Lukas Nelson on Neil Young: "His inspiration has just exploded the lurking genius in all of the musicians of this band"

Promise of the Real

From Interview with Lukas Nelson: Promise of the Real Frontman Talks ‘Masterpiece’ New Album, S.B. Jazz Fest | Santa Barbara (CA) Independent (Thursday, March 2, 2017) by Richie DeMaria:

Are you guys working on new material?

Lukas Nelson: We’ve got 35 recorded, we’re almost completed with a new album. We’ve got basically the next three records recorded already and have narrowed it down to about 13-14 songs. I’m telling you, this is the masterpiece. This is truly the best songwriting I’ve ever been able to put out and the best sounds we’ve put out. We’ve been working with a guy named John Alagía, who worked with John Mayer, and a bunch of folks at the Village Studios in West L.A. Beautiful sound, the way they’ve got the vocals out front. I’ve matured as a singer, too. The music keeps getting better. These songs are really going to make an impact.

How has your songwriting grown lyrically and thematically?

Well, I’m just introducing broader themes, even more personal themes. I think there’s that, but also there’s also the ability to say so much with a simple turn of phrase. That’s really important, and all of these songs sort of have that quality. It’s sort of like, I mean I’m really proud of the way these songs turned out. I almost can’t explain it; you just have to hear them. I just love them, and I’m really excited. We’re also reintroducing recordings of a couple older songs that spoke to people, like “Set Me Down on a Cloud.” This recording is just a mind-blowingly involved version of it. We’ve got the band Lucius: They’re two incredible singers and songwriters, and right now they’re on tour with Roger Waters. We met them when we did Desert Trip with Neil. They sound just angelic; they sound like angels. The production is just — it’s the best production I’ve ever been a part of. John Alagía and Jeff Greenberg at the Village are to be credited for that. It’s an amazing place they’ve got there, some really great music there. We’re also officially releasing a song called “Find Yourself,” which people have really loved. There’s a recording of it on YouTube that we did with Jam in the Van. There’s some really special guests on the record who are mega talented. I am really looking forward to showing people.

That must feel great, to feel like you are just now hitting your full powers as a band …

Oh yeah, oh hell, I feel like we’re aging like wine. It’s just getting better, you know? We’ve been together as Promise of the Real now for about 10 years. We’re still recording with Neil, and we’ve learned so much from Neil about each other, about our musicianship, and we’ve grown so much playing those shows with him. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue that forever. His inspiration has just exploded the lurking genius in all of the musicians of this band. I kind of liken it in a way to — our career has followed a similar path to the Band, which is a huge influence. The Band were a great band already. Then when they went and joined Bob Dylan, he just kind of lifted them up. That’s what Neil’s done for us. He’s given the public a chance to hear what we’re doing and a chance to see how our songs also relate to the world. I can’t say enough how excited I am honestly; it’s great.

Since touring with Neil, does it feel like the band has changed?

Yes, I feel like, we kind of all got little musical downloads, so to speak. It just feels like we really have grown, and Neil brought us closer together as a band. We were — I wouldn’t say we were floundering, but we — a lot of us — were wondering how long it was going to last. We weren’t making hardly any money, and I mean, I would have kept going always, you know? But it’s just the way we are. I think that Neil saw how good we were as a group — he could have asked for just me or Micah to come and record with him and come out on road with him. He saw how good the band was, and he lifted them up, too. I really feel grateful for him for. This band is something special. I got really lucky when I met this band, so I’m really excited. I feel like all of their talents are really showcased in this record even as opposed to Something Real. I loved it, but it was a little bit removed. It was kind of this rock ‘n’ roll thing, whereas this record is more intimate. There’s a lot more acoustic, a lot more just melodic lifts and lyrical melodies; even with the percussion and the drums and the bass, the way it all fits together is a lot more lyrical. I think it’s accessible to a larger audience, as well. The record speaks to my roots, where I came from, the Southern side you know? It’s more a country soul record. With this record, we’ve moved away from the “cowboy hippie surf rock,” so to speak; we’ve gone into, like, a country soul vibe. I feel like I’m going into where I really came from and bringing what I love about Southern culture into my music. There’s a lot of that happening, a lot of my Southern pride.

Any crazy tour stories from last year?

Oh, you know, one of my favorite parts of being on the road out there was going to this old meteor crater way up in Sweden that they turned into a limestone quarry and then a music venue. It’s called Dalhalla, and it’s the most incredible venue I’ve ever played. It’s so beautiful. It’s like Red Rocks times 1,000.

