Episode 717 - Neil Young

Episode 717 • Released June 20, 2016 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:Lock the gates!

00:00:09Marc:Alright, let's do this.

00:00:10Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?

00:00:12Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:12Marc:What the fucksters?

00:00:14Marc:What the fuckadelics?

00:00:15Marc:I'm Mark Maron.

00:00:16Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:17Marc:This is my podcast.

00:00:18Marc:Welcome to the show.

00:00:19Marc:How's it going?

00:00:20Marc:Everybody doing alright post-Father's Day?

00:00:24Marc:Did you call the old man?

00:00:25Marc:If he's alive, did you call him?

00:00:28Marc:Did you bury the hatchet for 15 minutes?

00:00:31Marc:I did.

00:00:32Marc:I called my dad and it was okay.

00:00:36Marc:It was pretty good.

00:00:37Marc:He was in a pretty good space.

00:00:39Marc:By the way, Neil Young is on the show today.

00:00:41Marc:I should tell you that right now.

00:00:46Marc:It was a pretty exciting day.

00:00:47Marc:It was a very nervous day for me.

00:00:50Marc:Neil's one of those guys, man.

00:00:52Marc:He was a giant.

00:00:54Marc:He walked the earth when giants walked the earth, and he's still a giant, but he's an older giant, but he's Neil Young, and I was a little nervous.

00:01:05Marc:I'll tell you about it in a second.

00:01:06Marc:I'll tell you more about that in a second, but I want to stay in this dad thing while I've got the emotions that are still kind of hot.

00:01:15Marc:I am recording this in the afternoon on Father's Day, and I had done something

00:01:22Marc:um i'd done something a couple weeks ago my it wasn't even a couple weeks ago my dad wrote me an email that was a fairly concerned but overly wrought uh somewhat paranoid and uh quite um uh projecting email in the uh in response to the tragedies of the uh the last couple weeks um

00:01:44Marc:the shootings and whatnot, and I guess it was concern, but for some reason, I misread it as a kind of feeding on sadness and negative energy and projecting it onto me, and I just reacted.

00:01:58Marc:I was feeling horrible that day like everybody else, and I just shot back at him, and I reacted in anger.

00:02:07Marc:I sent him some shitty emails, and then a few days went by, and I just couldn't live with it, and I felt bad, and

00:02:14Marc:I apologized, I emailed an apology, and he said, thank you, I love you, and I'm all right.

00:02:19Marc:A lot of times when we get caught up in...

00:02:25Marc:in our own bullshit with our parents, they cease to have a life outside of that.

00:02:30Marc:I don't know how empathetic I am with my father or my mother on a day-to-day basis because is that my job?

00:02:39Marc:It's hard to be empathetic to your parents' situation sometimes, or maybe that's just me.

00:02:46Marc:And sometimes it's hard for me to acknowledge that my father may have been out in the world doing...

00:02:52Marc:doing good things or having an impact on other people's lives in a positive way because you get so caught up with your own relationship.

00:03:00Marc:So out of nowhere, I get this email.

00:03:03Marc:The subject line is Father's Day.

00:03:07Marc:And it just says, Mark, I'm not certain this email will ever get to you, but I've been wanting to send a few sentiments your way.

00:03:16Marc:And as we are coming up on Father's Day, I thought it especially appropriate to do so.

00:03:21Marc:Some 18 years ago, my son, Nathaniel, broke his leg in a high school football game in western New York.

00:03:28Marc:He was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital in some forsaken little backwoods town.

00:03:33Marc:it became quickly evident that his injury was more severe than initially thought.

00:03:38Marc:In fact, he suffered from what is termed compartment syndrome, which often results in the loss of the limb because the swelling constricts the blood flow and amputation is often the only way to save a life.

00:03:50Marc:We had this doctor appear who was sarcastic, sardonic, funny, and absolutely wonderful.

00:03:55Marc:Without going into unnecessary details, his actions saved my son's leg and maybe his life.

00:04:05Marc:Now, 18 years later, my son is 36 and has just become a father for the second time this past week.

00:04:11Marc:After a very long recovery, he completed college, started a very rewarding career and has become, most importantly, a wonderful father and husband.

00:04:22Marc:As you probably know, that doctor who saved my son was your father.

00:04:28Marc:I never assume anything about anyone else's relationships.

00:04:31Marc:Life is far too complicated to think that my experience mirrors anyone else's.

00:04:37Marc:But I wanted you to know that your father's actions on behalf of my son helped to turn what could have been a tragic situation into something very positive.

00:04:48Marc:I'm aware through the power of Google that your dad has ended his career in what appears to be a rather sour situation.

00:04:55Marc:I feel badly for that.

00:04:57Marc:All I know is that your dad did all he could to help my son during a critical situation.

00:05:01Marc:And without his help, I'm not sure my son's life would have worked out the same.

00:05:06Marc:I would appreciate you letting him know that we think the world of Dr. Marin.

00:05:09Marc:And we are fortunate that fate had us cross paths with him in that Warsaw hospital that fall football Saturday.

00:05:17Marc:Finally, I do want you to know that I remember Dr. Marin mentioning to me that his son worked in comedy and thought it took exceptional courage to enter that line of work.

00:05:27Marc:When I first saw you perform on TV, I immediately made the connection.

00:05:30Marc:I'm not sure if you are a father or not, Mark, but as a dad, I know your father made a difference to my family, and I will never forget that.

00:05:37Marc:Thanks, Paul.

00:05:40Marc:In Knessus, New York.

00:05:44Marc:Well, thank you, Paul.

00:05:46Marc:Because sometimes I forget that my dad did good things, and it's good to hear that.

00:05:57Marc:And as I get older and I get more emotional about things and a little more willing to let things go, that email choked me up.

00:06:05Marc:It choked me up again here.

00:06:06Marc:And I do want to send some love out to all the fathers that are truly doing the best they can.

00:06:15Marc:And that might not be enough for a while.

00:06:18Marc:At some point, it's going to come back and bite you in the ass.

00:06:22Marc:I'm not a father, but I knew that I bit my father in the ass.

00:06:27Marc:And I continue to occasionally.

