Neil Young is Pissed: Poor Coordination on Hyde Park Gig with Dylan

Concert Announced "without my knowledge"
NYA | HYDE PARK : To my greatly appreciated NYA

Neil Young is very angry about the Bob Dylan & Neil Young Concert: Hyde Park, London - 12 July 2019 announcement recently made "without my knowledge."

Neil Young's full reaction on NYA. Primarily, the corporate sponsor Barclays Bank is a "fossil fuel funding entity." But more infuriating was the lack of coordination with promoters in the announcement which caught everyone off guard.

Neil Young: "There’s no doubt about it - Its been a massive fuck up!
Subsequently, the NYA team has had many ‘Come to Jesus’ meetings."
Image via NYA

More on the upcoming Bob Dylan & Neil Young Concert: Hyde Park, London - 12 July 2019.

Bob Dylan & Neil Young Concert:
Hyde Park, London - 12 July 2019

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Bob Dylan & Neil Young: 1975 Bill Graham’s Benefit Concert

Bob Dylan and Neil Young played together on March 23rd, 1975, for Bill Graham’s benefit concert Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks (SNACK) show at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.

Bob Dylan & Neil Young: 1975

The songs performed were “Helpless” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” with mebers of both's bands including Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson of the Band along with Tim Drummond and Ben Keith from the Stray Gators.

More on the upcoming Bob Dylan & Neil Young Concert: Hyde Park, London - 12 July 2019.

More on The Fascinating Saga of Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

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Joel Bernstein Interview: The Story Behind Neil Young's Album "Songs for Judy"

Joel Bernstein
San Francisco, April 9, 2018
Photographed by Joshua Ets-Hokin

Neil Young's long time archivist and photographer Joel Bernstein played a very key role in the recent album release "Songs For Judy".

Bernstein taped the November 1976 concerts and created a mix cassette with fellow fan Cameron Crowe. The cassette eventually evolved into the album release 42 years later. From an interview with Joel Bernstein in The Philadelphia Inquirer by by Chuck Darrow:

You were Neil’s guitar tech on the “Songs for Judy” tour. What were the circumstances of your capturing it on tape?

Joel Bernstein: I thought, ‘I really want to have a souvenir of this tour. So, I’m going to bring my Uhr cassette deck and get a PA feed and record these shows. It’s for me. It’s never going to become a bootleg album or something. It’s just so I can remember how cool it was.'

So I recorded 16 shows out of the 25 we did — it was a short tour, all in November.

Some people might assume the “Judy” of the title is Judy Collins. But it turns out it is a far more iconic Judy.


Joel Bernstein:We finished the tour [with two shows] in Atlanta, and Neil and the band were celebrating the end of the tour and had imbibed something and were pretty out there.

Neil hallucinated during the first show. The [spoken segment on the album] is him describing to the audience of the second show what had happened to him on stage during the first show, when he looked down into the orchestra pit and hallucinated Judy Garland standing there looking up at him.

So we decided to call the album Songs for Judy.

Full interview with Joel Bernstein in The Philadelphia Inquirer by by Chuck Darrow.

Also, more on Joel Bernstein and The Neil Young Archives.

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"This is Greendale" Brochure: Tomorrow's Town - Today

"This is Greendale" Brochure
Tomorrow's Town - Today (1948)

A quite amazing discovery by one of our dear Thrasher's Wheat readers and supporters.

Given the recent highlighting of the Greendale album on the Neil Young Archives (NYA), we thought this would be an excellent time to share a preview of "this is Greendale" brochure. Greendale, Wisconsin is an actual town that was established in 1938 and this brochure was assembled for the town's 10th anniversary.

"this is Greendale" Brochure (p. #17)
(Click photo to enlarge)

From Dionys in Germany:

Dear Thrasher,

As I am an early subscriber to NYA and a reader on a daily basis, I did notice the recent Greendale roll-out and wanted to bring "this is Greendale" brochure to your attention.

A couple of years ago a colleague lent me a brochure or booklet titled "This is Greendale" which I scanned, because it was such an unlikely find at a used bookstore in Bavaria, Germany. It happens to be a 46 page book on a housing project or an entire new community by the name of Greendale in Wisconsin. The booklet could have been an inspiration of sorts for Neil Young, although I know that the real Neil Greendale kind of resembles Half Moon Bay.