Mind-blowing. [See reviews of Neil Young + Promise of the Real on July 5 - Sweden, Rattvik, Dalhalla].

Full article at Interview with Lukas Nelson: Promise of the Real Frontman Talks ‘Masterpiece’ New Album, S.B. Jazz Fest | Santa Barbara (CA) Independent (Thursday, March 2, 2017) by Richie DeMaria.

Neil Young + Promise of the Real

Europe 2016 Tour Concert Reviews, Photos, Videos & More

2015 Rebel Content Tour Concert Reviews, Photos, Videos & More

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Photo of the Moment: Neil Young on Sabbatical

Neil Young's Auto Truck & Auto Repair
Somewhere Near Sebring, Florida
Photo by Paul
(Click photo to enlarge)

As we know, Neil Young has announced a sabbatical for 2017.

However, the TW Photo of the Moment reveals what Neil may be up to these days.

Let us know any other sightings in 2017!

Thanks Paul & Renee!

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1990 Neil Young Interview by Nick Kent | VOX

Neil Young & Crazy Horse
(L-R Billy Talbot, Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, Neil Young, and Ralph Molina w/ Elliot Roberts)
Spectrum in Philadelphia,PA on September 17,1986
©1986 Ebet Roberts
(Click photo to enlarge)
Recently here on Thrasher's Wheat, we have been re-visiting and reassessing some of Neil Young's 1980's releases on Geffen Records, such as, TRANS: A Little Bit of Essential Neil Young, "Landing on Water" by Neil Young: Incredibly Underrated and Reassessing Neil Young's Life on Geffen Records. And lots of fascinating observations by our dear TW readers in post comments.

To complement these commentaries on Neil Young's 1980's releases on Geffen Records, here is a 1990 Neil Young Interview by Nick Kent that appeared in VOX Magazine.

THIS YOUNG WILL RUN AND RUN

Interview with Nick Kent,
Vox November 1990

NEIL YOUNG'S manager Elliot Roberts told me: "He's doing interviews now because he's got things he wants to say.'There's a lot of things going on in the world right now he wants to talk about."

But Neil Young thankfully kept his new supposed "caring humanitarian global" opinions to himself for this interview ("I ain't nobody's ambassador of good will"). He looked awesomely tall, wearing an extraordinary long coat made from a multi-coloured horse blanket that looked like Young had won it from a Red Indian wineo in a card game. On anyone else, the effect would have looked disastrous, on Neil Young it looked . . . well exactly how you would expect Neil Young to look.ss

Overtly eccentric and very, very funny (when he talks his voice is exactly like the actor James Stewart's stoic US brogue) Young was in Paris during a trip that took him away from putting the final touches to a major Neil Young retrospective both musically and cinematically. Next year all Young's films including the one he directed with Dennis Hopper in 1978 entitled Human Highway and a Crazy Horse documentary a la Don't look Back·called Muddy Track are being made available on video ("My cinematic vision", he told me "is pretty much all taken from Godard. He's my main influence, him and certain other cineme verite guys") whilst Young is now readying a 180 track compilation of his three decade career for C.D - 'Decades I, II and III to be made available on Warner Bros late next year.

"There'll be 50 or 60 unreleased songs. There's three whole unreleased albums to go on too - 'Homegrown', 'Big Room' and 'Old Ways', the album Geffen sued me over. There's stuff from back in 1962 going on this collection, there's a bunch of stuff with CSNY - a whole aborted album called Human Highway, a-bunch of live Crazy Horse, some of my best stuff. Songs like 'Nothing Is Perfect', the 'hostages' song I did at Live Aid and 'Ordinary People' 'this 15 minute number I left off'Eldorado'. Both those songs dated too quickly. They were too topical. But they work in a retrospective like this.

There's also, of course, his new album with Crazy Horse, 'Ragged Glory', recorded at Young's ranch in just a few weeks and said to contain some of his best work since the first Crazy Horse album,'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere'. He's even talking about writing a book and "maybe some painting too" this decade. Neil Young is clearly back and open for business. Just don't expect him to stay in the same place too long.