00:06:29Marc:When I called up to wish him a happy Father's Day, and we talked a little bit about the series of emails I sent that were nothing short of just snotty, abusive, fucking...

00:06:42Marc:angry child crap I told him I said I don't know it was a hard day it was a bad day and I lashed out he goes yeah that's what I thought I go yeah I imagine you would think that because you do that too and we're both crazy and he laughed and I told him I loved him and I hope he had a good day

00:07:03Marc:Here's the deal with Neil.

00:07:05Marc:You know, I love Neil Young and there's about 10 or so records of his that I just, you know, they're fucking amazing.

00:07:14Marc:And he's done a lot more records.

00:07:16Marc:He's done, you know, like 50 records, a lot of records.

00:07:20Marc:Neil Young, the amazing thing about Neil Young is that it never really gets old.

00:07:24Marc:It always is very transcendent.

00:07:26Marc:He's a true genius.

00:07:28Marc:And he's kind of an intimidating character.

00:07:33Marc:And I know he's not easy necessarily to talk to.

00:07:36Marc:I didn't know how it was going to go, but it was one of those days where, you know, Neil Young's coming over to the house.

00:07:42Marc:I'm going to do the best I can.

00:07:43Marc:I'm excited to meet him.

00:07:46Marc:I just didn't know if he was going to like me, which, you know, I don't know how long you've been listening to this show, but it's better if they like me.

00:07:55Marc:And I didn't know how it would go.

00:07:57Marc:And I was nervous.

00:08:00Marc:And he came over and he had a little posse of 70 year old dudes or so little white haired posse, his manager, Elliot and a couple other cats.

00:08:09Marc:And it was one of those times where this happens very rarely, but it happens where, you know, Neil walks in.

00:08:15Marc:Looks at my living room, sees my Gibson 335, walks right over to it, picks it up, sits on the couch, fucks around with the guitar a little bit, looks at my stereo system, sees my records.

00:08:27Marc:He's saying, like, nice guitar.

00:08:29Marc:And on the table, his new Pono music system, the little box that you can listen to Pono with is sitting there.

00:08:39Marc:And I had it all packed up to give it back to the guy because they told me I had to return it.

00:08:45Marc:And I told him, I said, well, you guys can take that, I guess.

00:08:48Marc:And Neil said, no, let him keep it, man.

00:08:50Marc:I like him.

00:08:51Marc:Let him keep it.

00:08:52Marc:That's what he said before we walked out to the garage.

00:08:54Marc:Let him keep the Pono.

00:08:56Marc:I like this guy.

00:08:57Marc:And I'm like, okay, that's a good sign.

00:08:59Marc:That's a good sign.

00:09:00Marc:But...

00:09:02Marc:His new album, Earth, comes out on Friday, and you can get that wherever you get music.

00:09:07Marc:But you can also get it in that high-resolution audio through the Pono Music Store.

00:09:12Marc:You can also get it on Tidal.

00:09:14Marc:But the Pono is pretty fascinating.

00:09:16Marc:It's a pretty amazing thing.

00:09:17Marc:And the new record's pretty interesting.

00:09:19Marc:There's a lot of things going on.

00:09:21Marc:I'll talk to him about it.

00:09:22Marc:So enjoy this conversation that I had with Neil Young.

00:09:29Marc:You want to work hands or no?

00:09:39Guest:I'll try it.

00:09:40Marc:How's that?

00:09:40Marc:Well, it's changed my whole personality.

00:09:43Guest:You're a different guy now.

00:09:44Guest:I am.

00:09:45Guest:It was that easy.

00:09:46Guest:I did a show once where the DJ was talking to me.

00:09:51Guest:Yeah.

00:09:52Guest:And I was doing this show.

00:09:55Guest:This was like in the 60s or something.

00:09:57Guest:Yeah.

00:09:57Guest:and he's talking to me you know and the show hasn't started yet yeah and then just as it starts he puts on his phone yeah and his voice changed completely yeah and i said to him right away i said you're like a completely different person when you put on those phones it doesn't even sound like the guy i was talking to a minute ago it's true right yeah but then but that blew his mind that i said that on the air and he quit he quit right there he left

00:10:24Guest:No, he didn't.

00:10:25Guest:Yeah, he did.

00:10:26Guest:And then Elliot and I were the only ones in the studio.

00:10:29Guest:We just played records for about 45 minutes until somebody else showed up to help us.

00:10:33Marc:Is that true?

00:10:33Guest:Yeah.

00:10:33Marc:So the guy freaked out?

00:10:35Guest:Yeah, he freaked out and left.

00:10:36Marc:It was in the 60s?

00:10:37Marc:Yeah.

00:10:38Marc:So he was probably high, and he was probably like... He wasn't ready.

00:10:41Guest:It was me at some point in time where that was, you know, it made him feel, you know, anyway.

00:10:47Marc:You just, you tapped right in, you saw his soul, and he ran out.

00:10:51Marc:Last day of work for that guy.

00:10:54Marc:Oh, yeah, but the experience with the Pono, we might as well start with that, because I had an interesting thing happen.

00:11:01Marc:To interview somebody like you, to me, I freak out for about a day or two before it, only because you have such a massive amount of productive work involved.

00:11:16Marc:out there in the world so i'm loading my head and i just i thought it was interesting today and within the last two days so many new things happened that i would never that would never have happened i don't know how much time you spend on the computer but like just because of the world we live in you know like for instance like i listened to expecting to fly for the first time this morning

00:11:38Marc:And I'm a Neil Young fan, but I didn't know that song.

00:11:42Marc:I didn't have that in my head.

00:11:44Marc:That's early.

00:11:45Marc:Right, it's Buffalo Springfield.

00:11:47Marc:And I listened to the Pono, to the new record, for the first time all the way through last night.

00:11:52Marc:So I got bookends.

00:11:53Marc:Yeah.

00:11:54Marc:The experience, both of them slightly psychedelic experiences.

00:11:58Guest:Yeah, Jack Nietzsche and I made Expecting to Fly that took like about 30 days for us to complete it with Bruce Botnick, the engineer.

