1:06:47Speaker 1: then she she later wrote Circle Game. Yeah after hearing
- 1:06:52Speaker 1: Sugar Mountain as her as her conversation with me. Wow,
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: I never knew that. Yeah, so cool. Yeah, Circle Game
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: is a great song. It's a wonderful song. She's written
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: so many great songs. I'm thinking of doing both sides
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: now with Crazy Horse. Great, it would be a wild thing, right, Yeah,
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: you could do a whole album of her songs. Would
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: be cool. I could do a bunch of songs like
- 1:07:17Speaker 1: that with Crazy Horse. Yeah, that would be very cool.
- 1:07:21Speaker 1: That's one musical thought that I did have. That's about it. Yeah,
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: it's cool too with Crazy Horse. That wouldn't it would
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: not sound do you know what I mean? It would
- 1:07:31Speaker 1: be such an original take on whatever the material that
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: went into it. Yeah, there's there'd be no fear of
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: it being derivative in any way. I would crazy, I
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: wouldn't be stomping on the original arrangement. No, it would
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: be so different to be somewhere else. But the same song,
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: the same melody, the same chords. It's a beautiful song.
- 1:07:54Speaker 1: And in those days, did you think of Elvis as
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: a singer or as a movie star. I always thought
- 1:07:59Speaker 1: him as a singer. I saw the movies. Yeah, you
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: know it was okay, but it was always the singing. Yeah,
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: it was Elvis. It was great if we love it
- 1:08:08Speaker 1: Elvis or what he did. But as a singer and
- 1:08:11Speaker 1: a rocker. He was cool. Did you have the same
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: experience when you saw the Beatles of it being different
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: than what came before? All the Beatles were great. When
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: I first heard them, I think it was you know,
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: I can't even remember what song. It was really early
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: sixty three or something. And now they were great. We
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: loved them right away. It won't be long. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: I love that song. A great song. That's such a
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: great song. And you know, they had a thing, they
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: had a great thing, and they were rocking. They were
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: having a good time. You couldn't miss it. Were you
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: already singing folk songs at that time? No. I started
- 1:08:47Speaker 1: singing rock and roll songs first, yeah, first, But most
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: of them I wrote myself, you know, and they weren't
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: like really hard rockers. A song called I Wonder which
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: turned out to be Don't Cry No Tiarous later. That
- 1:09:03Speaker 1: was one of the first songs. And I had a
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: couple of two or three other songs that I don't
- 1:09:08Speaker 1: have copies of and I can't remember, but they were there.
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: I did him in the Squires. That was fun. Do
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: you ever do gigs with the Squires? Not since then? No,
- 1:09:18Speaker 1: But then did Oh yeah, we did about we played
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: community clubs all over Winnipeg. Oh cool, you know we
- 1:09:26Speaker 1: got I've got the records of it, and I think
- 1:09:28Speaker 1: in the archives from Ken Coblan. The bass player kept
- 1:09:32Speaker 1: records of everything, all the places we played and how
- 1:09:34Speaker 1: much we made it so cool. Yeah, like four dollars. Yeah,
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: that's all in the archive. Yeah, amazing, amazing, it is crazy.
- 1:09:43Speaker 1: I think it's all in there. How did you know
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: to keep stuff? I just never you know, I just
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: keep track of who has stuff, and the bass player
- 1:09:52Speaker 1: and the squires, he kept track of everything, and he
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: gave me the book. So I copied the book and
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: we have it. Like I'll find it. Yeah, basically, I'm
- 1:10:03Speaker 1: pretty sure it's there. I just have to go back
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: and look for it. Yeah. Like I was thinking the
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: other day, somebody asked about and I had a letter
- 1:10:11Speaker 1: to the editor, which I answered these letters every week,
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: and they wrote me about this thing where I was
- 1:10:17Speaker 1: at a Falcon lake in nineteen sixty three or sixty
- 1:10:21Speaker 1: two or something with my buddies and we went to
- 1:10:24Speaker 1: the dump and we parked our car and then the
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: bears all came out because it was a dump. So
- 1:10:31Speaker 1: there's bears all around our car and we're sitting there
- 1:10:34Speaker 1: trying to be cool, and then we left. Then I
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: started thinking about Falcon Lake. Well, Falcon Lake. Then I said,
- 1:10:40Speaker 1: Jesus Springfield did a song called Falcon Lake. It was
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: an instrumental and we recorded it and we did it
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: at Columbia and it was about the time when Stephen
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: was doing something had known Buddy Miles and a few
- 1:10:55Speaker 1: people like it was back there and I said, I said,
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: Falcon Lake. Jeez, I haven't heard that in a long time.