YOUNG is hunched in the semi-darkness of an 'intimately' lit Paris hotel bar as he informs me somewhat tetchily of his distaste for the subject of 'coming back'..."Listen", he states firmly, "I didn't go away! I just did other things. But I didn't go away, O.K! I'm not like some 6O's band coming back to take advantage of some wave of bullshit nostalgia. "My whole career is based on systematic destruction. See, that's what keeps me alive. You destroy what you did before and you're free to carry on "...He starts to laugh now, in that weird ironic croak of his. "And now . . . Now I'm just fine!" "All, I'm saying is ... All these reviewers writing stuff about my comeback . . . I don't have to come back 'cos I've never been gone! They write stuff like 'Oh, this year Neil Young's O.K. again'. I don't need them to tell me if I'm O.K. or not. As far as I'm concemed,I've always been O.K." "I just can't associate with anyone or anything involved in a comeback right now. Well, sure, I can associate with Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. Both their recent albums are great. But with us three, you've got to understand - it's a big time in our lives right now. We've come through, we've survived intact and we're still creatively focussed." "But I can't - and I won't - relate myself to the Who or the Stones or the Jefferson Airplane. Not in the 90's! No way. And I used to love all those bands, particularly the Stones. Only somewhere along the line they lost it for me. And then what happened in 1989 with those mega-tours - that is not what I love. That was nothing more than a remembrance, a swansong." "The music the Stones and Who play now has got nothing whatsoever to do with rock'n'roll. Spiritually it's all Perry Como".

TRY MAKING sense of Neil Young's career in the 80's - without aid of special knowledge regarding the man's personal circumstances - and you'll soon be throwing up your hands in despair. In the 70's too he'd been hard to pin down, jumping from country rock noodlings to acoustic angst to deranged electric guitar blow-outs often all within the space of the same record. Yet a peculiar dark, ironic vision connected the often disparate, musically primitive likes of the ultra-paranoid 'On The Beach' (74), the drunken wake of 'Tonight's The Night' (75), the ragged but radiant 'Zuma' (also 75) reaching through to the end of the decade with the incendiary 'Rust Never Sleeps' (79).

That's four great albums in one decade - three more than Dylan achieved during the same time frame, for example - and as a result Young got to be feted as "artist of the 70's" by credible publications like The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. The creative roll he'd been on however was brutally shattered when Young and his new wife Pegi gave birth in 1979 to a son, Ben, who turned on to be a spastic, quadraplegic, nonoral child. His other son by a different marriage, Zeke, also suffers from cerebral palsy.

"It was too big a picture", Young reminisced to a journalist from The Village Voice. "Too big. Pegi's heartbroken, we're both shocked. I couldn't believe it. There were two different mothers. It couldn't have happened twice.

"I remember looking at the sky, looking for a sign, wondering What the fuck is going on? Why are the kids in this situation? What the hell caused this? What did I do? There must be something wrong with me.

"So I made up my mind I was gonna take care of Pegi, take care of the kids. We were gonna go on, we weren't gonna be selfish and I wasn't going to hurt. I closed myself down so much that I was making it, doing great with surviving - but my soul was completely encased. I didn't even consider that I would need a soul to play my music, that when I shut the door on 'pain', I shut the door on my music. That's what I did. And that's how people get old."

YOUNG'S domestic upheavals in the 80's seeped into his music, throwing his music a curve it never got to bounce back from until the very end of the decade. Many of the songs on the unspectacular 'Hawks And Doves' are almost private assertions regarding enlarged family responsibility ( "Stayingpower through thick and thin" - Staying Power' - "We don't back: downfrom no trouble. We do get up in the morning "- Coastline' ). The dizzyingly brash and repetitive 'Reactor'was conceived to accompany a gruelling therapy program he commited his child to undertaking ("The program is driving, implacable, repetitive" he was quoted as saying at the time. "And so is Reactor.")

'Reactor"s failure in the marketplace compelled him to stomp off Reprise Records, where he'd been since his first LP in '69, and to sign instead with the Geffen label. This only precipitated further nightmares for Young. His first album for the label - 'Trans' - made no sense to anyone. Apart from Young that is, who'd fashioned an unintelligible sci-fi rock opera about computers, directly inspired by his own son's inability to communicate (" Trans is about communication, about not getting through. And that's what my son is. You gotta realise - you can't understand the words on 'Trans' and I can't understand my son's words. So feel that! "). After that Young just seemed to get weirder and weirder for a time. A subsequent foray in country music was shunned by Geffen who wanted more rock'n'roll. So Young quite vindictively gave the label 'Everybody's Rockin': a make-weight and generally pointless 50's rockabilly pastiche session, before returning to the country field and inhabiting a Reagan supporting 'good ole boy' cartoon of a persona that would finally cause Geffen to slap him with a three million dollar lawsuit for continuing to make "unrepresentative" music.

An album of crusty mainstream Nashville country, 'Old Ways', duly appeared however and this coincided with Young - now in his 40's - doing a number of interviews in which, betwixt voicing a disturbingly pro-Reagan bias, he stated that playing full-tilt rock'n'roll was pretty much all a thing of the past for him now ("Rock'n'roll is like a drug . . . I don't want to do it all the time 'cos it'll kill me.")

