Neil Young News

Thursday, March 15, 2018

INTERVIEW: Neil Young on ‘Paradox' film @ SXSW | American-Statesman/Austin360

Neil Young @ SXSW 2014
Photo by JAY JANNER / AMERICAN-STATESMAN

From Our SXSW conversation with Neil Young about ‘Paradox,’ his archives and more | American-Statesman/Austin360 by Peter Blackstock:

American-Statesman/Austin360: How did you assemble the material for the film?

Neil Young: The instrumental passages we did were all written for this film. Three songs — “Peace Trail” and “Pocahontas” and the long instrumental of “Cowgirl” (1969’s “Cowgirl in the Sand”), those are old songs obviously, although “Peace Trail” is only a year old. “Diggin’ in the Dirt” we wrote that for this, Lukas and Micah and I. And of course Willie’s song “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” sung by Lukas, is maybe the highlight, a classic. It’s like these two guys (Lukas and Micah) are American treasures, both of them. They’re continuing on the work their dad has done so well for so many years. It’s a beautiful thing.

You must have known them since they were little kids. At one point did you realize, hey, these guys might be good for my band?

The first time I remember thinking that is, Willie and I were standing onstage at Farm Aid in Milwaukee, maybe eight years ago, something like that. Lukas was playing, and it was just the (Promise of the Real) trio, and it was amazing. It was just stunningly great. And I was just standing there with Willie and saying, “You must feel great about this, to see those guys out there.” It’s just always felt good to see them. Now I’m playing with them, and they’re fantastic. It’s like they know: They’re in the river, they know the flow. They inherently know, and they have no fear. All those guys in that band, nobody has any fear. They’re not concerned with anything more than music. They know nothing to be scared of; they’re not trying to prove anything.

Lukas has said that his priority is playing with you, but he’s getting really good on his own and had a big record last year. How do you balance the needs of your band with your desire to encourage his own work?

I want him to do everything that he wants to do. And as soon as I’m ready to go out and play a tour, I’m hopeful that they’ll be ready to go, too. Right now I haven’t got the new music that I need to go out and play a tour, a Neil Young tour. I need to have a bunch of new songs, because it gives me something to get my teeth into. And then the (older) songs will hang off of them. And they hang on for dear life, those songs. But I can’t do it without the new songsm so I have to wait for the new songs to come.

You’ve done music-and-film projects before. Was “Paradox” different?

It’s just a continuation of music. We made the music that we felt like making. We knew we had a couple of scenes that we should create some themes for, and so we did them. In one case, we borrowed heavily from one of my existing songs to make a new musical track, and make an instrumental out of one of my old melodies. Another couple of songs are jam songs where we just went with the flow; we didn’t think about it much. Everything was so much fun. I mean, the drumming on one of those —is insane. Tato (Melgar) and Anthony (LoGerfo) had all these drums, the’re all banging away in the studio, and we’re just going nuts. On another one, I took my harp and I said (to the band), “You play the melody to ‘Love and Only Love,’ and I’ll play my harp and feed back through my amp.” And everybody just keep playing, and we’ll just keep playing that for a long time. We had a great time; it was fun.

Fill interview at Our SXSW conversation with Neil Young about ‘Paradox,’ his archives and more | American-Statesman/Austin360 by Peter Blackstock.

Here is the new trailer for the film "PARADOX" directed by Daryl Hannah with Neil Young + Promise Of The Real & Willie Nelson.

As previously reported, Netflix.com will stream the film globally on 23 March, the same day as the release of the movie's soundtrack.