Jim Jarmusch and Neil Young
Director
Jim Jarmusch’s intimate documentary about Neil Young and Crazy
Horse, Year
Of The Horse
spanned the band’s 28-year history, incorporating footage from
tours in 1976, '86 and their most recent '96 jaunt around America and
Europe.
"A Tale of 4 Guys Who Like To Rock"
"Year
Of The Horse" by Jim Jarmusch
The
Akron, Ohio-born Jarmusch, one of the pioneers of the American
independent film boom, is best known for his idiosyncratic movies
Stranger
Than Paradise,
Down
By Law
and Mystery
Train.
Music is a big element in all his films, and Jarmusch has cast rock
music personalities in his movies like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and
Tom Waits.
The
director's relationship with Young began when the rocker did the
score for his last film, Dead
Man,
while Neil's own label, Vapor, released the soundtrack album.
Jarmusch also directed the video for the song “Big Time” from the
Neil Young and Crazy Horse record “Broken
Arrow.”
Year
Of The Horse
is about the band, Neil Young and Crazy Horse--which includes
longtime cohorts drummer/vocalist Ralph Molina, bassist/vocalist
Billy Talbot and guitarist/vocalist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro.
Former
Neil Young and Crazy Horse producer/arranger Jack Nitzsche is
represented in some still photos in the collection as well as a Crazy
Horse founding member, Danny Whitten.
The
live performances, along with the interviews and behind-the-scenes
footage, were filmed in Europe and the US during the '96 tour, with
some archival stuff from both the ’76 and ’86 treks. Most of the
performances were photographed in 16mm, but a large percentage was
captured on Super-8 film by L.A. Johnson and Jarmusch.
“But
mostly we used Super-8 because we love the way it looks—the raw
beauty of the material somehow corresponds to the particular quality
of the Horse’s music.”
In
1998 Harvey
Kubernik interviewed director Jim Jarmusch in Los Angeles. Portions
were later published in Kubernik's 2006 book Hollywood
Shack Job: Rock Music in Film and on Your Screen.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Q:
How did your relationship with Neil Young formally begin?
Jim Jarmusch:
Neil and the band liked the results of the video I did for the song,
“Big Time,” which was shot entirely on Super-8 film in and around
Half Moon Bay, California. Neil particularly liked the rough look of
the Super-8. He called me up a little while later and said, “Listen,
we should do a longer film that looks and feels like the ‘Big Time’
video!” Neil liked the way we were such a small, portable little
crew.
Q:
What are you most proud or happy with after viewing and living with
this movie?
A:
I love the contradiction of Super-8 film on a big screen with music
that is recorded on 40-track digital Dolby... the combination of
high- tech sound with a real low-tech image. And somehow that
contradiction is very appropriate to this band, because they have
this huge transcendent sound that comes out of old amps and a very
raw kind of playing approach to the music. And somehow that raw
beauty and bigness and smallness together... I don’t know how to
explain it, but I think we captured that contradiction on film.
“Year
Of The Horse makes
it clear that the band's music comes from the whole band. Neil Young
is certainly their navigator, leading them into the soaring territory
of their songs, but Ralph, Poncho and Billy are anything but sidemen.
Together they create a singular sound that--in the same way John
Coltrane kept jazz alive and evolving with his group’s ‘sheets of
sounds’--keeps rock & roll alive through its emotional
connection to the musicians who are playing it. I wanted to shoot
Super-8 and then we covered the concerts that we shot in the house
with 16mm.
Ralph Molina Discussing Danny Whitten
Q:
One of your film’s strong points is the fusion of archival 1976 and
1986 materials shot in 16mm and the utilization of photos blended
with the 1996 tours you and the crew captured.
A:
Neil had 16mm film material from 1976, and the ’86 footage was
“stolen” from Bernard Shakey’s film, done by Neil himself,
“Muddy Track.” The 1986 was high-8 video that Neil, and I guess
(arranger/ producer) David Briggs shot.