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: And so I checked in with our archivist and I said,
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: what do you guys know about Falcon Lake by Buffalo Springfield?
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: And they say, well, the next day I get it back.
- 1:11:14Speaker 1: It's it's called in the archives, it's called ash on
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: the Floor. For some reason, the title got changed, but
- 1:11:21Speaker 1: the original title was still in the in the writings,
- 1:11:25Speaker 1: and there is a recording of it and it's there. Incredible,
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: So it's you know, that song is in the archives.
- 1:11:32Speaker 1: It's probably in volume one, Disc one or disc two
- 1:11:35Speaker 1: or something, you know. Incredible. Yeah, the fact that it
- 1:11:39Speaker 1: all exists is so amazing. There it's blowing my mind now. Yeah,
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: because I've been so thorough with it. Yeah, and I've
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: got a great archivist, John O'Neill, our hard archivist, and
- 1:11:50Speaker 1: a really good uh keeper of the tapes who's really
- 1:11:55Speaker 1: got a good, good method of filing and keeping track
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: of everything. And we keep a lot of our stuff
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: and at Hollywood vaults and all the backup for it
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: is in ox and ards somewhere. Just a volume of
- 1:12:10Speaker 1: stuff over the years. It's it's unbelievable. I was walking
- 1:12:14Speaker 1: around in it yesterday. Yeah, as we were looking for
- 1:12:17Speaker 1: some stuff, and I had the sky with me as
- 1:12:20Speaker 1: a builder, and it's working on my model train layout
- 1:12:25Speaker 1: with me, Like we're building this outdoor train layout. It's whack.
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: So anyway, we're looking for some old pieces of train
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: stuff and we get in this one room and it's
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: a room. It's about the size of Shangri Law almost.
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: You know, this whole area it's full of boxes on shelves,
- 1:12:44Speaker 1: year after year after year of tapes. It's all there,
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: everything that I recorded. Amazing. Yeah, it's coming wild. I mean,
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: you know, so when you have a memory or something
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: triggers something that goes somewhere. If I remember that there
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: was something good that I didn't finish yourself, Yeah, I
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: can actually get to it. It's so cool. Has there
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: ever been a time when you've worked on something and
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: left alone for whatever reason and then come back to
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: it later years later, realizing all there's something there. There
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: is a song that was on the B side of
- 1:13:17Speaker 1: a Buffalo Springfield thing. It was I don't know if
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: it was a B side or if it was in
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: the session for Expecting to Fly. There was a song
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: called Whiskey Booth Hill and there's another song too, and
- 1:13:31Speaker 1: the track is there, but it has no vocal, So
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: I keep thinking about that, maybe I should put a
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: vocal on it, just to have it. Yeah, then it
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: would be a complete song. Yea, with the old original
- 1:13:44Speaker 1: Jack Nietzsche track. Wow, so vocal and you remember the
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: words and yeah, it'd be cool. Yeah, it seems like
- 1:13:54Speaker 1: it's cool to do, regardless of why they ever decided
- 1:13:56Speaker 1: to put it out in right, it's like that it'd
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: be a good No, it's good to have those things. Absolutely.