00:12:07Guest:We had a fantastic time.

00:12:08Guest:A lot of time mixing it with these old two boards and everything.

00:12:11Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:12:13Marc:So Jack Nietzsche did a couple stones.

00:12:15Marc:He did Spectre stuff.

00:12:17Marc:You can't always get what you want.

00:12:19Marc:That's Nietzsche.

00:12:21Marc:Yeah.

00:12:21Marc:Now, when you do something like that, when you work with a guy like that, how clear is that memory for you now?

00:12:25Marc:very clear yeah it's as clear as you right there that's it that's right here yeah and when you when you when you were setting out to do that what was because you were creating a new sound what was the collaboration like how do you start to to go to that place well you know i was very young yeah and uh i think it was like uh even was only the second

00:12:48Guest:buffalo springfield album yeah i think yeah that expecting to fly was on and uh you know he he had just started talking to me about doing things myself and being you know a solo artist so uh

00:13:05Guest:you know i i just listen to him he's like a mentor yeah he's a genius yeah yeah yeah and you knew that going in he did incredible oh yeah no i knew everything he'd done all of his all of his charts that he'd written for various things specters and stuff that weren't just insane crazy

00:13:24Guest:yeah that that whole crew back then was like nuts yeah well he was the architect behind the wall of sounds parts yeah yeah putting all the wrecking crew together well i guess you all probably spectered got the musicians and jack and then but jack wrote down all that stuff and then i think it was jack who said well we should have three guitars playing the same thing instead of one

00:13:46Marc:oh really yeah and then it's you can hardly hear it on the record but it's three of them and it's just this massive wall i mean it's true this is sonic blast yeah mono yeah yeah exactly mono flat like the mono kind of flatten the sink like it's interesting that the the difference mono is actually better because it all is coming at you in the same time mono is the ultimate why is that well because it's deep yeah

00:14:11Guest:Stereo is distractingly wide.

00:14:13Guest:Right.

00:14:14Guest:And because of that, you don't focus on the depth.

00:14:17Guest:Right.

00:14:18Marc:Right.

00:14:19Marc:It's a little bit false, stereo.

00:14:21Marc:Right.

00:14:21Marc:Because when you listen to mono on the good system, it just floats in the middle.

00:14:25Guest:Yeah.

00:14:26Guest:And if you were listening in any room...

00:14:28Guest:Your stereo is your own ears bouncing off of the walls.

00:14:31Guest:Yeah.

00:14:32Guest:But at some one source, like, you know.

00:14:34Marc:Yeah.

00:14:35Marc:And the other thing I was doing when I knew I was going to talk to you is I started sort of compressing people's mind.

00:14:40Marc:The other thing I listened to, I listened to Bert Janch for the first time this morning.

00:14:43Marc:Oh, man.

00:14:43Marc:Isn't he great?

00:14:44Marc:It's great.

00:14:45Marc:Yes.

00:14:46Marc:Like, it's an amazing world we live in that I can just discover that.

00:14:49Marc:Because the kid who I know, Matt Sweeney from Superwolf, he says, listen to Bert Janch.

00:14:54Marc:So I listen to Bert Janch.

00:14:56Marc:And then I start thinking about you as a kid in Canada.

00:14:58Marc:I start thinking about Bert Janch.

00:15:00Marc:I'm thinking about Link Ray.

00:15:01Marc:And I'm thinking about Roy Orbison.

00:15:03Marc:I'm trying to put my head together, like wrap my head around, you know, what galvanized your head.

00:15:09Marc:Do you have an idea of that?

00:15:11Guest:Well, those guys are pretty popular.

00:15:13Guest:Yeah.

00:15:15Guest:You know, Link Ray and Roy Orbison, all those people.

00:15:19Guest:I mean, that was great.

00:15:20Guest:It was great music.

00:15:21Guest:Yeah.

00:15:22Guest:You could really hear it and feel it.

00:15:24Marc:And Link was just broke.

00:15:25Marc:That guitar sound was just broken up, man.

00:15:28Marc:Did you love that?

00:15:28Marc:Yeah.

00:15:29Marc:Yeah.

00:15:29Marc:And Roy... Rumble.

00:15:31Marc:Rumble, right?

00:15:32Marc:Yeah.

00:15:32Marc:And then Orbison kind of had that sort of heartbroken, ethereal... Falsetto.

00:15:38Guest:But what a great range.

00:15:39Guest:Oh, my God.

00:15:40Guest:Right?

00:15:40Yeah.

00:15:40Guest:in where'd you grow up uh all over canada in winnipeg a lot winnipeg toronto omimi uh jackson's point do you spend a lot of time up there still uh no not as much as i as i used to i don't know what the future holds though oh yeah in terms of uh canada's a cool place it is man yeah

00:16:02Marc:I've done some time in Winnipeg.

00:16:04Marc:Winnipeg's very flat.

00:16:05Marc:It's intense.

00:16:06Marc:Yes, it is.

00:16:06Marc:It's a little harsh.

00:16:08Marc:It's in the middle of everything that's missing.

00:16:11Marc:Yeah.

00:16:16Marc:It seems a little beaten up.

00:16:19Guest:It's got a lot of soul.

00:16:20Guest:It does, man.

00:16:20Guest:It does have a lot of soul.

00:16:22Marc:and when you started like playing guitar what you know what was it who who was around i mean what were the what were the bands that you were you know playing with and local guys canadian guys randy backman you like that guy right randy is cool guess who yeah back when turned overdrive called alan and the silvertones they were called when when we first listened and he was always a pretty monster guitar player monster exactly had his own sound had a thing going on had a

00:16:49Guest:had a tape deck up there and he had tape repeat coming off the tape deck back then yeah back then live on stage just incredible sounding so he was a sort of a wizard up there yeah and he was just a kid yeah he was just a young guy like me a little couple of years older

00:17:05Guest:and did you uh did you have how many brothers and sisters you got one brother two and one sister yeah and you you just grew up why'd you move around so much um well my dad moved around a lot yeah really a lot because he was a writer and he just kept moving and uh and then uh when my mom and dad broke up i i moved again with my mom yeah and that was winnipeg and then i started the band and started playing how old were you when that happened

00:17:32Guest:oh 13 or 14. oh yeah but you stayed in touch with your old man right yeah yeah what kind of writer uh everything sports human interest yeah fiction did it inspire you he wrote hockey books yeah about hockey players in high school and stuff like it was pretty cool were you a sports guy

00:17:52Marc:No.