We
went that way partly because the small cameras allowed us to easily
shoot by ourselves, without a crew.
But
mostly we used Super-8 because we love the way it looks—the raw
beauty of the material somehow corresponds to the particular quality
of the Horse’s music.”
Q:
What did you notice about the '76 and '86 footage? I would imagine
even then the camera was mostly on Neil.
A:
I tried to keep the crews that shot our 16mm from doing that. Neil is
the lead singer, the lead guitar player and the songwriter, the front
man of the group.
Crazy
Horse tend to be overshadowed by, not by his own design but that’s
just the way it is. And one aspect of Year
Of The Horse
was to make those guys known as people a little bit, so we understand
them as a band, and not just as Neil Young’s backup, side
musicians.
I
began to realize they were a four-piece band when I started shooting
“Big Time.” I’ve always been a big fan of Neil,
particularly with Crazy Horse on album like Tonight’s
The Night or On The Beach. I
like the more dark, rock ‘n’ roll side of Neil. I think he’s a
great songwriter but Harvest
Moon
isn’t Ragged Glory for me, ya know.
I’m
a rock ‘n’ roller, so I never liked Crosby, Stills and Nash, for
example. It’s too sweet and light, and doesn’t speak to me. I
don’t respond to that stuff. So, I was always a fan of the Horse.
And I started realizing that sound comes from these guys and if you
were to replace any of the them you wouldn’t have that sound
anymore.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Photo by Henry Diltz, Courtesy of Gary Strobl at the Diltz Archive
Q:
Were Neil Young and Crazy Horse members cooperative interview
subjects?
A:
We were treated as part of their gang! We were in the same hotels and
given the room list. We were able to hang out with them anytime we
wanted—with or without a camera. We were very polite— we didn’t
barge in. They were really gracious. At one show in England, there
were 60,000 people there. Neil’s guys allowed myself and L.A.
Johnson on stage and let us film with total access. We’re not
supposed to get in Neil’s eyeline, because he gives 110% when he’s
on stage. He’s there to make music, not to make a movie. You get a
slightly different show when they play in small clubs, which they
love to do before they go out on tour. Those shows are amazing.
Q:
Were you always a Neil Young fan?
A:
I’ve been a big fan since I was a kid. I first heard the song
“Broken Arrow” by Buffalo Springfield, which was very visual and
dreamlike to me. I didn’t know what the lyrics meant, so I
invented my own scenario. After that, the next big thing that went
right into me was the first Crazy Horse record, Everybody
Knows This Is Nowhere.
So, I’ve been a big fan all along, but had never seen Neil live
until the late ’80s. The good stuff always held up. That’s why we
listen to Bach.
I
was listening constantly to Neil and Crazy Horse while I was writing
the script for Dead
Man,
then again during the shooting, which involved a great deal of
travel. Crazy Horse even performed in Sedona, Arizona during the
shooting period, and a large number of our crew attended the show.
I
wrote Dead
Man
in a little house in the Catskills with Neil’s music playing on a
boombox.
Q:
What did you learn about Crazy Horse's music, and Neil Young as a
writer/guitarist?
A:
He’s a real poet, but not in an extravagant way. I mean, he uses
very common language, but it becomes poetic in the economy. Things
are not over-explained. And what really kind of blew my mind was,
after I hung out with Neil at his ranch, I realized certain lyrics
that were very abstract to me I then saw, or had some insight into
what, literally, they were all about.
Q:
Tell me about the pre-production process.
A:
Filming is like going out and collecting material. It’s like taking
some guys and going out to a rock quarry and you bring back a big
chunk of marble. And then you look at it. Say you wanted to have a
sculpture of a horse and you bring back the model which you think is
the right size and shape, but then while you’re looking at it, it
tells you it should be a deer. Or a cow. You have to let the material
tell you what it wants to be. That’s the way I like to work.