- 1:14:02Speaker 1: I have another thing that where Darrell shot something that
- 1:14:04Speaker 1: I was I was playing the guitar and I was
- 1:14:07Speaker 1: playing the changes to don't Think twice It's all right,
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: and sitting on the bus and the bus is going
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: down the road, and my silhouette is against the window
- 1:14:20Speaker 1: and outside these beautiful fields going by, and then every
- 1:14:23Speaker 1: once in a while the light changes and you see
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: me and I'm playing the guitar a little bit, and
- 1:14:28Speaker 1: then it goes back to outside, and it goes through
- 1:14:31Speaker 1: the whole thing. And you know, I've often thought it's
- 1:14:34Speaker 1: got a great vibe. If I just sang the lyrics
- 1:14:39Speaker 1: on top of it, I wasn't singing it. If I
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: just lightly sang the lyrics there, don't think twice, it's
- 1:14:44Speaker 1: all right. That would be my version of it. But
- 1:14:46Speaker 1: it would be like a video version of don't think twice,
- 1:14:49Speaker 1: It's all right with you know. And I think about
- 1:14:52Speaker 1: doing it, and I know I could make it happen.
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: But somebody asked me, well what would you do with that?
- 1:14:57Speaker 1: Where would that go? And I said, well, I really
- 1:14:59Speaker 1: don't know what about that part of it? Yeah, but
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: this is, you know, the creative something I could do.
- 1:15:07Speaker 1: I think that's the best way to make things. Yeah,
- 1:15:10Speaker 1: when you get the feeling, that's yeah, you make it
- 1:15:11Speaker 1: to make it, and then if there's a use for
- 1:15:13Speaker 1: it later that's fine. Well, this is a good idea,
- 1:15:16Speaker 1: And I think I could do it, you know, I'll
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: try to get the track together. And what was the
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: first film project you did the first time he made
- 1:15:23Speaker 1: a film, Journey through the Past. I think it was
- 1:15:26Speaker 1: the first movie that I made. And what motivated you'd
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: want to do that. I just wanted to do something different,
- 1:15:33Speaker 1: so I didn't get bored with music. I see, I'll
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: distract myself, and it got a big distraction. It's good.
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: I need distractions, yeah, because I'm so you know, single minded,
- 1:15:45Speaker 1: I just go into it. I could get lost. Yeah,
- 1:15:47Speaker 1: and you do better being busy than not. Yeah. Yeah, No,
- 1:15:51Speaker 1: it's bad things happening if I to have projects. Yeah.
- 1:15:55Speaker 1: So yeah, but I really think that that's the way
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: it works. I feel like if I'm working on the
- 1:16:03Speaker 1: train layout, yeah, and I really get immersed in that
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: for months. Yeah. Then I'll come out of that and
- 1:16:10Speaker 1: I'll write, Yes, something will be fresh. Yes, but I
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: have to get a way to get back. Yes, you
- 1:16:16Speaker 1: can't just always be there waiting. I got to be
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: distracted by something. Yeah, that's great. It's great advice for
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: people who think the way to do it is to
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: just do the one thing. Oh, it doesn't work that way, No,
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: it doesn't you've got to get away from it, yeah,
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: because it'll come to you when it's ready. The thing
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: people think they're in charge, Yeah, you're not in charge.
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: Just forget it. We're along for the ride now, we
- 1:16:39Speaker 1: are along for the all. We have to be as ready. Yes, Yes,
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: that's it, ready recognized. Do finish out, Yeah, and then
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: you're on. And being ready is not easy. No, You've
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: got to be able to drop anything that's happening at
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: any time and say I'll be back in a while. Yeah,
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: because there's something here that can, something that can, and
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: we don't have control over it, and if we don't
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: act on it, we could forget it. Puff a smoke exactly. Well,
- 1:17:10Speaker 1: I'm sure we will get to be together again sooner
- 1:17:13Speaker 1: than later, because that's what we do, all right, man, Well,
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: I'll see you soon. Thanks again to the legend Neil Young.
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: You can hear his new album World Record, along with
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: all of our favorite Neil Young songs on a playlist
- 1:17:29Speaker 1: at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe
- 1:17:32Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken
- 1:17:35Speaker 1: record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes.
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: Record is produced with Health Familia Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holiday,
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez. Our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive
- 1:17:52Speaker 1: producer is Mel LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin,
- 1:17:59Speaker 1: consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast
- 1:18:03Speaker 1: subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening
- 1:18:07Speaker 1: for four ninety nine a month. Look for push Complus
- 1:18:10Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts subscription and if you like our show,
- 1:18:14Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
- 1:18:17Speaker 1: podcast that Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.