00:17:53Marc:Not at all, right?

00:17:54Marc:No, no.

00:17:55Marc:You know, either it clicks in or it doesn't, right?

00:17:57Marc:It didn't click in for me.

00:17:58Marc:No, me neither.

00:17:59Marc:I don't know what the hell anyone's talking about.

00:18:02Marc:There's enough of them doing it already, though.

00:18:04Marc:They don't need us.

00:18:05Guest:No, they don't need us.

00:18:08Marc:You've got to go where you're needed.

00:18:09Marc:That's it.

00:18:10Marc:They don't need me at the arena.

00:18:12Marc:They seem all filled up with guys who are painting their face funny colors.

00:18:16Marc:I'm good.

00:18:17Marc:But music was it, then.

00:18:19Guest:Oh, it was for me, yeah.

00:18:21Marc:And what was the first rig you got?

00:18:25Guest:For my guitar, maybe?

00:18:27Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:18:28Guest:I had a Harmony Sovereign.

00:18:31Guest:Was that a hollow body?

00:18:33Guest:It was a hollow body.

00:18:34Guest:Well, it was a Monterey.

00:18:36Guest:Harmony Monterey, I think it was.

00:18:38Guest:Yeah.

00:18:40Guest:And it was like a flat... It was like a...

00:18:44Guest:what do you call it an f-hole guitar right yeah yeah yeah i had a sliding de armand pickup on a on a thing that i could slide back and forth on a track yeah yeah and i plugged it into uh our sea breeze uh stereo system it blew out those speakers it was pretty harsh it distorted quite a lot of course it was that that was a little mismatch

00:19:07Guest:and who were you like playing along with at that time where were you learning oh i i didn't really play along with things yeah i really listened a lot to uh there was a couple of key things hideaway oh yeah it was a cool track the uh freddy king yeah yeah uh but and i really got into jimmy reed oh yeah that's who i really liked

00:19:30Marc:Yeah, he leaves that open when you go to the turnaround.

00:19:32Marc:Oh, that's great.

00:19:33Marc:Yeah, I talked to Keith Richards about him.

00:19:37Marc:I've talked to a couple people about him, about Jimmy Reed.

00:19:40Marc:Oh, yeah, sweet voice and that great guitar sound, harmonica.

00:19:44Guest:Yeah, and you couldn't really tell who was playing what on those records.

00:19:47Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.

00:19:48Guest:Because Buddy Taylor was a guitar player on those records.

00:19:53Guest:Oh, really?

00:19:54Guest:So I don't know if he's the one.

00:19:56Guest:One of them's playing like that.

00:20:00Guest:Yeah.

00:20:00Guest:And the other one's, you know.

00:20:02Guest:Doing the licks.

00:20:05Guest:Right.

00:20:06Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:09Marc:Yeah, that fucking drive.

00:20:11Guest:But that usually was three guitars.

00:20:13Guest:It was three guitars.

00:20:13Guest:One of them tuned down, playing the bass.

00:20:16Guest:So no bass.

00:20:16Guest:One of them, I think...

00:20:18Guest:oh i i don't know whether jimmy was playing the treble guitar yeah or playing the boogie guitar right yeah and uh and no one does an upbeat too that happened if you listen to it there's three guitar players and i think his wife used to sit there in the room with him too yeah you could hear her singing just before him right so he'd get the words yeah she had a primum right i think it was a some issue with his sight i can't remember they worked really well together it was a beautiful thing yeah

00:20:45Marc:So, when did you meet Stills?

00:20:49Marc:When did Springfield start?

00:20:51Marc:How did that happen?

00:20:52Marc:Do you mind going through this stuff?

00:20:54Marc:Are you guys okay?

00:20:55Marc:No, it must be.

00:20:55Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:20:56Marc:Yeah?

00:20:56Marc:You guys are good?

00:20:57Marc:Oh, we're great.

00:20:58Marc:I never know how all you guys are getting along.

00:21:00Guest:No, I'm getting along great.

00:21:01Guest:Oh, good.

00:21:02Guest:You know, I don't have any enemies.

00:21:04Guest:Oh, that's good.

00:21:06Guest:That I know of.

00:21:09Marc:We all want to assume you guys get along okay.

00:21:11Guest:I think you should assume anything you want to assume.

00:21:14Guest:Ha, ha, ha.

00:21:14Guest:Because that's what I'm doing.

00:21:17Marc:It works.

00:21:19Marc:I come into this not being quite as old as you, but revering certain people and certain groups of people.

00:21:27Marc:And in my mind, it's hard when people fight.

00:21:30Marc:That's never fun.

00:21:32Marc:You guys have lives.

00:21:33Marc:That's not fun.

00:21:34Marc:I mean, you have relationships with these guys for, what, 50 years?

00:21:37Guest:yeah kind of well stills is longer than that oh yeah stills goes back to like i think it's 63 or 64 i'm not sure when you were kids yeah i guess we were kids and uh and you met before springfield right oh yeah at least a year before springfield started and were you guys playing together then a little bit yeah you're just kind of hanging around yeah what do you got

00:21:59Marc:Well, fun.

00:22:00Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:02Guest:Admiration for each other is what we were doing.

00:22:04Guest:He sang so great.

00:22:06Guest:Great voice.

00:22:07Guest:Wonderful.

00:22:07Marc:Yeah.

00:22:08Marc:You guys have such different perfect voices.

00:22:10Guest:Well, they've been described in different ways.

00:22:14Guest:I know that Stills' voice is a great voice.

00:22:17Guest:Right.

00:22:18Marc:crosby too right yeah he's got it oh he's a great singer yeah and it's weird because his voice it doesn't seem to ever change like like all you guys i don't know how you how'd you keep your chords so nice man is that is that you on top of that you might have to check yourself out now oh really well if your analysis of the situation is accurate

00:22:37Marc:I hear this record.

