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An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.
Bridge School Kid Interview: 2013 27th Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert - Arcade Fire and Carly Ritter
Here's another heart warming interview with The Bridge School kids.
Bridge School Network (BSN) co-anchors Collin and Job bring you the backstage interviews from the 2013 27th Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert. BSN reporters Rebecca and April interview Arcade Fire and Carly Ritter.
Thanks BridgeSchooler! Tonight, Saturday, March 7 at 9:00 PM EST, Thrasher's Wheat Radio on WBKM.org.
Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon on Neil Young’s ‘Out of My Mind’
Kim Gordon - Sonic Youth
(Click photo to enlarge)
Kim Gordon has a new autobiography titled Girl in a Band: A Memoir which chronicles her career as the bassist, vocalist and founding member (with now ex-husband Thurston Moore) the ground breaking band Sonic Youth.
Many Neil Young fans first encountered Sonic Youth as an opening act during Crazy Horse's WELD Tour in 1992. In an interview in Wall St. Journal by Marc Myers, Kim Gordon discusses finding refuge in Neil Young's Buffalo Springfield song ‘Out of My Mind’:
Kim Gordon: When I was 14 in the late 1960s, I’d spend hours alone listening to my albums. I loved Buffalo Springfield’s first album, especially Neil Young ’s “Out of My Mind.”
We lived in West Los Angeles—the flat, boring part—and through the music I grew fascinated with the Laurel Canyon scene, where many folk-rock musicians had homes. I had a friend who lived up there, but the houses were all tucked away and inaccessible to me, and I was too young to go to the clubs on the Sunset Strip. So all I had were the albums. I related to the Springfield’s sound—the melancholy melodies, tight harmonies and lyrics with meaning.
As a teen, I often painted in my bedroom as I listened to “Out of My Mind.” The song seemed to be about the alienation of success—how you could become detached from your original community and become screwed up if you couldn’t handle it: “All I hear are screams / from outside the limousines / That are taking me / out of my mind / Through the keyhole / in an open door.”
Back in the ’80s, when I was touring with Sonic Youth, we opened for Neil. I never told him about how much I liked “Out of My Mind.” I was too much in awe of him. Now I wish I had asked him about the song’s meaning.
About eight years ago I rediscovered the song. I live in Western Massachusetts now and hate the winters. Relistening to the music was partly California nostalgia, but I also developed a new appreciation for the song’s craft. Neil’s vulnerability and authentic sound haven’t changed much. As a nonsinger, I relate to that.
I’ve never tried to sing “Out of My Mind,” even by myself at home. Several years ago I did use the song’s lyrics to make a series of word paintings with metallic watercolors on rice paper. But I’ve never shared them with anyone. They’re private.
Well here's a pretty rare photo of Neil Young performing "Lotta Love" with Nicolette Larson in 1985 at the Meadowbrook Arena in Rochester, Michigan (photo via Jim Munro on Neil Young's Ditch Trilogy | Facebook Thanks Jim!).
Nicolette Larson is best remembered for her 1979 cover of Neil Young's "Lotta Love" which was a #1 hit and launched her musical career.
Regarding the song "Lotta Love", she said "I got that song off a tape I found lying on the floor of Neil's car. I popped it in the tape player and commented on what a great song it was. Neil said: 'You want it? It's yours.' "
Nicolette Larson's "Lotta Love" written by Neil Young.
Nicolette Larson sang on Neil Young's 1977 album, American Stars 'n Bars, with Linda Ronstadt on the tracks "Old Country Waltz", "Saddle Up the Palomino", "Bite the Bullet", "Hold Back the Tears", and "Hey Babe".
Nicolette Larson: 1952 - 1997
Sadly, Larson died in 1997 at the age of 45 after suffering a cerebral edema.
In August 2005, during the Neil Young's Nashville Ryman concerts, "Young referred repeatedly to the late singer Nicolette Larson" among the personal losses Young has experienced.
The "Lotta Love Concert," a tribute to late vocalist Nicolette Larson was staged Feb. 21-22, 1998, at the Santa Monica, CA Civic Auditorium.
The event featured performances from Dan Fogelberg, Joe Walsh, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jimmy Buffet, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt and Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt, a number of whom Larson recorded with in her lifetime.
"Neil Young, urged by Emmylou and her producer-husband, Brian Ahern, ambled down malibu's Broad Beach to play some tunes for Linda and found her harmonizing with Nicolette. So were born the Bullets on American Stars'n Bars. The next year Nicolette backed up Young on Comes A Time"."
(Thanks firehills!)
The liner notes also says of the Tribute concert that "Neil Young sent a bouquet of roses as big as the audience. He could only attend in spirit on the group encore of 'Lotta Love'".
One evening when Linda Ronstadt got a call from Neil Young, a Malibu neighbor, looking for a female vocal accompanist. Ronstadt mentioned Nicolette to Young, who had already been given Larson's name three times that day. He promptly came over with guitar in hand.
'I didn't know much about Neil Young,' remembers Larson. 'But we went over and sat by the fireplace and Neil ran down all the songs he had just written, about twenty of them. We sang harmonies with him and he was jazzed.'
A week later Young invited Larson and Ronstadt up to his northern California ranch/studio to re-create the same vocal mix for his American Stars and Bars album. 'We [Neil and Crazy Horse] worked out the songs in a room of his house,' says Larson. 'And just when we had the songs down, Neil said, 'Thanks a lot... we've got the album.' He was recording all the rehearsals secretly in another room.'
Larson didn't hear from Young until six months later, when he summoned her to Nashville where he was beginning Comes a Time. Young wanted her to front a twenty-two-piece studio band with him - dubbed the Gone with the Wind Orchestra. 'He told me to sing whatever I wanted,' says Larson. 'You can hear me trying to work the parts out on the album.'"
After the Ducks episode, Young had taken his son Zeke for a cross-country ride in his tour bus. They ended up in Nashville and Neil decided to begin his next record there. Young rounded up a crew of sidemen that included country session musicians who had never played anything resembling rock, a singer – Nicolette Larson – he had worked with on American Stars ‘n Bars, and six acoustic guitarists.
Young began his most accessible and ultimately best-selling album since Harvest. “I was feeling pretty sunny,” he recalls. Nicolette Larson had kept a tape of some of the material from when she and Neil first met and sang together at her friend Linda Ronstadt’s house. When the phone call came from Nashville, she was ready.
Young barely had to show her the songs before they were singing the duets that appear on the album. The Gone with the Wind Orchestra, as the entire conglomeration of twenty-two musicians was called, lasted throughout the album and for one live performance, on Young’s thirty-second birthday, at an outdoor benefit for children’s hospitals in the Miami Beach area.
Young rehearsed the outfit in a Nashville storefront and flew everyone to Florida where, sharing the windy stage with Nicolette, he played what could well have been his purest and most note-perfect performance ever. The show ended with Young playing part of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” which he dedicated to “a couple of friends in the sky.”
A visit to Young’s house in Zuma Beach a month later found him and Nicolette in floppy sweaters before the fireplace – Ma and Pa Kettle at home. Young made some coffee, put on the tape, and they sang with themselves while Comes a Time played.