Neil Young

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Even if you've only listened to Broken Record a few times, you've likely heard Rick Rubin absolutely gush about Neil Young. Neil has been on the show three times now, and his legendary body of work has been brought up by more musicians interviewed on this show than likely anyone else except for maybe Joni Mitchell. That's because Neil is a true artist. He's been writing and singing songs since the early sixties, and his creative output has been near constant and in my opinion, virtually flawless for the last six decades. Neil recently stopped by Shangri La following the release of Crazyhorse's latest album, World Record. The album was produced by our own Rick Rubin, and on today's episode, Neil talks to Rick about the remarkable way the new songs were conceived. Neil also reminisces about recording after the gold Rush and Harvest and lanes, how THHC changes his relationship to music. This is Broken Record Liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Rick Rubin and Neil Young. Thank you so much for coming and talking to me today. It's my favorite thing. It's a favorite of mine too. Rick. We're like a couple of birds of a feather here and sitting here in your studio, this beautiful place that I was in almost fifty years ago with Robbie and Rick. And tell me about that. Well, you know, the board was smaller, it was a quad eight. It was up against the wall more that way. There was no area here. It was a little too crowded, but it wasn't bad. We had a good time. You know. I wasn't making music with him or anything. I was down here with I was with Bob. He was in here, Dylan was in here, and I played him a couple of songs. I played him Cortez, and he liked Cortez and he played in the recording and you played it for him. I just played it, just played it on the guitar. Yeah, in a little room down there. Yeah, And I was playing it for him, and I played it and then I played him, you know, I mean, the guy is so great. I just had to play these songs. So I played this other song. Uh, it's called Hitchhiker, and it's it's a song about every drug I ever took. And it tells a story of you know, being straight and get you know, just everything all the way through it chronologically, through this whole long story. And at the end of the song he said, he looks at me, he goes, that's a very honest song, Neil, And that was it was. It wasn't good, It wasn't bad. But yeah, have you seen his new book? Yep, it's cool. Yeah. I started listening to the audio version of it. It's really cool. I'd like to listen to the audio. Did he do it? He did parts. He did parts in a bunch of guests. But it's cool. It's cool the way it's put together with the different people and his voice cool. Yeah, it's amazing. I've been doing interviews, you know, for the record. Yeah. I don't usually do interviews like this, but I love this record. I love it so much and I want people to know that I'm alive. Yeah, you know, it's a very basic thing. Well, I haven't heard from Neil Young in a long time. Where is Neil Young? What happened? Well, I stopped playing a couple of years ago, and so I haven't been anywhere. There's been three farm aids in a row I've missed, and the same with the Bridge School and all that, But I don't really miss it that much. I liked playing music. I've made a lot of records. I've made many records during that period of time, three brand new ones, and you know, so I feel really good about that. What's the longest you've ever gone not playing with Crazy Horse? Probably a year and a half or something. So it's max. It's been a constant in your life for fifty years. Yeah, amazing since nineteen seventy sixty nine seventy. When you write new songs, do you always know in advance whether this is something you want to record with Crazy Horse or not? No, I really don't. I don't, but usually you know, I'm hanging out with them when I write it, and you know, it's just happens like a song that I would anything that's spacey, anything that's got any cosmic vibe to it at all, it's got to be Crazy Horse because that's the loosest that it can be, and simple and loose, and that's what I like. When you play with other musicians, does it change the way you play? Oh? Yeah, how does it? I don't know, but I'm different. I don't. It's not the same as playing with the Horse. Yeah, I mean I've become I think I just I play the song, then I deliver the song, and I try to immerse myself in it. I'm playing with promise of the reels. A lot of fun. And we even done some stuff here in this studio that was pretty cool. And uh, there's one that I laugh in. I don't know what I'm laughing in it, and we recorded it right here at Changer Law and it has to do with going to a fair or a circus or something, and it's wild. Do you always know what the songs are about when you're writing them? No, Usually I don't even care. I don't. I just start, you know. And with the new songs on this record, there's no there's no thinking. I mean, everything was just the flow was just all I wasn't trying to do anything. That's why it was so special. That's why I think it came out the way it did because there's no there's no preconception of it. I remember when you first talk to me about it before before we recorded it, do you explained that the melodies came in a way that none had ever come to you before they were delivered. They came through me whistling while I was walking. And I realized as I was walking along and I was whistling a different song every day, because I'd go in these long walks every day through the forest and stuff in the snow and just whistling along. And then I remember it, Wow, I really had a nice melody. I was whistling yesterday and I could hardly bring it back. And because I was whist seeing a new melody, and that's what made me think, Wow, it was a different melody from yesterday's melody. What was that melody? And I liked it. As I approached the part of my walk that was the same place I remember seeing whistling it, I remembered it. So I remembered it, and then I started whistling it again, and I got out my flip phone and recorded it on my flip phone, but I used a movie, you know. So I got this partly my thumb and partly the sky and some trees going by and dogs running and footsteps and stuff. But I'm whistling along with it. That's how I got all those melodies. And every day after that, I kept walking, and most days I'd have a new melody, and I just pulled out the phone and I even had harmony parts or bass parts and things like that that I put on the phone too, that I imagined them, you know, like on that one the world is in trouble Now there's a bass part, and we went through it in the studio. I remember it was like, Wow, this is a part. We have an idea. It was like because none of the other ones even had that. No, at what point did you realize this could be a collection of songs to record? Well, you know, I was. It was last April, and I was thinking I had that song Break the Chain, which I wrote before I did my previous album barn I wrote that just as COVID started. It was about COVID. So I was walking in the same general area, but this time I'm walking and I'm writing the words on a piece of paper and the melody's really kind of a blues melody, so you can't you know, you don't need to write it or whistle it or anything, and you kind of know it from the from I just remembered it. So I did that, and then later that winter, I was in Canada and I have a piano there that was in the house I was in and I wrote Chevrolet on the piano, which is interesting because it's this huge, long guitar song. I did it totally on the piano over the period of about a month, where I passed by on the piano and stopped and play a minute and then keep on going. And well, I was there the last time. I noticed all the lyrics are still sitting there on the piano, and it reminds me I should get those. But so anyway, yeah they did. And then the other eight I'm thinking. I was thinking, hey, I'd like to make a record. It'd be fun horses available, and I said, I don't have any songs. And when I talked any songs, then I started thinking, uh, wait a minute. I got all those melodies whistling, and then I got the flip phone out and recorded all of the recordings from the flip phone. I put the phone down on top of the computer and made another movie of just the you know the yeah, yeah, the phone is seeing to a microphone yea, and yeah, there's no phone speaker to the microphone of the computer. So I put it down and I remember and I copied all of the whistling and they were like fifty eight tracks but I had multiple tracks for each song, and each day was different, and so I had to organize