However these sentiments didn't hinder him from next recording a loud electric rock album 'Landing On Water '- which featured several 'promising' songs left still-born by ill-concieved arrangements and production. Sensing this, Young reunited with good old Crazy Horse and a passable album in his 70's vein, "Life', resulted from the collaboration.

Young celebrated the end of his fractitous Geffen tenure by touring extensively with Crazy Horse whilst at the same time filming a documentary of the event. The tour was frustrating for Young however - Crazy Horse bass-player Billy Talbot was suffering from a drinking problem and as Young would later claim, "I would do the song, lay it out and they wouldn't be able to remember the arrangement . . . There's gotta be a memory retention problem. "

Consequently there was considerable ugly friction spilling over into the documentary footage which Young edited together, entitling the results 'Muddy Track'. Three years after it's completion it has yet to be shown.

Uglier still was the friction Young next has to face after committing himself to a second album as Crosby Stills Nash And Young. It had started with a promise he'd made during a 1984 radio interview, where he'd vowed to record again with Crosby, Stills and Nash if David Crosby succeeded in conquering his now fabled addiction to free-base cocaine. Three years later Crosby had achieved just that and Young was left with no alternative but to deliver on his word. Only the addiction that almost destroyed Crosby had now turned its grip on Stephen Stills.

By the end of the sessions - which took place in Young's own ranch house studio - Stills was unnerving everybody with his deranged mush-mouthed behaviour. Guns and free-base equipment were often visible around him but what was even more disturbing was his deluded insistence about having served in Vietnam when everybody around him had to gently keep reminding him that he'd in fact playing in the Buffalo Springfield at the time he was claiming to have been on special manoeuvres, killing 'gooks'.

It says a lot for Young that he refuses to get drawn into putting down or talking out of school on his former colleagues. "It only lasted a while", Young told a French TV interviewer. "Then it was over. We made a record. . . but I've gone so far, I've gone all over the place and they're still doing what they've always done. Coming back together wasn't as easy as I thought it might be." The question of a Buffalo Springfield reunion was then broached (Young admitted two years ago that the five original members would sometimes get together for informed playing sessions at each other's houses.) "I just can't see it", he replied. "I mean, what would be the point? Buffalo Springfield are all part of the past now. If we reformed we'd be like a statue or something. A monument with pigeons shitting on our heads (laughs to himself). And that just wouldn't be right."

Wasn't this all because of Stephen Stills being a shadow of his former self, a persistent questioner finally managed to get out. Young looked at him evenly. He still wasn't going to be drawn into anything, you could tell."Well, I'm a shadow of my former self'', he replied smoothly. "I know it. But there's nothing I can do about it. And anyway", he added, "i kind of like it that way.

THE FACT of the matter is, of course, that for the last year and a half Young has been anything but a shadow of his former self.

A return to Reprise in 1988 sired another of Young's genre excursions, this time as a stetson-hatted Jimmy Reed styled blues wailer and guitarist fronting the Bluenotes, a tough R'n'B collective. The album's title track ' This Note's For You' accompanied by a Julian Temple video clip, voiced disgust at musicians selling out to advertising corporations and the ensuing controversy served to make Young seem oddly contemporary and meaningful again to the MTV generation (Young now shakes his head in disbelief that "such a dumb little song" should have sparked off such heated debate).

But it was 'Eldorado', a 5 track CD released only in Japan, Australia and New Zealand with a 5,000 limit to the pressing, that marked Young's true return from the wild blue yonder of self-defeating genre workouts and numbed emotions."Oh, you're one of my 'abrasive music' fans", Neil Young remarks when I query him about the record. "Well I got no problem with that. I made 'Eldorado' just for people like you. But see, 'abrasiveness' wasn't totally where I was at in 1989. I wanted 'Freedom' ton be a 'wider and deeper' . . . uh. . . 'kinder and gentler' kind of album" (starts laughing)

Don't you think though that you've always done your greatest work with Crazy Horse?

"Right now, here, this minute I'd probably agree with you, yeah! I love to do that kind of music. That's the most natural thing for me, playing with Crazy Horse. But it's not everything and right now it's not enough. Plus I can only play the way I play with Crazy Horse occasionally these days. You'll like this film I made that's called Muddy Tracks That one's a documentary of me and Crazy Horse on the road two or three years ago. There's a sequence where I filmed all the interviewers who came to interview me. Then I picked the most ridiculous questions. And didn't answer them."

