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