00:22:39Marc:You sound good.

00:22:40Marc:Is there things you have to do to take care of that thing, or do you think about it?

00:22:46Guest:No.

00:22:47Marc:Just let it go.

00:22:48Guest:I think it's about being healthy.

00:22:51Guest:Yeah.

00:22:51Guest:Try to be in good shape.

00:22:53Guest:Stay strong.

00:22:53Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:22:55Marc:That just happens naturally.

00:22:57Marc:Well, you've got to work at it, but it happens naturally.

00:22:59Marc:What do you do to take care of yourself?

00:23:01Guest:uh well you know like this morning i got up and i walked uh i walked on the beach for three miles oh yeah and i uh you know a lot of times like five times a week i i have pilates do you yeah i do you get the best thing i ever did do you get on the machine or just do the laying flat i i do all the thing whatever they say tightens you up

00:23:23Guest:it's great it makes you feel your body and your body starts to move and you can use it yeah yeah it's really good for you and you do i enjoy it you have a trainer that does it comes there's several of them i mean yeah keep coming and uh you got off the booze too huh booze yeah no i still drink when i feel like oh good good yeah everything in moderation you know even moderation should be taken in moderation

00:23:48Guest:How long did you take to figure out the moderation trick?

00:23:51Marc:I still haven't got it yet.

00:23:52Marc:I don't have it.

00:23:54All right.

00:23:54Marc:How about you?

00:23:55Marc:I think you're doing okay.

00:23:57Marc:I'm off.

00:23:58Marc:I don't do nothing.

00:23:59Marc:What about coffee?

00:24:00Marc:Coffee.

00:24:00Marc:A lot of coffee.

00:24:02Marc:And I do these nicotine lozenges.

00:24:04Marc:Oh, what do they do?

00:24:05Marc:They're basically nicotine candy.

00:24:07Marc:Oh, so instead of...

00:24:07Marc:smoking yeah did you do that to stop smoking i don't know like i think that might have been the intention but then i just decided well these are pretty good are they they and what do they get what do they do they get you a little bit jacked yeah yeah yeah they do they do the same thing as nicotine does you know if you if you hit it just right you're jacked if you go too much

00:24:24Marc:you down.

00:24:25Marc:And you're in trouble, but it doesn't hurt your lungs.

00:24:27Marc:No, it does nothing to your lungs.

00:24:28Marc:I don't know what it's doing to the other organs.

00:24:30Marc:How many of these do you take a day?

00:24:32Guest:I don't keep track.

00:24:33Guest:How many packages do you go through?

00:24:35Guest:Well, no, these will last me a couple of weeks.

00:24:37Marc:I get three tubes.

00:24:38Marc:Oh, that's good.

00:24:39Guest:You get three tubes and it lasts you a couple of weeks?

00:24:42Marc:But no one has told me that they're bad for me yet.

00:24:43Guest:No, no.

00:24:44Guest:Wait a minute.

00:24:45Guest:How many are in each tube?

00:24:46Guest:24 and I split them.

00:24:47Marc:Let's get Matthew on.

00:24:48Marc:I break them in half.

00:24:49Marc:So I got 52 doses in each 15.

00:24:51Marc:No, 48.

00:24:52Marc:In each one.

00:24:54Marc:And there's three of them.

00:24:55Marc:That's 150 approximately.

00:24:57Marc:No, I break one in half.

00:24:59Marc:And then I do it.

00:25:01Marc:So that's 150 halves.

00:25:02Marc:Something like that, yeah.

00:25:04Guest:Approximately, maybe 142 or something.

00:25:06Guest:Right, right.

00:25:07Guest:Yeah, that's cool.

00:25:08Guest:Yeah, I just write it up.

00:25:09Guest:Let's see, three weeks.

00:25:11Guest:Yeah.

00:25:12Guest:I get mathy.

00:25:14Guest:If I go into a certain place, I have to do the math.

00:25:17Guest:You break it down?

00:25:18Guest:Yeah, I don't stop until I'm finished.

00:25:21Guest:You've got to ride the equation all the way through.

00:25:22Guest:You've got to go all the way.

00:25:23Guest:But I think we can drop that one.

00:25:26Guest:All right.

00:25:26Guest:People that are interested, they can figure out where we're going.

00:25:29Guest:Sure, sure.

00:25:29Marc:I'll get tweets of people going like, I know the number.

00:25:32Marc:Why don't you talk about other things?

00:25:34Marc:Why are you talking about math with Neil Young for?

00:25:37Marc:Right, right.

00:25:38Marc:Do you have a place down here?

00:25:39Marc:Yeah, I live down here, yeah.

00:25:41Marc:Oh, you live permanently down here?

00:25:42Marc:Yeah, I do.

00:25:42Marc:But you still have the ranch, right?

00:25:44Marc:No.

00:25:44Marc:It's gone?

00:25:45Marc:No, it's still there.

00:25:46Guest:I'm not there.

00:25:48Guest:Oh, when did that happen?

00:25:49Guest:A couple of years ago.

00:25:50Guest:Do you miss it?

00:25:51Guest:uh no i really don't i i was there for a long time and it was great it was always a wonderful beautiful place yeah but the planet is so huge and there's so many beautiful places you really deprive yourself if you stick yourself in one place and go this is mine i have to stay here and take care of it right no there's more to it than that i think so where are you so you're down here like by the beach then

00:26:14Marc:no you're around i'm around i'm in the hills okay back in the hills yeah you've returned you've come full circle yes i have so when you so you did the it's it's hard to do like obviously a whole history but i like to get a sense of like when you first came to los angeles uh you know that was in the late 60s right 66 april fool's day with and that was with springfield

00:26:40Guest:No, that was before Springfield.

00:26:42Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:26:43Guest:I was with Bruce Palmer, the bass player in the Mind of Birds that... Rick James' band?

00:26:49Marc:Yeah.

00:26:49Guest:Yeah.

00:26:50Guest:When we broke up and Ricky went to jail and, you know, we...