You've always entertained a special antipathy for journalists and their work·. Hasn 't this got a lot to do with your father being a journalist?

"Maybe. I saw the 'inside' of the hard journalism business when he'd take me to the office when I was just a kid. I saw how a story could be 'manipulated'. I never trusted it then and I don't trust it now.I never believed 'em when they said I'd made a bad album. Why should I believe 'em when they say I've made a good one?"

You've been been quoted as saying you found 'The Bridge: the recent tribute album "threatening". Why?

"Well I made that statement before I'd actually heard the record. I love that record now. Before, I saw it as all these groups saying 'O.K. Uncle Neil, time for that rocking chair'. I love all those guys on the record - The Pixies, Sonic Youth and that Nick Cave guy in particular. When I heard it, it really touched me."

I interviewed Roy Orbison just before his death and he told me you'd approached him once and told him that after seeing a gig in Winnipeg when you were a teenager you'd decided to become a Professional musician. Is that true?

"Oh absolutely yeah! This was years ago - '62 maybe. I saw him in Winnipeg, saw him all over the place that year. Got to talk to him once outside a gig. He was coming out of his motor-home with his backing band the Candymen. That had a profound effect on my life. I always loved Roy. I looked up to the way he was, admired the way he handled himself. That aloofness he had influenced me profoundly. It was the way he carried himself, y'know, with this benign dignity ... His music was always more important than the media. It wasn't a fashion statement. It wasn't about being in the right place at the right time making the right moves. That didn't matter to Roy. Just like it doesn't matter to me. "Anyway I've always put a piece of Roy Orbison on every album I've made. His influence is on so many of my songs . . . I even had his photograph on the sleeve of 'Tonight's The Night' for no reason, really. Just recognizing his presence. There's a big Orbison tribute song on 'Eldorado' called Don't Cry. That's totally me under the Roy Orbison . .. spell. When I wrote it and recorded it I was thinking 'Roy Orbison meets trash metal' ( laughs). Seriously."

There's one passage in the book Neil And Me - that your father Scott Young wrote about you that I found highly revealing of the way you work. Apparently Cortez The Killer which is probably . . .

"Some of my best guitar playing ever, yeah!" he interrupts ...

Was being recorded and you had several other verses written and you were playing this one perfect take when . . . . .

When there was a power-cut in the recording studio, yeah. They missed a whole verse, a whole section! You can hear the splice on the recording where we stop and start again. It's a messy edit. But yeah that's true . . . incredible!"

What I'm asking is was the whole effect of that song its pacing, the lyric flow, everything -just an accident based around that power failure?

"Yeah it was a total accident. But that's how I see my best art, as one magical accident after another. That's what is so incredible. You see, with lyrics I try not to edit anything. I just let it all come through. I actually believe that if it was meant to be written down in the first place, it has a place there. I only ever edit at all after I've actually performed a song live. And I like to record 'em fast. Record 'em quickly and move on to the next batch."

There's a famous Miles Davis quote 'I've got to change, it's like a curse. Like Davis you've changed groups, styles, idioms relentlessly often without any apparent regard for commercial potential. Isn't this thirst for change, as you grow older, starting to become a curse for you too?

"I don't see it as a curse . . . It's just part of my make-up. It's the structure. Without change, the whole thing will just fall apart. I'm not just talking about rock'n'roll here, I'm talking about my life. I have to keep moving somewhere."

It's a cliche now 'In the 80's the whole context of rock! changed and lessened dramatically.' But that doesn 't mean it's not true . . .

"Well the context changed because of MTV and the rock video. That's really it. Because by MTV trying to visualise the music they automatically stripped it of most of its natural mystery and depth. Before rock video, when people where confronted with the music, they had to rely on their own natural ability to utilise their imagination . . . . If they weren't also opting for some kind of state of enhancement via some drug or other."

"Today in America for better or worse rock'n'roll is Guns'N'Roses. People call them evil but they're just kids. At least they were. You've got to remember it's the kids that made Guns'N'Roses what they are, not Guns'N'Roses making the kids what they are today."

I interviewed their guitarist Izzy Stradlin some months ago and he kept telling me America was poised on some kind of drug war. Many of the lyrics on Freedom 'portray the streets of your country as a drug war-zone . . .