There’s certainly the “Hitchcock School,” where you storyboard
everything. Hitchcock said himself that filming was incredibly boring
because it was just trying to translate this stuff on paper onto the
screen. But I like to be open to the things you can’t control. I
like to be open and bring something else ’cause... Neil is a master
of this. Often the best things you do are by accident or by mistake
or by things you didn’t plan properly. Things out of your control.
Q:
Were you impressed by the availability of film and video from earlier
tours that you were allowed to utilize in Year
Of The Horse?
A:
Well, it kind of threw me for a loop when I realized all that 1976
footage is a feature-length film. I keep tellin’ Neil, “Man, you
gotta make that into a feature length film. Then you’ll have ‘Muddy
Track’ from ’86, ‘Year Of The Horse’ from ’96 and this
other film from ’76.”
Q:
What did you observe about the growth of Crazy Horse and their
relationship with Neil over the years?
A:
They’ve become more pure and more loose at the same time. They are
more open to letting something take them away into the sky without
knowing the destination necessarily. I think they’re more
courageous in that way. And yet their music is wilder. It’s less
refined, less careful. Like, there’s Neil playing that solo from
’76 in “Like A Hurricane” that is a breathtakingly beautiful
guitar solo, but it’s very clean in a way. It’s a different kind
of purity. But then you cut to how far he’s gone to like this real
wild way-out-there stuff. He’s not afraid to go into dark terrain
and bring all that experience with him. They are warriors and they’ve
been in more battles and are more violent than ever. But they are
also stronger. I agree with Neil’s dad in the film when he says:
“Their music just seems to get better and better.”
Scott Young
(Writer, Neil's Dad)
Q:
It was also interesting to learn about the other members of Crazy
Horse. The candid interview segments really educated a lot of people
to a band that has played together for decades.
A:
They are not used to it. It’s like people have always gone by them
to get to Neil. And on one level they probably like that because they
are not thrown into the melee all the time. On another level, they
deserve, and know they deserve, respect for their contributions to
this “world’s greatest garage band,” or whatever you want to
call them.
#CrazyHorse4HOF
Q:
It’s not often we get to see and hear musicians run down their
individual histories around the age of 50 as they are sort of being
introduced to an audience for the first time.
A:
They’ve seen it all. These guys have had people die around them.
Tragic things. They’ve lived through really wild drug experiences
and they all survived. Not all of them, but these four.
It’s
like, when I worked on Dead
Man,
I spent a lot of time with native people in the States and Canada.
One old guy was saying, “In our culture, to be old is like getting
to go to the top of the mountain and looking out.” That’s a
value all the young people respect... a guy who has been able to look
out up there. Because in native culture, it’s very cool to be old,
you know. Their view is from a higher place. That’s very valuable
to those of us who are catching up to that, who are just starting out
our climb up the mountain.”
Jim Jarmusch & Neil Young
Harvey
Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon
Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and
2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles
1956-1972. He
has also written titles on Leonard Cohen and Neil Young.
Sterling/Barnes
and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The
Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In
2021
they wrote Jimi
Hendrix: Voodoo Child
for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld
Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs
That Rock, Music That Matters.
His
writings are in several book anthologies, including, The
Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats
and Drinking
With Bukowski.
Harvey
wrote the liner notes to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s
Tapestry,
The Essential Carole King, Allen
Ginsberg’s Kaddish,
Elvis
Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century
and
Big
Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey
International Pop Festival.
On
October 16, 2023, ACC ART BOOKS LTD published THE
ROLLING STONES: ICONS.
312 pages. $75.00. Introduction is penned by Kubernik).
Also, see ESSAY: Neil Young’s Harvest at Age 50 by Harvey Kubernik.
More on Neil Young's "Year of the Horse" and Director Jim Jarmusch.
Also, see INTERVIEW: Jim Jarmusch & Neil Young - 1996.
Labels: #CrazyHorse4HOF, #DontSpookTheHorse, #SmellTheHorse, archives, concert, crazy horse, festival, film, interview, jim jarmusch, neil young, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, nya, tour
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