it. And then I found out at the end I had nine, maybe ten or eleven different melodies, and eight of them seem to be pretty darn close to, you know, a whole thing melody wise, but to just whistling, no idea, what the chord changes are, no idea, no instrument. So that's really different for me to have the whole melody and be sitting there writing words to a melody and not knowing the chords, any chords, or the instrument or anything. So I did that in two days. I wrote all of the words. It sounds funny, it is. It's funny. It happened so fast, and I never rewrote anything, I never fixed anything. Everything came out right the first time, and that's very rare, as it never never like that. But it was like that this time. So you got these two unheard of things that I'm you know, for me that I'm doing, And then I had to figure out what instrument to do it on and what the chords were. And as I was doing that, it was easy for me to make a video of a verse and chorus for Billy, so he'd have the changes for the base, so I'd do a FaceTime video thing to him, which I did. I don't know how I did it. I think I did a quick time file and then I sent it to him or something, but I I just did that. At six o'clock in the morning, I get up and I go to the organ and put the computer down, press record and play what it was that I thought it was with the one verse and one chorus. So we use those things too in the movie. Cool. So we got the whistling in the movie, and then that and then the studio and then we're in then we do it with the band, so we have the evolution of these melodies. It's so cool that it can't you know that it just came. It was wacky. You can't. You can't. You can tell that it's mindless when you see the footage, it's crazy. And when you listen to the Our experience of listening to the album has been every every time I hear it, I hear different things than I heard before. Yeah, or if I hear something that sounds wrong, and then go back and listen to it again, that's gone. That happened with us several times we'd have a thing. We'd be together and we'd hear something and we said something gla and then it happened. Yeah, well we'll fix that, well, make a you know, make a note. We'll come back and the next day we come back and we couldn't find it. No, So it's remarkable. The whole process was strange. Yes, the whole process was strange, really different. It was like a gift. It was like a gift for us. We didn't have to do any work. Yeah, we just you know, we thought. We both made records for years, and we both like making records and we love music, and we know about the ways of making records. Things that we do, you know, like with me, it's like occasional double tracking one line or a couple of words or something like that to punch them out a little. So I just kind of sing along and sing a little more when I want it and a little less when I don't. And so you understood that right away. And bang, when I said let's do a double track, it wasn't like I'd go in and I'd do it, and it was like I was only singing part of the time and kind of half singing the rest of the time. But it was cool. It wasn't like, hey, well you know, I try to sing the whole thing. That never happened. Yeah, So on the only purpose I think you ever double tracked anything was if you couldn't understand here or understand the words the first time. It was so loud in the room when you're playing and you're singing live with the band, Yeah, it's hard to get the yeah everything, every little nuance. Yeah. So we picked out a couple of things and backed them up and mixed it in and it came out really great. I'm just really happy with the record. It's one of my if it's one of my favorite processes, and the music is some of my favorite music I've ever made. I mean, how I listened to it. It's good, it's really and it's really the way that it happened was so magical. Even after the way that it happened to you, once it got to the studio, it was weird. Yeah, It's like I remember the first week the band was learning the songs, and the feeling I got by the end of the first week was they might not ever be able to play the songs. That was the feeling was like, this is like not really happening. Yes, And then I thought, okay, well they played through everything, even though they couldn't play them, they played through them. So probably next week is going to be better because now it won't be the first time. And then and I remember when you called out the song to start the second week with, and Ralph said, well, we already played that one. Why would we play that? And then we went back and we listened to it and it was pretty good. Yeah, Ralph was right. Ralph was right. Turns out yeah, it's crazy. We didn't think we got anything. No, it turns out we got I think maybe the whole album was recorded when we didn't think any of it. We didn't think anyone was happening. Yeah, and it certainly nothing like that's ever happened to me before. For sure, nothing like that. No. I mean I'm used to the horse getting things on the first or second take. Yeah, but this was like I had no idea. You didn't know the songs. No, I didn't know the songs. I was learning how to play it on the pump organ or on the piano. And uh, because I did want to play guitar. Remember, we'd say to Nils. You know, Nils sounds like a guitar lick, you know, and we don't really don't want to hear. Yeah, you know, we know it's great and you played it, but it made it sound ordinary when't Yeah, but when we when we heard it was like, we really don't want to hear a guitar. And then on one or one or two songs, I mean you can hear it in the room. Yeah, but you only thing we featured was between the riffs where it'd be a clunk and scratch on the thing and you know, the pick guards all these weird sounds that he was making as he was playing between when he played his thing. Yeah, and we take his thing off and just leave the other things up real loud. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We we took out the playing and left the noises in between. Yeah. So it would go from the noises to the leakage of something too. It was like we broke every rule that wasn't crazy, and we were enjoying it very much and seem normal. I mean no, but it sounded good. It's like you can't argue with the sounds, Like if it sounds good, it's right. You know. It was wild and then we got what was that one? Uh, I think it was The Wonder Won't Wait? Or either that or the World is in Trouble now one of those two where I was. We started doing the harmonica through the octave divider with the organ on certain notes to create this instrument that was like, and I get kind of picture, who are these guys playing these instruments because I don't even know what that kind of instrument that it is. It sounded like an old organ but with an elect drake funky part of it, like two or three notes were just jamming, and it was weird. It wasn't working exactly properly either, I don't I don't think, no nothing, that fictional instrument was not at its best. No, No, it wasn't. But it didn't matter. No, So you know, we had a blast. We had a really good time, the time of a lifetime. Actually, I thought, I there's nothing I can look at that compares to it. Everything else is they're all great, And there's a lot of really cool things that we did. Yeah, and you know that I did with with Crazy Horse in the past and everything, and the stuff we did in the studio in the nineties was cool too. I mean, I've still got that and actually getting ready to put it out in the archives because it's some of it's really cool. Yeah, there's a couple of really cool songs there, but they're not like this, this was what is this? Yeah, it's definitely new music. Yeah, it's new very old music, very old new music. Because something is like if the song sounded like a folk songs from the forties, or they sound like songs from before you ever wrote songs. Somebody else wrote these first, and here I am and and I don't know, he kind of got us mosis or something. It's strange, it really is, man, So we gotta we just gotta be thankful because we got a gift and we will find out if other people think so. Yeah, either way, I think it works out fine. We got to experience it and we did. I'm glad people get to hear it. Yeah, I am too, And whatever they think is fine. I think they're gonna like it. I've got a couple of reactions from people who are like whoa, whoa, and I'm going, well, you know, it's it's me and crazy Horse and we're just doing what we do. And if you listen to it, that way you can say that's what it is. But the fact that I only play guitar on what three songs I think, Oh, I did overdubbed a note or two on another song that's chords, power