"I think he's probably right, yeah. I think it's happening already. I mean, the lyrics to 'Rockin' In The Free World' are just a description of events going on everyday in America. Sure, I'm concerned for my children particularly my eldest son. And he's a Guns'N'Roses fan! He has to face 'drugs" everyday in the school yard, drugs that are way stronger than anything I got offered in most of my years as a professional musician . . . "But I've got to say right here, I think 'drugs" from my experience are beatable. Drugs are transitory. The environment's a whole different issue. We've simply got to come to terms with the fact that we've done damage to this world which we may not be able to undo. We've got to try and save this planet. That's it for me. I mean, the chances are anyway it's gonna blow up on us all soon enough. I mean, compared to that reality,'drugs" are really . . . just drugs.

Four years ago you gave a couple of interviews to Promote your country album Old Ways and stated then you were finished with playing rock'n'roll because you felt the music demanded too much of you that it was, by its very nature, a totally destructive drug-fuelled music . . .

"But I am a naturally very destructive person. As a guitar player . . . That's where you get to hear how destructive I really am in my life. Man, if you think of guitar playing in terms of 'boxing' O.K. . . well let's just say I'm not the kind of guitarist you'd want to play against" (laughs). "Rock'n'roll is a drug-fuelled music . . . maybe I said it but there's a lot of different drugs. And a drug doesn't have to necessarily be a chemical substance so much as a metaphor for something that stimulates you, that charges you up. For me now, physical training is like a drug. I do that now to get 'charged up'. It works too . . .mostly. "At the same time, drugs as chemical substances, I still find very threatening. I've had a thing for drugs but I don't think it's scarred me. I'm just scarred by life. Nothing in particular. No more scarred than anyone else. Only other people often don't let themselves know how damaged they are, like I do and deal with it."

Your ill-fated, often litigious 80's years with Geffen Records was it a personal thing, David Geffen being against you?

"I think it was, yeah. We went through a lot of changes when he managed Crosby Stills Nash and Young and when he signed me in the 80's he didn't seem to comprehend how . . . uh, diverse my musical career could become. So he took it personally when I handed him a straight country album or a rockabilly album. He thought I was making those albums to laugh at him, as a joke at his expense.

Many of your audience felt you were doing the same thing to them with at least a couple of those records. . .

"Yeah, I know. But it was no joke. None of those records was meant just as a joke. I was deadly serious about what I was doing 'cos I desperately needed to do something. But at the same time thru' most of the 80's I didn't want my most innermost feelings about life and everything to come out. Back then I had a lot of dark thoughts weighing on my mind tied in to experiences that happened in my immediate family". "Things happened to me over those years I had no possible reason or way to expect or capacity to explain. And it took me a long time to get over it and come to terms with my life to date. For better or worse,'Eldorado', 'Freedom' and 'Ragged Glory' are the result."

A constant theme in your songs is migration, People or things on the move . . .

"Yeah that's right. I even write 'em that way. I've written most of my best songs driving on a long journey scribbling lyrics on cigarette packets whilst steering."

Many of your characters are running away . .

"Well so am I. It's all running away. I've been running all my life. Where I'm going ... Who the fuck knows? But that's not the point."

The point is how long you can keep going.

"Absolutely. And right now there is no end. I mean, the only end is the big end .OK? I can keep going for a long time . . .

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For more on Neil Young's 1980's releases on Geffen Records, see:

• TRANS: A Little Bit of Essential Neil Young
• "Landing on Water" by Neil Young: Incredibly Underrated
• Reassessing Neil Young's Life on Geffen Records

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Reassessing Neil Young's Life on Geffen Records

Life
by Neil Young & Crazy Horse - 1987

Recently here on Thrasher's Wheat, we have been re-visiting and reassessing some of Neil Young's 1980's releases on Geffen Records, such as, TRANS: A Little Bit of Essential Neil Young and "Landing on Water" by Neil Young: Incredibly Underrated. And lots of fascinating observations by our dear TW readers in post comments.

Neil Young's Life (1987) is another overlooked album with many transcendent moments such as, "Long Walk Home" and "When Your Lonely Heart Breaks."

As you may recall, David Geffen in the 1980's filed a $3 million lawsuit against Neil Young for violating his contract by recording ‘unrepresentative’ albums. In other words, Neil Young wasn’t making Neil Young music."The truth is I fought with him because I wanted him to do better work,'' Mr. Geffen explained afterward. ''I was taking too much of a fatherly role in his life.'' Only David Geffen could describe a lawsuit against one of his trophy clients as an excess of paternalism. Described by friends, peers and adversaries as “passionate,” “neurotic” and “giftedly non-diplomatic", Geffen has been a highly polarizing figure in the Entertainment industry.

(For more on David Geffen and Neil Young, see FULL VIDEO: Inventing David Geffen | American Masters | PBS).