00:26:55Guest:We broke up, and then Bruce and I decided to take a shot at L.A.

00:26:59Guest:to see if we could get a band going down here.

00:27:01Marc:So that was R&B that you were playing at the time?

00:27:04Guest:A little bit of that, yeah.

00:27:05Guest:Sort of, kind of funky thing, but we had a little bit of Stones, Rolling Stones.

00:27:09Guest:We played a few of those songs.

00:27:10Guest:Yeah.

00:27:10Guest:And I was riding a little with Ricky, and so was one of the other guys in the band was riding, too.

00:27:18Guest:So we had a good time.

00:27:19Guest:Great band.

00:27:20Guest:Really good band.

00:27:21Marc:And then that's when you moved down to Topanga, or that was later?

00:27:24Guest:That was later.

00:27:25Guest:We moved right down here.

00:27:27Guest:I think we came right to Silver Lake.

00:27:30Guest:Oh, what was that like then?

00:27:31Marc:it was different but it was the same yeah still pretty it's a great place it is a great place yeah and what was the scene like i mean what was it how like how competitive were you what were you looking to do no just start a band and write songs and play songs you know i'm not a rock star thing i'm not so sure about that but you just want to play music well hell yeah we wanted to be in the best band in the world you know yeah get something going yeah and and who were the people that you were meeting at that time we were looking for stills yeah and oh you knew he was down here yeah we got

00:28:01Guest:track him down yeah and you found him yeah we did yeah and then uh and then that became buffalo springfield he found us actually we were leaving we were going to san francisco in our in the hearse that i had and yeah and we were heading out of town i had ontario plates

00:28:17Guest:And when you saw me, when we met a couple of years before, I had a hearse with Ontario Plates.

00:28:22Guest:It was a different one.

00:28:24Guest:Yeah.

00:28:25Guest:But you just, you know, you don't see that that often.

00:28:27Guest:No, no, not that.

00:28:28Guest:And so they caught up with me.

00:28:30Guest:Yeah.

00:28:30Guest:There were a couple of guys in the car.

00:28:32Guest:They actually tracked you down in the car?

00:28:33Guest:Yeah, they stopped us right on sunset.

00:28:35Marc:How many leisure hearse are there with Canadian plates?

00:28:38Guest:That's got to be...

00:28:40Guest:It's got to be a rare item.

00:28:41Marc:Yeah, it's got to be new in that car.

00:28:43Marc:That's right.

00:28:44Marc:So he tracks you down, and then you guys, you start Buffalo Springfield.

00:28:49Marc:Yep.

00:28:50Marc:And then you knock out a couple of great records.

00:28:52Marc:Yeah.

00:28:53Marc:And then you meet Jack Nishi, and you start thinking about solo.

00:28:58Marc:Yeah, I know.

00:28:59Guest:I was already... I think I'd dropped out of the band already once.

00:29:04Marc:Yeah.

00:29:04Guest:And that's when Jack and I started hanging out.

00:29:06Guest:Then I went back with the band for a while until finally the band kind of broke up.

00:29:11Marc:How does that happen with bands?

00:29:12Marc:Is it an aggressive thing or is it just sort of a go-your-own-way thing?

00:29:15Guest:I was like 20-something years old, a very young guy.

00:29:19Guest:I had no idea what I was doing.

00:29:20Guest:Yeah.

00:29:21Guest:I can't be responsible for that.

00:29:24Yeah.

00:29:24Marc:No one was blaming you.

00:29:26Marc:No one was blaming you.

00:29:28Marc:No, but I just did what I felt like doing, you know.

00:29:30Marc:Right.

00:29:31Marc:And at that time, did you find that, you know, is it usually a musical issue?

00:29:35Marc:Like, you know, I have a, I want to go this way.

00:29:37Marc:You guys want to go that way.

00:29:39Guest:No, no, not at all.

00:29:40Guest:I just think that it was one of the things that I didn't like and we got into quite a deal about was the Johnny Carson show.

00:29:53Guest:Shows like that.

00:29:54Guest:Right.

00:29:55Guest:They wanted to do them.

00:29:55Guest:Yeah, and I didn't really like that.

00:29:58Guest:I didn't like playing on TV.

00:30:00Guest:Did they make you lip sync?

00:30:01Guest:I didn't like it.

00:30:02Marc:Yeah.

00:30:03Guest:Yeah, at first we did.

00:30:04Guest:We did a couple like that.

00:30:05Guest:Fuck it.

00:30:07Guest:Yeah, pretty much.

00:30:08Guest:Yeah.

00:30:08Marc:Was it just the expectation or the showbiz element or the selling element?

00:30:13Marc:What is it just exactly about that?

00:30:15Marc:All of those.

00:30:16Marc:Yeah.

00:30:18Marc:I'll make you mention those three things.

00:30:20Guest:Yeah.

00:30:24Marc:Yeah, because that's something that you've kept with you.

00:30:27Marc:That is something that, you know, that belief system is in place.

00:30:30Marc:You know, I always feel better when I don't do that.

00:30:33Marc:When I don't, you know... When you don't feel like you're, you know... Well, I just don't want to... Pitching and hustling.

00:30:37Guest:I really don't like, you know...

00:30:40Guest:i don't know i'd rather play for people live yeah a place that was for music yeah where you could really play loud right and there wasn't people in front of you and right right moving around going can we stop can we stop we stop the song yeah and i think back then a lot of them lip synced didn't they i mean yeah oh yeah no there's they got lip sync copies of me doing things is it yeah do you do how do you feel about those in retrospect are you sad that they're out there or they're funny

00:31:06Marc:they're very funny i don't know who that guy is but he was okay yeah but that that idea of of you know having a space where music is supposed to be played and you know i only can relate to it similarly in in stand-up that you know there's places where stand-up's not supposed to be done you know you do it where you're supposed to do it where it's best received where it's the you have yeah control the environment yes yeah

00:31:32Marc:Well, there's there's all these different interesting, you know, sort of, you know, waves of what you're doing.

00:31:39Marc:And like, you know, I was when I first listened to the new one with the mixes, you got a live concert and then you integrate these animal noises.