chords I put on one of the I don't think it ever really sounds like guitar. No, No, we had a great time. We ought to be thankful. Let's be thankful. So cool. Have any new songs come to you since now? Do they typically come in bunches like that over the course of your life. Well, there's nothing typical about this bunch. But usually what happens is as soon as I finish an album, I'm starting to think about other things, and other music starts coming in my head. Finishing this album, not being able to play it and have it come out for six months after we finished it because of the way things are with vinyl and everything else. That was very weird. But I haven't got any new songs. I have not thought of any new songs. All I think of is the songs that we did and for months I was still listening to it, and I'm going one of my do it, let's do this, I did this. Could you imagine how you would play these songs live because it kind of is its own thing. I don't even know how you do it live. I don't know either, but we did it live. Yes, No, I know that, so we yes. I just can't imagine that they would sound you know, pump organ, electric guitar, bass and drums, pump organ accordion. But I think though that probably would sound good if we if we got to do them. We'll see what happens, yeah, I hope. So I'd be curious to see what that is. Yeah, I would be too, I would be. But things move along and they move on, you know, and Nils is you know, Nils is part of the Eastet band, so Bruce is probably going on a megatour. So Nils is gone, and Nils is like what I'm I can't be in two places at once. Yeah, because he was, you know, really into this. I mean, we were all really into it. So actually I feel I feel for Nils a little bit because I know he wants to be here with us. You know, he's with Bruce, and that's Bruce has been there for him for years and years, and that's an old old thing. Now. It was amazing to me that you played with Nils before Bruce did. I didn't. I wasn't aware of that until this. Oh yeah, this project Nils is on after the gold Rush Wild. Yeah, he plays piano on After the gold Rush. And you wanted him to play piano because he couldn't play piano, Is that correct? Yeah? Well he played accordion, right, so I knew he could play piano, right, And I knew, you know, he's a music he's everything, you know, So I just didn't want him to sound like he really knew what he was doing so sure of himself, you know, because that wouldn't go with everybody else. We had a good time. It's amazing that you found guys who you can play with for fifty years and still sound like maybe it's not going to happen. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Well, Nils is a great, great musician, and we'll miss him when he's out there with Bruce, but he'll be back for sure, and uh, you know, we'll just wait around, let's see what happens, and uh, if I do anything anything else in the meantime, yeah, I've asked Micah, Mica and Nelson and he'll step in and be with the horse. So you know we were ready to rock. If we decide to go out, we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with Rick Rubin and Neil Young. We're back with more from Rick Rubin and Neil Young. Is it different writing a song on guitar versus piano? For you? You know, they're all the same. It's just wherever I am and whatever it is. I don't have much method. I just I'm just there in it, and I never try. I only do it if it happens. If I hear a melody and I start seeing a keyboard or a guitar or listening, then I'll pick it up and try it, and then I'll stay with it until I don't hear it anymore. Usually that's how a song arrives. But in the last six months since we finished this, I haven't heard anything. But over the course of your life, there's been no rule of how and when it comes it comes. At first, it was all guitar because I could hardly play piano. At any point, did you pack this piano, like, did you decide I want to be able to play pianomore? Yeah, when I was in high school or there was a piano downstairs, and we lived in a triplex and my mom and I were on the top floor, and then in the basement there were some college guys. Outside of their room was a piano. So the piano wasn't really in their room. It was at the bottom of the stairs, understood, And then then you went into their room. It felt like their space or kind of. But that's how I learned to play what's the name of that song by the Marquis Dana Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, do not last dance something? Let me check on Marquis, Yeah, Marquis check. Maybe I can even play it, let's see. Anyway, I learned how to play that on the piano and kind of a very vanilla fashion because they were pretty funky. What the heck is the name? And that's I think they might have been from New Orleans last night last night. That's it. Let's see. So would you have heard that on the radio? Yeah? So I learned how to play that on the piano. It's the first song I learned how to play. And it sounds like if you could play that on the piano, you could play a lot of songs because it was all of the songs that I can play. Now, that's basically all I know how to do. Luckily, a lot of songs go like that. Yeah they Yeah, now that was fun. So that's how I started when I was in high school of playing a piano on that thing. Yeah, I just thinking about the h the process of having a melody and figuring out chords. Did you figure out all the chords using the pump organ or or different instruments to find them? Pump organ was mostly what I used sometimes, the upright piano. The song Chevrolet I learned on the guitar from the piano. And then the other song that I did was Break the Chain, and I just played that on guitar because it was, you know, obviously a guitar song. But really the first time I played it was well, we played it, and that's the one that's in the record. Yeah, you can tell it's it's we just pick up the beat in the beginning, it kind of finds itself, and that was the first time we played it. We played it a few times after that, but on them were anything like that. Yeah, I mean they were good. We got through it, yeah, but it wasn't like that one that is a thing that normally you know how to play the song and the band maybe has never heard it. Yeah, so they can follow you because you're solid and they're they're accompanying your performance. Yeah. And then but you get it. Yeah, but in this case, you don't really know the songs because you didn't write them the way they normally come now. But both Chevrolet and Uh and the other song that we were just talking about, both those songs break the Chain and Chevrolet, we're both take one, Yeah, I mean Chevrolet. We did six more versions after that. Yeah, but they weren't better. They weren't like, they weren't better than that one. There were a couple of minutes and a couple of the other ones. That's an interesting thing too, that sometimes you gotta go past it to know which is the horns, like you never you never know until you go. You gotta go buy it exactly and experience well, just as good as that was. Yeah, And we know from past experience that coming in the next day and trying it again does work. Yeah, that's hardly ever works with me. We try to get it. I try to get them so I know the songs well enough to do them and so I had all the lyrics, I had everything done it. You know, everything was ready, you know, I wasn't. You know. Chevrolet was a big song with a lot of changes, and I jammed on the changes with the band for a while without singing it. You know, we did that before we played it. And then the good thing about that is, you know, when you start playing the stuff and you're playing it, it's the first time. It's the first time I heard it, yeah, and the first time they heard it, and we were all playing it together, and it just grows and there's something there is. There's something to that that I really enjoy. And that's the way I try to make records. There's definitely an excitement when you don't know what it's going to be when you get to hear it, yeah, and it's exciting. It's got to go into your playing, you know, you have to play it differently when you're feeling the thrill of experiencing it for the first time. Yeah, Like in Chevrolet, when we get to the second instrumental after the intro and then the first verse and it comes back and this is now worth three and a half four minutes into the song and the first repetition happens. Yeah, and so you figure it's got three verses, so it's like, you know it. You know it's going to be a journey. So we started playing that and I was playing the guitar riff and I can hear it, and I'm going this, it's cool, this is good, and we just keep doing them and just