Well here's something that we had forgotten about that's fascinating regarding Neil Young's Life album cover. Released on Geffen Records in 1987, the relationship between Neil Young and David Geffen was very strained -- to be put it mildly -- while a multi-million dollar lawsuit ensued over a record contract.

Trying to escape the contract with Geffen, Neil must have felt imprisoned. Look closely at the closeup below, on the prison wall.

Number of Neil Young records on Geffen Label scratched out on prison wall
(Click photo to enlarge)

From book excerpt “Shakey” by Jimmy McDonough (Thanks Gary C.!):

“Young openly attacked the head of his label in the media. Geffen “missed his calling in life,” he told Much Music in 1986. “He should’ve been a dictator in an art colony.” The cover of the next album, Life, would show Young behind bars, the number of records he’d made for Geffen scratched out on the prison wall.

Briggs was brought in three weeks into the tour to pull an album out of the mess. “When they called me, they had already done fifteen shows and it was already in the shitter. Neil was an angry, angry guy—he was in a rage at everybody, and everybody hated him for it.”

So what other musician has so directly challenged his label and owner so openly with lyrics like: "We don't wanna be watered down, takin' orders from record company clowns." (Prisoners Of Rock And Roll)?

People tell us that we play too loud
But they don't know what our music's about
We never listen to the record company man
They try to change us and ruin our band.

That's why we don't wanna be good
That's why we don't wanna be good
(Ohh, ohh, ohh, ohh, ohh) Prisoners of rock and roll.

In 2004 Rustie, Mike "Expecting 2 Fly" Cordova posted a series of articles on his experience listening to all of Neil Young's albums in chronological order. Here is one in the series. For a complete listing, see Albums in Order reviews.

Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:51:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Life

In the fall of 1986, I had the opportunity to attend one of the shows in the Rusted Out Garage tour; in fact I saw the show that was broadcast live over pay-per-view television and on audio through participating radio stations. I had a heads-up about the audio broadcast and I was successfully able to set up my hi-fi vcr to record the audio portion of the concert while I attended the show. I had good copies of several new or unreleased songs several months before the album in which they appear would be released. I liked the new songs and anticipated the release of the next album; the first with Crazy Horse since re-ac-tor.

The basic tracks on several of the songs were recorded live in concert on the ROG tour, then various overdubs were added in the studio, a technique Neil had used for Rust Never Sleeps. I found that for the most part, I liked the raw live versions I had from my radio recording much better than the final album tracks. Take Around The World, for example: I thought it was a good rockin’ tune live. The added spoken parts found on the album (not in my concert recording), you know the part that goes “hey, what’s that you’ve got on…” was IMHO superfluous and actually detracted from the effectiveness of the song for me. I do like most of the album overall though. Mideast Vacation is somewhat disturbing; “I was Rambo in the disco, I was shootin’ to the beat” creates an image that really bothers my peace and love sensibilities. A throwaway tune on the album, Prisoners Of Rock And Roll, has for some reason become a Neil Young and Crazy Horse staple. I’d rather see them perform Inca Queen or Around The World myself, but no one ever asks my opinion about Neil setlists… I didn’t know it at the time of release, but a couple of the songs were from a while before Life was released. Cryin’ Eyes dates back to 1977 when it was performed with the Ducks. While visiting the Rock Hall Of Fame in 1997 with a bunch of fellow crazy Rusties, I saw a lyric sheet for Long Walk Home that was dated in the early 70’s. Filling out the album was We Never Danced, a song Neil wrote for the movie Made In Heaven; the track was a collaboration with Jack Nitszche. I believe it had been quite some time since Neil had worked with him. I always liked this track, especially since the one in the movie features a female singer instead of Neil.

Life was Neil’s fifth and last album of all-original music for Geffen records. The difficult relationship had come to an end. Check out the cover of the album and see Neil behind bars with the number 5 in hash marks visible. I think Neil was very glad to get back to Reprise and away from Geffen. I don’t know what Neil thinks of this album, but I very much enjoyed listening to Life today.

Mike - Expecting To Fly

(For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.)

Here's another review from TW Archives, via the FUNHouse! Reviews:

LIFE
1987 - Geffen GHS 24154

Mideast Vacation / Long Walk Home / Around the World / Inca Queen / Too Lonely / Prisoners of Rock'n'Roll / Cryin' Eyes / When Your Lonely Heart Breaks / We Never Danced

by Gary A. Lucero
glucero@wordperfect.com

Life is Neil's last official recording with Geffen. It was released in 1987, with much of it recorded live during the Landing on Water tour. Although not as reliant on keyboards for its sound as Landing on Water, Life shares a certain feeling with its predecessor. Many of the songs, like "Mideast Vacation," "Around the World," "Too Lonely," "Prisoners of Rock'n'Roll," and "Cryin' Eyes," are rockers. They're fairly hard, and have some great guitar work.