00:31:46Marc:And at first I'm like, what's happening?

00:31:48Marc:But then it sort of started to level out.

00:31:51Marc:And I was surprised.

00:31:53Marc:Initially, I thought, well, is this going to be hokey?

00:31:55Marc:But then I was sort of like, no, this makes complete sense.

00:31:59Marc:It's sad that when you hear bees on either side of an anti-Monsanto song, it's sort of heartbreaking.

00:32:07Guest:Well, you realize we lost 30% of the bees last Christmas or last winter.

00:32:12Guest:30% decline in bee population here.

00:32:15Guest:And bees really hold everything together.

00:32:17Marc:They're very important.

00:32:18Marc:So in conceiving a record like that, which I guess, you know, would be something experimental.

00:32:24Marc:I mean, was this whose idea?

00:32:26Marc:What's the think on that?

00:32:27Guest:It just was no think.

00:32:28Guest:It was just don't.

00:32:30Guest:I had a meeting with my co-producer, John Hanlon.

00:32:34Guest:uh who's my engineer yeah recorded a lot of the stuff and I said listen I just want to do an album it's going to be a studio album we're going to be full-on in production which I haven't done in years and years and years I haven't made a real record in many years I only make records of performances of things in the studio yeah

00:32:54Guest:uh and but this is a real record where anything we want to do we can do we can do anything use any trick any nothing is too cheap for us we can do anything and there can't be rules about oh it's a live recording so right you want to do this you want to be honest about right

00:33:11Guest:no yeah so we started like that and then and then uh we put the songs together and they started talking to me like uh these songs i can hear animals and i can hear i can hear things in the audience yeah and i could hear and i've heard it before you know i've heard these sounds before yeah uh you know just in my head listening to live tapes that i've made

00:33:34Guest:over the years and i go god that sounds like a dog barking in the background or it sounds like you know wolves or something yeah yeah and it's actually people yelping and carrying right right right so i added those in just to see what would happen and i went wow i really like that it's like they're all here yeah yeah so i created this picture it's an audio it's an ear movie yeah right it's an ear movie you

00:33:56Guest:You close your eyes and you can go away for 98 minutes.

00:34:00Guest:It never stops.

00:34:01Marc:Right.

00:34:02Marc:Something's continuous.

00:34:03Marc:Yeah, it is.

00:34:03Marc:It's not music.

00:34:04Marc:There's the sounds of audience integrated with animals.

00:34:07Marc:And also you had the freedom of this new bandwidth, this new file, this new range was part of the impulse for this, right?

00:34:16Guest:Yeah.

00:34:16Guest:Well, you know, we created, you know, the work that we created, we captured at its highest level the way it was in the 60s and 70s and early 80s and the 50s even.

00:34:26Guest:That kind of audiophile quality that everyone heard.

00:34:29Guest:Right.

00:34:30Guest:That's the way we recorded it.

00:34:32Guest:And so we were able to capture the whole thing.

00:34:36Guest:And the only thing that we did that we couldn't do then was it's long and it's like a movie, but you don't have to stop.

00:34:42Guest:Yeah.

00:34:42Guest:you know uh on the on the master file you listen all the way through and the only the cd has got only one break i mean there's two discs and it stops in one place and you got to put on the other disc right and isn't the idea of the of the pono though to to sort of engage the the the depth of that sound that we the idea of of pono is to give you exactly what was created yeah without putting anybody's intellectual property uh device on like mp3 right right the new mp3 whatever it is yeah

00:35:12Guest:encoding high-res compression right yeah encoding and compression we don't have any of that yeah and we just have a excellent playback system in the player yeah you can listen to it on other players but our player was voted best in the world by stereo file yeah we we got a great sounding player

00:35:30Guest:It's made by a genius guy who really hears.

00:35:33Guest:We found him, and he made the player for us.

00:35:36Guest:It's so great.

00:35:38Guest:Long time in the making.

00:35:39Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:35:40Guest:So it all sounds really good.

00:35:41Guest:If you really like good, pure files of the music you love, whether it's old or new, that's what we sell at ponomusic.com.

00:35:49Marc:And what about the band, The Promise of the Real?

00:35:52Marc:There's a new band for you, right, the last few years?

00:35:55Marc:They're great, yeah.

00:35:55Marc:And those Willie Nelson's kids are in that one?

00:35:57Marc:Yeah, a couple of them are in there.

00:35:59Guest:Yeah.

00:35:59Guest:So the pedigree of the band is really great, and everybody's sensitive to the music.

00:36:06Guest:They respect it.

00:36:07Guest:It's been their whole life.

00:36:08Guest:are there any old guys just me yeah and uh but you know i feel really good in there i feel like um safe and also no fear yeah and they have no fear yes the key ingredient in love yeah no fear well that was the interesting thing in in the in the movie not in the movie so now you got me calling it a movie well you know it is a movie if you close your eyes you went to a lot of places

00:36:33Guest:I did go to it.

00:36:33Guest:Remember Bram Stoker's Dracula?

00:36:35Guest:Did you ever see that one?

00:36:36Guest:With the Coppola film?

00:36:38Guest:Yeah.

00:36:38Guest:Remember when the bat was flying down the street and it was like some old... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:44Guest:And you saw like it was the image of what the bat was seeing?

00:36:47Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:48Guest:Of course, the bat can't see.

00:36:49Guest:Right, right.

00:36:50Guest:But that was what was interesting.

00:36:51Guest:So that was the impetus for doing this record.

00:36:54Guest:Right.

00:36:55Guest:Because you're hearing things...

00:36:57Guest:and you can't see them and you're going from place to place i mean you're plugging all over the world i mean you're going to the bottom of the ocean downtown new york you're not in prairies you're that's right yes you're you're in barnyards or you're everywhere right you go everywhere around earth yeah during the record and the music is like a a break from the traveling right and so you you just get meditative kind of in there trippy man yeah it is yeah it's far out yeah man

00:37:27Marc:But the interesting thing is fearlessness is the core of love.

00:37:32Marc:Yeah.

00:37:33Marc:Being open.

00:37:35Marc:And there's two songs on there.