advancing along, and it's like a long trip in a car, you know, sometimes the road is great, sometimes it's not. Yeah, it's real, it's real. It's real. That's why I think that hangs in there for whatever fifteen minutes. Yeah. It's also after like some of the solo sections are so long and deep that when you come back and singing, it's strange like that, there's still there's a song going on it because we've do you know what I mean, it's a new verse. This it's like, wow, there's still a song. Yeah, because where we've gone a long ways away. Yeah, that's right. That's a special. It's a special in that song because of that. The verses are over two minutes each verse. That's a long verse. Yeah, And you know that came from writing it on the piano and developing all the chord changes. And I just didn't feel like it was time to repeat anything. I didn't want to go back. I wanted to keep on going. And the parts are cool, like one part after another. It's a cool part, that another cool part, and another cool part. If you don't analyze the music of it, it doesn't feel strange or like it's long. It doesn't feel long, No, it does. It just flows really naturally. Yeah, we're lucky. We were very fortunate. We got a gift, that's how I look at it, and we're we're in the right place at the right time. At what point in your life would you say you listen to the most music. Probably I'd say I listened more in the sixties and seventies. You think because it was just new to you. Yeah, I think so. I used to like to listen to things over and over again and hear them. Now I just uh, if I hear it once, I know, you know. But these songs I like to listen to over and over again. Yeah, I think because it's so abstract what's going on. I mean, it's funny way to describe it, because it's they are as songs. They're pretty straightforward songs, pretty straight ahead. Yeah, but for some reason. The paintings of them are pretty abstract. Yeah, yeah, I don't know how that happened, man, I just I just know that we're here and we were all together, and I remember i'd look at Ralph after we finished, because that's the barometer. You just look at Ralph and you can tell whether you got it or not. And it was not because he's going, hey, that was great. It's not like that. No, it's a body thing, you know. And uh, at the end of Chevrolet it ends, and then there's a break and nobody's saying anything much, and then Ralph says to Billy, how long was that song? And Billy looks at Ralph and goes, not long enough. It's crazy. Yeah, it's still high school for a crazy horse. Oh yeah, it's unbelievable. And then oh yeah. And then somewhere in there Ralph's Ralph told Neils, he said, you know, I think you're playing a little timid, and Neils went off to Timid. You know, it's funny, but only in a you know, in a high school kind of group way would you have these comments. And you know, this ship and it's all so real with these guys, so it's amazing. I enjoy it, man, I really truly do. I'm glad we got to share that. Is there every time with the songs that happen over the course of your life, When you're writing them, you don't really know what they're about. Is there ever a time later where it's like, oh, maybe this is about this. Do you ever have insights into the songs later? No, I really don't. I don't have any insights in the one song I was thinking of when you started saying that was I did a song called will to Love and I did it on a cassette player sony cassette, sitting on the hearth of a fireplace with the fire burning, and I'm sitting there in the middle of the night, playing my guitar and playing this song which I just had written, which I was writing. So I wrote the words and had them all written out, and then I started playing it. And I only did it once and that was it. And then a couple of months later, I was here in Malibu up on that Indigo ranch. Yeah, I was up there with Briggs and we did the recording up there of where I overdubbed all the other instruments, you know. I played drums. I played bass in a certain area. Suddenly kind of a jazz band joins in and plays for maybe four or five or six bars and then stops. It's very weird. It's like a big sketch the whole thing. And so I sketched in background vocals that I couldn't sing the same thing at two parts at the same time that I knew they had to be there for it to make sense. And the song was about a fish, a fish swimming, a salmon trying to make its way up the river. So I really didn't know what I was thinking about, but it was just that the salmon had had the will to love. The salmon wanted to go and get to this place, and that's that was it. So that's that's the whole thing. What was it like working Briggs? Briggs was great, brings a lot like you. He was. You guys are very similar. Briggs is different, you know, definitely his own unique guy. But he wasn't shy about what he knew how to do, wasn't shy about organizing things, telling people what to do. And uh, well, Briggs was a good engineer. Yeah, he was at the board at Hyder all the time. When we recorded it on Selma and Coega there and we recorded. Everybody knows he was at the board. He was at the board during my first album. And we went out and I remember recording somewhere out in Glendale. I was a pipe organ in a building and I used it on a song called I've Been Waiting for You and went out and recorded that pipe organ. That's an amazing thing. And then we came back to Hiders and we did that whole trip with it. But Briggs is great. Briggs is great, and you know, so I look at you. Two guys are like brothers as far as I'm concerned. Her brothers who never met. How do you first meet Briggs? I was walking down to Panga Canyon Boulevard Old to Panga on my way to go to the Canyon Kitchen to have breakfast. And I'm walking along and this World War two army vehicle drive spy and that stops in front of me and I walk up to it and there's two guys in there, and one guy says he want to ride. I said, sure, I'm just going down to the Canyon Kitchen that we'll give you a ride down there. So that's how I met him. Had you ever recorded at this point? Oh? Yeah, I made the Buffalo Springfield Records. I had not made my first solo record. I was at the point where the Springfield was breaking up, and I was living at a girl's house, Linda Stevens was her name, and I'm around a mile and a half walk from where she us to that place, and somewhere along there along comes this old you know, it's like it's not like a Humby or something that was, but it was an open military vehicle, like a giant jeep, huge, big tires and everything. And it was Briggs and somebody else I can't remember who it was. That's how we met. And then on the way back, they showed me where they lived, where he lived. He took me in there and I looked at it and I said, wait, this is where Stills used to live. Stills was having a party out there we were, and we all got busted, and so we ended up going to jail for smoking weed, and we all got you know, we got out and everything was okay, but that's a Springfield days. Then Briggs is living there and I recognized the place, and sudden I'm going, hey, I've been here before and then, uh, you know, I would since it was just down the road, I'd go visit him, and he was doing Murray Roman. I don't know Murray Room. He was a comedian and Briggs was recording him, and he also was getting here. I think he recorded Spirits first album, How Cool, And you know he was doing stuff like that and just getting started. And we just started talking about Megan Records and we made my first record and many many more after that. Was it obvious when the band broke up that you wanted to make solo records as opposed to putting together a new band. Yeah, I wanted to do a solo because I didn't want to be hindered by held back by other things, other opinions. Yeah, I had a lot of ideas, too many songs. I don't enough time. Did you feel held back in Buffalo Springfield? Not really. That was a great band. I just had more songs than I could put in the band because there were you know, Stephen was writing, Richie wrote, and I was writing, and Bruce and Dewey didn't write. But I could write enough songs for an album myself. And the time that it would take the Springfield to get ready to record an albums, So I wrote a lot of songs. Do you remember the first time you heard Crosby Stills in Nash? I think it was after that record came out. I listened to some of it, and and I because Stephen. I always missed Stephen, and what's Stephen doing? You know? And I could hear him, what are you doing? I could hear he was producing and playing a lot of instruments and doing that. And I could hear that in the tracks for the first CSN album, And I knew