The remaining songs, "Long Walk Home," "Inca Queen," "When Your Lonely Heart Breaks," and "We Never Danced," are slow, melodic numbers. Most of the songs are about war, the Incas, rock, or love. One interesting thing is that the song "We Never Danced" was used as the basis for the movie "Made in Heaven," which stars Timothy Hutton and Kelli McGillis. Neil Young has a cameo role in the film as a truck driver. "We Never Danced" was unfortunately not sung by Neil in "Made in Heaven," but was used to good effect none the less.

As with Landing on Water, Life was not appreciated very much by Neil Young fans at the time of its release. Rolling Stone magazine said that Freedom, which came out two years later, was more a "life" album than Life
was. I disagree; real life is love, war, hate, rock-and-roll, etc., and that's what the album Life is about. Long may you run.

For more, see Neil Young Discography.

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VIDEO: "Too Little Too Late" by Pegi Young & The Survivors

Here is a new video by Pegi Young & The Survivors titled "Too Little Too Late" from her new album RAW (See more on Pegi's album RAW and here).

From interview with Pegi Young in Pegi Young Premieres 'Too Little Too Late' Video, Talks Learning 'To Live In New World Order' After Divorce | BILLBOARD by Gary Graff:

"I think people can read into this record and think one side should get all the blame, and that's not my intention at all," Young -- whose video for her original song "Too Little Too Late" premieres exclusively below -- tells Billboard. "I'm not blameless, and there were some issues that were going through the marriage. There's always two sides. What I really don't want is for people to read into this record as some sort of indictment of the woman been done wrong. It's not that clear-cut. It never is."
...

[On "Why'd You Have To Ruin My Life", Pegi says] "That was written pretty early on, when I was [in] my anger phase…but also really hurt, and that song takes you on that journey," Young recalls. "It's pretty pointed, but it was representative of where I was at at that time. There was a lot of emotion swirling around inside this little heart of mine. But there's a lot of other songs on the record, like 'Too Little Too Late,' and there's songs that didn't go on the record where I think it's clear there's blame to go around."
...

"I would say ('Tryin' To Live My Life Without You') came around midway in the overall recovery process," Young recalls. "I had to get out of bed, first, to start this record; I did suffer some pretty significant depression initially. We'd been doing some of the songs, and my keyboard player Spooner (Oldham), after a while he says, 'Y'know, Pegi, you're doin' a lot of po' po' pitiful me songs...' I just love him. I said, 'Y'know what? You're so right. I've got to get off my pity pot here and turn a corner' and adjust to learn to live in this new world order, in my early 60s.

"There's that process of discovery of, 'Well, who am I now that I'm not doing what I did for so many years?' That's been my process, but it's also a universal experience, whether it's a late in life divorce or a divorce at any stage of the game or a death or any significant loss. You've got to learn how to function in the new world order -- and that's what I'm doing."

Young says she and her ex-husband "don't communicate very often," though they both remain committed to the Bridge School that Pegi Young started in 1986 for children with severe special needs, and to the annual concerts that provide most of the operation's funding. "I think we got joint custody of Bridge School," she says. "Bridge School's bigger than the both of us." And she was gratified by the outspoken support from David Crosby, though his criticisms of Neil Young seemed to be part of the reason Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are in dry dock at the moment.

"My dear friend David -- Y'know, he said what he said when he said it. I don't know that he expected what came in the aftermath and... things have been spinning out of control a little bit," she says. "But, y'know, music transcends. Like Neil and Stephen (Stills); They've had all kinds of spats and this and that over the years 'cause they've known each other since they were kids, but the music takes you above and beyond those issues. So I hope that's what happens in this case 'cause those guys made some great music, and I'd hate to see the whole thing implode."
...

"I came into my own, you might say, in terms of putting out my first record quite late in life," Young says. "And yet there's some authors and photographers and even probably recording artists that didn't really hit their stride until their mid-50s. Some people write a lot more and put out a lot more product than I do, but I'm pleased with what I've been able to do in the last decade, and I don't see this as my last record by any stretch.

In some ways it's like a new beginning, even."

Full interview @ Pegi Young Premieres 'Too Little Too Late' Video, Talks Learning 'To Live In New World Order' After Divorce | BILLBOARD by Gary Graff.

Pegi Young & The Survivors will be touring Raw this spring at SXSW.

Also, see more on Pegi's new album RAW here and here.

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