Still the brochure's content, especially the text, breathes all the optimism of an age buried in the past now. I thought that these apocryphal archival things should be brought to your notice, also because Greendale appears to have a kind of echo phase now at NYA.

Especially I liked the ads of local businesses who likely paid for the production cost of the booklet. Sometimes a journey thru the past can be really refreshing. Compare this to the blaring digital commercial world of today. Buy Me!

Being a geographer and a historian of sorts I always have been interested in these idyllic plans for better living. Greendale, Wisconsin, is an Eisenhower Era / early sixties dream which in my world is linked to the flood of American TV Series such as "The Waltons", "Lassie" etc. which were received in West Germany in the late 60's and 70's, that is at a time when this best of all worlds in its real incarnation already came apart.

Yes, I did see Greendale solo in München, chatted with Larry Cragg after the show when he packed up all these guitars. And I own Greendale in all incarnations including a Green family tree drawn by my son Dionys who at that time made his first steps into English as a foreign language (shaky
sketch by an 8-year-old boy) In 2005 or so I bought the book at a New Orleans store below sea-level, only to learn three days later that Katrina hit the city and most likely drowned that bookstore...

I liked Greendale a lot and looking at it now I think that it very much anticipated what Americans would do to their country later on. (Use of hand guns, sensationalist media, Power Co.'s, a seemingly helpless one-trick-pony police force, an enstranged older generation in rural areas of the fly over country, voting for The Donald).

My appreciation for Neil Young goes back to 1979 when I first heard Live Rust and being annoyed of my friends howling along with "Tonight's the Night" I was hooked for a lifetime because from early on I Have been attracted by experiences that gave me something to whet my appetite in putting up resistance to my comprehension. (I did send you a text about my 1982 Trans Tour disappointment a couple of years ago).

Anyway, that's some background about me, just to help you understand. Keep up the good work and best wishes for the up-coming holiday season!

Dionys

Thanks again so much Dionys for sharing your find with all the Rusties!

We'll work on getting the full brochure uploaded in the coming days. Now uploaded @ "This is Greendale" Brochure.

"This is Greendale" Brochure (p. #24)
(Click photo to enlarge)

Sun Green Was Right!

The Inconvenient Truth of
Greendale

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Elliot Roberts Interview: A Revealing Discussion on "The Music Business"

Here is a very rare interview with Elliot Roberts.

Elliot Roberts has been Neil Young's Manager for over 40 years now, as well as many, many other artists such as Joni Mitchell.

From New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Sync Up interview by Warren Zanes on Feb. 28, 2018, a quite revealing discussion on music and "The Business". Note, that there are audio issue with Elliot's microphone, unfortunately.

Elliot Roberts, Neil Young's manager, was characterized in the biography "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough this way:

"There have been other infamous artist/manager teams in rock and roll – Dylan and Albert Grossman. Ray Charles and Joe Adams, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau – and, of course, Elvis and Colonel Tom Parker. Elliot Roberts definitely resides in that hall of infamy – and is the only human capable of guiding Neil Young's career." 

"Neil likes quirky people around him," said Elliot Roberts, Young's manager since the late sixties. "I think having quirky people around him lessens-in his mind-his own quirkiness. 'Yes, I am standing on my head, but look at these two other guys nude standing on their head.' " His mane of gray hair flying, Roberts was on his ninety-sixth phone call of the day, either chewing out some record-company underling or closing a million-dollar deal. Not far away, a bearded, sunglassed David Briggs- Young's producer-prowled the stage, palming a cigarette J.D.-style and looking like the devil himself. 

 Briggs and Roberts were the twin engines that powered the Neil Young hot rod. Feared, at times hated, both men possessed killer instincts and had been with Neil almost from the beginning. Roberts was a genius at pushing Young's career, Briggs at pushing his art. It's an understatement to say the two didn't always see eye to eye. Roberts and Briggs were two of the quirkiest characters around- difficult, complicated men-but then so was just about everybody and everything in Young's world. 

"Let's look at Neil's whole trip-the ranch, the people he plays with," said computer wizard Bryan Bell, who worked extensively with Young in the late eighties. " 'Easy' isn't in the vocabulary."

Also, see interview with Elliot Roberts and Larry Johnson & Elliot Roberts Interview on Greendale.

Neil Young and Elliot Roberts, Manager
American Way Inflight Magazine, August 2016

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