he could do that, But I like playing with him live better. Yeah, he's a great musician. Yeah. He had a lot of great ideas, and he had big, big ideas, big beautiful ideas. Yeah, he was an amazing talent. A lot of respect for Stephen. Do you feel like he would push you to be better or was his greatness something that would make you better? Oh? Definitely. He was just so naturally good. Yeah, kind of singing was great. What a singer. He was learning how to play guitar and singing great, and learning how to play piano, and he just never stopped growing, just kept growing. And that was a lot of fun. How did you end up joining that band, a CSN band. Yeah, Stephen came out and asked me if I wanted to join and do a CSMY thing because they wanted to go on the road. And I think almeded To suggested to Stephen that Stephen and I play really well together and if that was happening, that would hold the whole thing together. So they never toured without you. No, I don't think that would have happened, or it might have happened, yeah, But the history is they put out an album, then decide, Okay, if we want to play live, it'd be better to do it with you. Yeah, And then you play live with them, and did you play songs from the first album. I didn't play live with them until after we'd done Deja Vu. Wow. So they never toured for their first album. I don't think so that's amazing. We went right in and did another one, wow, although we did. I think the Greek theater was. I remember doing I've Loved Her So Long, which was on my first solo album. I did it with Graham Nash, but I don't remember doing Helpless, so maybe we hadn't done Helpless yet. It might have been one gig. Yeah, you know before we got out there and recorded Deja Vu. But I'd have to look on If I looked at my archives, I'd be able to figure it out right away because Woodstock, the gig, happened in between right at that time, also, so that it'd be the separator. I think Woodstock was between Deja Vu and CuSn, But it was also one of the first times I ever played with CSN, So if it was that I was playing with them live before we did Deja Vu, that would be a gig in Chicago, maybe the gig in la at the Greek Theater and a Chicago auditorium gig, and then Woodstock. I think that's all we did, so I may not when we did Woodstock, we may not have recorded Deja Vu yet because Woodstock the song is on Deja Vu. Yeah, Joni wrote it after Woodstock. Yeah, so that's probably the chronology. Do you remember what it was like recording the Deja Vu album at all? We recorded a lot of it up in San Francisco at Hiders, and it was pretty cool. It was fun. Good to be playing with Stephen again. Yeah, great to be playing with Stephen again and in the studio, and those guys were great, and they were great in the studio. I think that was about the time that did Crosby started getting into the free base and kind of got out of it, but it got him. It's too bad. But anyway, he you know, we had a good thing going on there for a while, but that after the drugs and all that stuff happened. Maybe that's when we tried to do another album that he had taken the drugs. But I don't know, you saw hazy back. You always planned on continuing your solo career, regardless of whatever whatever else he would. I mean, you know, I had too many songs. Yeah, it was just it was a project essentially. Plus I'd already done. I think I already done. Everybody knows it is nowhere by then. I don't know how at all evolved, but it feels like there was a stark change from your first solo stuff to everybody knows or yeah, or even after the gold Rush is like really, it feels like after the Goldish in some ways is the first Neil Young sounding record, you know, for do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, how do you think that happened? Well, I built a studio in my house into Panga and that's where we recorded after the gold Rush. Before that, I was going into the studio and recording more more professional, professional studios, like kind of like from Buffalo Springfield type of thing. Yeah. And then when I got together with Crazy Horse, we practiced in the house into Panga, but we went into Hiders and that's where we played all those songs and that was so much fun. Still remember looking at Ralph when we were doing down by the River and he was playing, and he just looked at me for a second and he just shook his head and looking up in the air and uh. And he never likes anybody to ever look at him. Don't ever look at Ralph. Stop, don't look at me. He just wants to play, doesn't want to make any contact. He just wants to be in the music. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, it's a great Drummer's amazing field drummer. So yeah, feel it's all it is. Yeah. So some of these songs he stops playing, Yeah, but it's works for the song. It's like a big Phil Yeah, there are no drums. Then he comes back in. Yeah, that's pretty wild. He really is one of a kind drummer. He really is. Yeah, and Billy is a one of a kind based and they groove together incredibly well. Yeah, Crazy Billy is great one note at a time, and each note is like a universe, yeah of soul and sound. Yeah, he definitely means it. Yes, he really means every note. Yeah. So in some ways it sounds like the album you recorded at home that sort of set the stage for it. Seems like most of what's happened since. Yeah, even when you're in a professional place, you're still approaching it in this same way, homemade, personal, not concerned with the technically right way to do anything. No, that's what was so different about Harvest, because there was I had no idea what I was doing. I had never met the musicians before Elliot Maser put that all together and we went in the studio in Nashville. He was in a barn or in a studio in Quadraphonic Nashville on sixteenth. Yeah, it was this house studio with a house with the studio and yeah, a lot of studios like that in Nashville. A great studio, really good sound, and that was a lot of fun. Elliot Maser did a great job, and you know, so there were four or five six songs recorded at that time and then but that was in the studio and we were sitting there playing like we were making a session and more like the Springfield. But those for those songs, you knew the songs at that point. I knew him really well. I was playing them on the road. Great. So you're playing them as a solo ARTI like solo acoustic and the band had never heard them, and they started playing him right away. They learned him real fast. Those guys were really good. They were like great studio players from Nashville. That was that was unique. It sounds like that probably happened really fast. If you knew this das well it did. I knew the songs really well. As soon as they had the chart they were playing what they played. Battery wore a great drummer, amazing drummer, Tim Drummond, great bass player Ben Keith. Ben played with me from that moment until when he died. Yeah, made a lot of great records with Ben. I think there's that BBC concert that you did solo with those songs before you made the album. It seemed like it was before you made the album. Yeah, that was during the time of the album. If I remember correctly. One of the songs he played was not the whole like it was a part of one of the songs that ended up being a full song on the album. I can't remember specifically, but something like that. The timing of that, I'll have to check that out in the archives and see how it worked. But that's all part of the Harvest fiftieth anniversary. So Carvest Time movie, it's got all that stuff in it. And when does that happen? That's happening off immediately. Really, this is the fiftieth anniversary of Harvests now probably the fifty first. I mean we're probably oh, that's unbelievable. I know, well, yeah, it was seventy one, so this is twenty two. So explain the archive. That's a good one. You know. I collect things so and I like the idea of things being in order. And then when I thought learned about a website, I thought, wow, I could just put this all in a build a file cabinet and put everything in the file cabinet like an old school And I just came up with all these ideas for how to do it. And it's the same system that any archival thing would be just in a giant file cabinet, but each song has got its own index cards and everything about the song is there, so you know, it's chronological. Everything from the beginnings of the end is all of this time going by, and it's your personal archive. But it's accessible by everybody. Yeah, anybody can go and look at it. Check it out if you want to listen to all of my music and high res I think you have to subscribe to do that, but it's all there, and I think it's nineteen ninety five a year. I just don't want to charge for it, you know, I just I just don't think. I just wanted to be there. Yeah, and I probably could make more money from it if I charge more, but I don't know. So far, so good. Yeah, people could listen to anything in the same quality that they could hear it in the world for free. Yeah that's only Yeah, you can only you're only paying to hear it in a way that you can't hear it anywhere else in a higher quality. Yeah. Or you can hear it on Amazon, yeah, and you can hear it on Apple, and you can hear it on cobuzz. Those are the three high res services and apples. Not all high res. But and they're not even like in that thing anymore like they were. I don't know really what they're doing, but they do supply music and you could get to stream all kinds of stuff and you can get it from them. So they sell my stuff high Amazon does high res. So anybody who does hi res, I'm there for them one hundred percent, yes, because I think that's what the music. That's the only saving grace of digital is that it has high res and we need that. We need it to sound good, we need it to sound as great as it can. We'll be right back with the rest of Rick Ruben's conversation with Neil Young. After a quick break, here's the rest of Rick Ruben's conversation with Neil Young. Tell me about when you first heard, because you made a handful of albums in digital and digital first hit, Yeah, do you remember what the first one was? It was around in the eighties. After US Never sleeps afew was Trans after that, Yeah, Trans was definite. Trans was on the edge of that eighty two. We recorded in on analog tape and then we mixed it to analog. Trans is actually almost a whole analog, but it came out on CDs. You know, it was getting to be the end of vinyl. After that was everybody's rocking. Yeah, that was that was all digital. That was Mitsubishi thirty two track, you know, sixteen bit forty four one CD quality. And if anytime you'll listen to that for very long loud, your head hurts. That's what I discovered because I always listened loud and long, and that's that's when I realized something was wrong. When did you switch back to recording analog? Probably in the nineties again, Yeah, I started going back because I wanted to have the analog source. And then Vinyl started making a comeback. Here's an idea. I got an idea, let's go check this out. Vinyl very popular because people when they hear a good Vinyl, they love it. Right, So there's only one other way to get that. It's radio. Remember those old analog transmitters on top of the buildings in New York and Chicago, Cincinnati and Boston. Yeah, and they went far, long way yeah analog. Yeah, So you could play a Vinyl record on an analog radio station and you never went digital, and it would go to everywhere everywhere that they had a radio that wasn't a digital radio. So you'd have to have an analog radio that can play can pick up a digital station, but it's not a digital radio picking up a digital station. But that's could be the future of great sound is radio, AM, radio or FM, whatever, as long as it's analog because it can be broadcast. Imagine vinyl quality. You say how hard it is it to get vinyl, but a radio station could send it to millions of people. Yeah, and it's one step away. It's one step away from being possible. Yeah, that'd be cool. It would be cool. The difference between play and what they play? What is it? MP three's most of the time on the radio? Yea. At the best it'd be a CD, yeah, which is not very good compared to analog. It's like really not good. And if that was coming through people's radios. But you know people are now, they're they're in this thing about well they did the cars digital. This is digital ads digital and it still don't realize how much gets lost. Digital loses it all. I'm really a great amount. Like I'm looking out this window and looking out of the beautiful green wand and a blue sky and beautiful trees and all the detail of every little part of everything is all there. And if this was a digital picture, it going to be like there was a screen up, yeah, and I was looking through each little hole in the screen, But that's been averaged out to the dominant color in that hole. So instead of seeing a universe of color when I move up and look through it, I get up because that thing and it's all like one shade of blue or one shade of green. And that's why our bodies don't feel. That's why we don't feel the music like we used to, because it's not there. It's only a reconstitution of something that sounds like it for ones and zeros. But businessmen love the ones and zeros because they can say, well, the cheap stuff is less numbers. The most expensive and best stuff is the high numbers. So we'll only sell the good stuff to the people with the most money. You know, it's not really a common thing for everybody to have that, so basically yet because of that thinking, yeah, the floor went to the bottom for quality and music. That happened about nineteen eighty five. So the regular people get the low quality, yeah, instead of regular people used to get the high quality. That was analog. Everybody got the same thing. That was music. That's what happened. That's a sad thing. As I said, we're having a moment of silence for the music. Yes, there was a high fi store in Santa Monica that I would go to sometimes and listen to vinyl and it would frustrate me so much because it sounded so good there. And I decided I can't listen to vinyl because I spent all my time. I'm making music for other people to hear it, and they don't have vinyl. And if that's my reference point, it's not achievable. Do you know what I'm saying. It's like, it's not it's a different animal. Yep. We got to start a radio station in La Man and broadcast on off and down the West coast. Would be great, pirate station. Pirate station, Yeah, pirate analog. But you'd have to sell people. I'd have to make analog radios. I wonder if anyone still makes them. They may someone, But that's the missing thing. That's so easy. Had a cool old car that had a AM tube radio in it. Oh yeah, and then I wanted to listen to music I was working on, so I replaced it for a new super duper sound system. Never sounded. It is good. It really never sounded as you gotta get that other one back. Yeah, that's what the world ought to do. It's a cool idea. It is a cool idea. Yeah, radio could be the future. We can do that. I mean, we can do it at very least for ourselves, yes, easy. Yeah, So maybe we start there, yeah, and then maybe it grows. Yeah, Malibu radio, you know it's it's possible. Yeah. And you you just play analog sources through this thing and it sounds great and people are going, why is my radio sounding so good? It's like I got a record player in here. That's pretty wild. And all the time I spent talking to people about this record, and I've done a few interviews and some of them. I did one with some guy and it's supposed to be this big thing and everything, and he starts talking about Love Earth like it's the melody of Love Earth's actually did you know it's shaboom by the crew cuts? And he said it's the same changes in the same thing and the whole idea of the song and everything, and that's all he said about the music. And this is a guy with the big magazine that we do every year that my management told me, oh, yeah, they've heard this, they heard the record, they love it and everything. I'm talking to this guy, he has no idea what the record is. After that, that's when I figured I'm really doing some heavy screening on these people, and you know they're gonna have to Then I spoke to Edna Gunderson, who is great and she's from AARP. That's how she's interviewing for Okay. So she's great. She's listened to every song and she says to me, Neil, what happened to music? I remember about nineteen eighty five I stopped listening. I just didn't want to listen anymore. And I said, what that was? CDs? That's when the digital revolution happened, right about then? Yeah, And she just looked, you know, she's real And I said, yeah, I mean check to go back and check the history and that she came out of nowhere with that date. Yeah, And she said, I don't know what happened to music? You know, I think the songs that we used to sing are the songs that we sing that are songs that have emotion in them and everything. About them is like echo and all the stuff that we have that we the way we blended it, the melodies, the arrangement, all of the melodic content of the lyrics, the feeling of the whole thing that requires playback of the recording that is deep and has a universe of sound in it, so you can feel all the emotion. Now, those are old records that we loved were very emotional. New records that are big hits are clever. Yeah, they're not as emotional at all. They're clever and tricky, and that's kind of where all of this stuff that's happening now it lives. So if you just listen to that kind of music, you're not going to hear the difference. So everything changed. It was interesting when you look back at it and you can't figure out how it happened. I don't know how it happened, but I know what happened. There's even an argument that it sounded better before multitrack. You know, like if you listen to Frank Sinatra recordings from the fifties where it's him and an orchestra and it's going down live, that's it, and it's it. That's it. There's nothing to change. There's nothing to mix, there's no you can't do better. All it is is that, and there's something about it that just hangs together in a way that nothing else does. Yeah, well there's nothing between it and you. Yeah, it didn't have to be mixed. It was already mixed, and it went one to one big track, and maybe they recorded it four times and cut the tracks together to get a good beginning and a good end, but it was always one track. Then we went to three track and four track and started doing the same things, ping ponging back and forth between two of the tracks, overdubbing and putting the chorus vocals and doing those kinds of things. But it was still a basic track. Was on two of those. Then they'd mixed to a two track or a mono, so that was a generation away from what franked it in the beginning, from the straight mono live. Oh that's the greatest that stuff. Yeah, there's something about the limitations of all of the information coming together right from the beginning, where the way that it's mixed isn't electronics, it's it's something else. It's it's real. Yeah, it's really what happened, it's really what they or they might have mixed a few microphones up and down, yeah, to get to that mono track in the room. Yeah, and maybe they only had three or four mics in the whole room at the most. Yeah, you know, because they had everybody to stand in the right place. Okay, Frank, when you move in one foot because we need you a little louder, but stay on the right, don't stand on the left because you're going to block the bass. That's the way it was mixed. Yeah, so you know, that's pretty good. That's why when we were doing some backup vocals would be like okay, Billy, take a step back, I'll take a step forward. Yeah. Yeah, and just trying to get that balance with everybody singing on one mic, and it's like, okay, it's a little too much of the high voice. What's it like if we have a little more bass and the next time none too much bass. Let's go back and move back yeah, and tiny, tiny moves. Yeah, but it all made a difference. Yeah, I did. I'm very, very proud of the of the vocals that we did. Somebody was listening to this record, I mean somebody up in Canada that I played it for and they said, my God, the vocals. When these guys come in singing, they sound great. Who's singing yea? Who's thinking? Yeah? Crazy? Okay, here's a good one. How do you connect to spirit? How do I connect to spirit? Yes? I try not to connect to spirit. Okay, I try to not do anything. If it's gonna come, it's gonna come. I just try to stay open. But I can't get it. You can't stand over a hole with a gun waiting for it to come out. Spirit is there or it isn't. You've got to be in the right place at the right time. How would you say? THHC changes your relationship to music. It enables other things to get lost, so you're only in the music. After the session's over, you can't do anything for a while. But while the session's happening, you're living in the music. And it's not because you're not in the music when you're not high. It's just that because you're high, you can only focus on one thing. I see. It removes the distract removes the distractions you see. You know, that's what it does for me, and I enjoy it. So you get so into it, you enjoy it, you feel it yeah. Yeah, imagine it's different for different people, like everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like math is not good for getting into the spirit. I don't think I would. I would imagine math and spirit not working harmonically. Well, we've seen so much good music being made with hallucinogenic influences, and then when the popular drugs shifted to more other kinds of drugs, music wasn't as good. No, It's like the difference between the sixties and the seventies was different drugs, and you can kind of hear where it shifts. Yeah, yeah, you can. Cocaine had a big effect, and then after that as things rode along, But in the beginning, it's it's interesting to look at music that way, the way it's developed over the deckcades, and I think we're you know, we were lucky to be there, because if you're just getting here now, it's hard to pick up on it. You have to go back in time and check it out. It almost feels like it's a different thing now. I don't know what it is. Yeah, but I'll say I'll say it's not that it's bad, it's just different. Yeah, it's just different. Really is different? Yeah, No, it's what people need now it's what they it's in the neighborhood that where people are accepting it, which is basically as wallpaper almost. I mean, it's like in the background, it's part of everything. There's so many other distractions. Music used to be the big thing. Now tech is the big thing. Tech is how you get involved. People are on their phones, they're just lost in the little box and they so they don't have that time in their day where there's nothing to do but listen to music, because as soon as they start listening to music, they got a call. All then they're on the online trying to figure out what that person in the call was talking about, googling something to find out what it is. Yeah, when we think of folk music now, we think of it as music from the sixties, and those songs were old songs or songs from writers in New York, from writers that wrote pop songs, and people would do them. But it wasn't like the singers of the songs were writing their own songs or the band was writing a song. You never did many cover You did a few cover songs over the course of your life, but not many. You did it four strong wins that I loved. Yeah, that was like one of my favorite songs of all time. It's a beautiful song. It's a great song. Yeah, Ian and Sylvia. I used to pour coins into a Nickelodeon and listen to that song over and over again by Ian and Sylvia four Strong Wins. That's how I I got familiar with it. I think in sixty two sixty three or something. I loved that song, so that felt really good to do that. Do you ever meet those guys Ian and Sylvia matter in And I've met Sylvia too. It not for long, just very casual. And did you know Janie from Canada? Yeah, from the coffee house scene. We met in the coffee houses. When I met her, she was with Chuck Mitchell, Chuck and Joni Mitchell. It wasn't even the thing. Then she came back as Janie and I played Sugar Mountain for her when I met her, I'd already been to Toronto and came back and I met her and I played Sugar Mountain for her, and then she she later wrote Circle Game. Yeah after hearing Sugar Mountain as her as her conversation with me. Wow, I never knew that. Yeah, so cool. Yeah, Circle Game is a great song. It's a wonderful song. She's written so many great songs. I'm thinking of doing both sides now with Crazy Horse. Great, it would be a wild thing, right, Yeah, you could do a whole album of her songs. Would be cool. I could do a bunch of songs like that with Crazy Horse. Yeah, that would be very cool. That's one musical thought that I did have. That's about it. Yeah, it's cool too with Crazy Horse. That wouldn't it would not sound do you know what I mean? It would be such an original take on whatever the material that went into it. Yeah, there's there'd be no fear of it being derivative in any way. I would crazy, I wouldn't be stomping on the original arrangement. No, it would be so different to be somewhere else. But the same song, the same melody, the same chords. It's a beautiful song. And in those days, did you think of Elvis as a singer or as a movie star. I always thought him as a singer. I saw the movies. Yeah, you know it was okay, but it was always the singing. Yeah, it was Elvis. It was great if we love it Elvis or what he did. But as a singer and a rocker. He was cool. Did you have the same experience when you saw the Beatles of it being different than what came before? All the Beatles were great. When I first heard them, I think it was you know, I can't even remember what song. It was really early sixty three or something. And now they were great. We loved them right away. It won't be long. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that song. A great song. That's such a great song. And you know, they had a thing, they had a great thing, and they were rocking. They were having a good time. You couldn't miss it. Were you already singing folk songs at that time? No. I started singing rock and roll songs first, yeah, first, But most of them I wrote myself, you know, and they weren't like really hard rockers. A song called I Wonder which turned out to be Don't Cry No Tiarous later. That was one of the first songs. And I had a couple of two or three other songs that I don't have copies of and I can't remember, but they were there. I did him in the Squires. That was fun. Do you ever do gigs with the Squires? Not since then? No, But then did Oh yeah, we did about we played community clubs all over Winnipeg. Oh cool, you know we got I've got the records of it, and I think in the archives from Ken Coblan. The bass player kept records of everything, all the places we played and how much we made it so cool. Yeah, like four dollars. Yeah, that's all in the archive. Yeah, amazing, amazing, it is crazy. I think it's all in there. How did you know to keep stuff? I just never you know, I just keep track of who has stuff, and the bass player and the squires, he kept track of everything, and he gave me the book. So I copied the book and we have it. Like I'll find it. Yeah, basically, I'm pretty sure it's there. I just have to go back and look for it. Yeah. Like I was thinking the other day, somebody asked about and I had a letter to the editor, which I answered these letters every week, and they wrote me about this thing where I was at a Falcon lake in nineteen sixty three or sixty two or something with my buddies and we went to the dump and we parked our car and then the bears all came out because it was a dump. So there's bears all around our car and we're sitting there trying to be cool, and then we left. Then I started thinking about Falcon Lake. Well, Falcon Lake. Then I said, Jesus Springfield did a song called Falcon Lake. It was an instrumental and we recorded it and we did it at Columbia and it was about the time when Stephen was doing something had known Buddy Miles and a few people like it was back there and I said, I said, Falcon Lake. Jeez, I haven't heard that in a long time. And so I checked in with our archivist and I said, what do you guys know about Falcon Lake by Buffalo Springfield? And they say, well, the next day I get it back. It's it's called in the archives, it's called ash on the Floor. For some reason, the title got changed, but the original title was still in the in the writings, and there is a recording of it and it's there. Incredible, So it's you know, that song is in the archives. It's probably in volume one, Disc one or disc two or something, you know. Incredible. Yeah, the fact that it all exists is so amazing. There it's blowing my mind now. Yeah, because I've been so thorough with it. Yeah, and I've got a great archivist, John O'Neill, our hard archivist, and a really good uh keeper of the tapes who's really got a good, good method of filing and keeping track of everything. And we keep a lot of our stuff and at Hollywood vaults and all the backup for it is in ox and ards somewhere. Just a volume of stuff over the years. It's it's unbelievable. I was walking around in it yesterday. Yeah, as we were looking for some stuff, and I had the sky with me as a builder, and it's working on my model train layout with me, Like we're building this outdoor train layout. It's whack. So anyway, we're looking for some old pieces of train stuff and we get in this one room and it's a room. It's about the size of Shangri Law almost. You know, this whole area it's full of boxes on shelves, year after year after year of tapes. It's all there, everything that I recorded. Amazing. Yeah, it's coming wild. I mean, you know, so when you have a memory or something triggers something that goes somewhere. If I remember that there was something good that I didn't finish yourself, Yeah, I can actually get to it. It's so cool. Has there ever been a time when you've worked on something and left alone for whatever reason and then come back to it later years later, realizing all there's something there. There is a song that was on the B side of a Buffalo Springfield thing. It was I don't know if it was a B side or if it was in the session for Expecting to Fly. There was a song called Whiskey Booth Hill and there's another song too, and the track is there, but it has no vocal, So I keep thinking about that, maybe I should put a vocal on it, just to have it. Yeah, then it would be a complete song. Yea, with the old original Jack Nietzsche track. Wow, so vocal and you remember the words and yeah, it'd be cool. Yeah, it seems like it's cool to do, regardless of why they ever decided to put it out in right, it's like that it'd be a good No, it's good to have those things. Absolutely. I have another thing that where Darrell shot something that I was I was playing the guitar and I was playing the changes to don't Think twice It's all right, and sitting on the bus and the bus is going down the road, and my silhouette is against the window and outside these beautiful fields going by, and then every once in a while the light changes and you see me and I'm playing the guitar a little bit, and then it goes back to outside, and it goes through the whole thing. And you know, I've often thought it's got a great vibe. If I just sang the lyrics on top of it, I wasn't singing it. If I just lightly sang the lyrics there, don't think twice, it's all right. That would be my version of it. But it would be like a video version of don't think twice, It's all right with you know. And I think about doing it, and I know I could make it happen. But somebody asked me, well what would you do with that? Where would that go? And I said, well, I really don't know what about that part of it? Yeah, but this is, you know, the creative something I could do. I think that's the best way to make things. Yeah, when you get the feeling, that's yeah, you make it to make it, and then if there's a use for it later that's fine. Well, this is a good idea, And I think I could do it, you know, I'll try to get the track together. And what was the first film project you did the first time he made a film, Journey through the Past. I think it was the first movie that I made. And what motivated you'd want to do that. I just wanted to do something different, so I didn't get bored with music. I see, I'll distract myself, and it got a big distraction. It's good. I need distractions, yeah, because I'm so you know, single minded, I just go into it. I could get lost. Yeah, and you do better being busy than not. Yeah. Yeah, No, it's bad things happening if I to have projects. Yeah. So yeah, but I really think that that's the way it works. I feel like if I'm working on the train layout, yeah, and I really get immersed in that for months. Yeah. Then I'll come out of that and I'll write, Yes, something will be fresh. Yes, but I have to get a way to get back. Yes, you can't just always be there waiting. I got to be distracted by something. Yeah, that's great. It's great advice for people who think the way to do it is to just do the one thing. Oh, it doesn't work that way, No, it doesn't you've got to get away from it, yeah, because it'll come to you when it's ready. The thing people think they're in charge, Yeah, you're not in charge. Just forget it. We're along for the ride now, we are along for the all. We have to be as ready. Yes, Yes, that's it, ready recognized. Do finish out, Yeah, and then you're on. And being ready is not easy. No, You've got to be able to drop anything that's happening at any time and say I'll be back in a while. Yeah, because there's something here that can, something that can, and we don't have control over it, and if we don't act on it, we could forget it. Puff a smoke exactly. Well, I'm sure we will get to be together again sooner than later, because that's what we do, all right, man, Well, I'll see you soon. Thanks again to the legend Neil Young. You can hear his new album World Record, along with all of our favorite Neil Young songs on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with Health Familia Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez. Our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is Mel LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for push Complus on Apple Podcasts subscription and if you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast that Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.