00:37:38Marc:The hippie song, The Hippie Dream, which is sort of like drawing a line between the hippies that are still fighting and the hippies that have...

00:37:49Marc:given up in a way or surrender to comfort or whatever it is that they surrender to right but the dream of of you know change and love is still real and still something that has to be fought for so that's that's one of those neil young songs where you you're sort of like uh you know you fuckers quit right somebody did

00:38:13Marc:but not you apparently not right and then there's the idea that you know this idea that um that love like the because like there's something about that hippie ideal that was a fashion that that you you know because there's another song on there that that is basically a somewhat of a direct or satiric attack on people that just want music about love

00:38:40Marc:Yeah.

00:38:41Marc:And here we're saying that love is really what can conquer and what can win fearlessness.

00:38:45Marc:And that's a love that's got a little fight to it.

00:38:48Marc:Yet the sort of trite love of love songs or generally, I imagine you're talking about pop music in a way.

00:38:57Guest:I'm just talking about people who don't want to hear.

00:39:01Guest:yeah a confrontational message they don't want to hear uh uh uh no fear yeah they don't want to hear about certain things they just want to hear about love that's what they want to hear about that'll relax them because pretty soon you know like they really need to get away i mean you know that's they put on the radio they don't need to be attacked

00:39:20Guest:So they're feeling that way because the rest of the world is not really, you know, maybe they don't feel great about the world.

00:39:28Guest:So they want to get out of the world and just go to music.

00:39:31Guest:But, you know, unfortunately, living in that musical space is people like me.

00:39:35Guest:I mean, I'm there and there's a lot of people like me that want to sing about things that.

00:39:39Guest:that they care about and so the song started from from you know i was playing my songs from about anti-corporate songs and all these things and and uh somebody just uh you know i got the message you know yeah people want to hear about love that's what they want to hear

00:39:57Guest:You know, I'm going, I don't care.

00:40:00Guest:You know, I sang about love already.

00:40:03Guest:You know, love can break your heart.

00:40:05Guest:Yeah.

00:40:05Guest:You know, I sang about many aspects of love.

00:40:09Guest:And quite recently, I did an album called Story Tone.

00:40:12Guest:Yeah.

00:40:12Guest:That's all about love.

00:40:13Guest:Yeah.

00:40:14Guest:And, you know, that was only a couple albums ago.

00:40:16Guest:And I'm going, what does this mean that I have to only do that?

00:40:20Guest:Right.

00:40:21Guest:And, you know, I can't talk about love.

00:40:23Marc:uh things like uh you know the dangers of different things and yeah and incongruous things that are happening or yeah pollution corruption oil mining corporate government yeah you know yeah no those things i i just i think they're interesting but you still you still have people that have those that confront you with that stuff like they they come up to you and go like where's the old neil it's like which one are you talking

00:40:49Guest:about really where's the old Neil that's one of the things about this record that'll let when they go to earth and they want to take that trip through there yeah the oldest song on there is 45 years old from which one after the gold rush so even in the middle of that song even though it's a live version but it's live in a different way it's a living version right it has the original

00:41:18Guest:French horn that was on the real record from 19... You pulled it from the tape?

00:41:23Guest:I took the whole master and I just dropped it into this live one.

00:41:27Guest:It's just seamless and covered it with a few things so that people could feel the space and traveling and

00:41:33Guest:and that's what the whole record's about so that's a little disorienting when you hear that and you hear these these beautiful voices the corporate harmony singing along with after the gold rush it's like there's something a little edgy about it uh in a way that it's it's so sweet well right it's just so nice and but it's but it's not wait a minute underneath there this that's some neil young shit in there

00:41:55Marc:What is that?

00:41:56Marc:The corporate harmony, the vanilla corporate harmony.

00:41:59Guest:Yeah, the vanilla singer is the corporate harmony.

00:42:01Marc:But obviously talented and sound great.

00:42:04Marc:Fantastic.

00:42:05Marc:But there is a joke to it.

00:42:06Guest:Well, you know, there's just, I motivated them and I said, listen, you really got to sell this.

00:42:12Guest:Yeah.

00:42:13Guest:This is great stuff.

00:42:14Guest:Right.

00:42:17Guest:You know, you've got to think how cool some of these things are that you're, you know, like how optimistic you should sound when you sing Exxon.

00:42:24Guest:Right.

00:42:25Guest:It's really great stuff.

00:42:26Guest:It's energy.

00:42:29Guest:People need it.

00:42:30Guest:You have to have this.

00:42:31Guest:I mean, you know, here we are.

00:42:32Guest:You directed them.

00:42:33Guest:Yeah.

00:42:35Guest:Sell these concepts.

00:42:37Guest:You know, Monsanto, it's a beautiful sounding name.

00:42:39Guest:Right.

00:42:40Guest:Make it sound like a beautiful day.

00:42:43Guest:Right, right.

00:42:44Guest:It's a satirical device done beautifully.

00:42:47Guest:Well, they're great commercial background and commercial jingle singers, the best in L.A.

00:42:54Guest:That's who you got?

00:42:55Guest:Yeah.

00:42:55Yeah.

00:42:56Guest:the best ones i mean you know i know there's other ones that are really good but these ones we got are are yeah you know the best that we could get together right there i love it they're really excellent so they sing so perfectly and so in tune and they're obviously so much more accomplished technicians yeah so the idea was to play them against the the message of truth

00:43:17Guest:Well, you know, the idea was that they played against the promise of the real.

00:43:21Guest:And they're in the image of the record.

00:43:24Guest:They're there on stage with us and we're playing and the animals are cheering and every once in a while the animals come on stage and do a breakdown where there's just the bass and drums and animals.

00:43:34Guest:Yeah.

00:43:34Guest:you know so it's like and and they're good with they're good with the band they're they're always right there you know they never miss right so and they just show up when they want to but floating in among all of the image of the band on stage and the animals in the audience and sometimes on stage is this hologram of these vocalists yeah and they're perfect and they're just so great so this is a very this is this is it's almost like

00:44:01Marc:Everything that you've sort of been working towards and playing with, coming together in one big fucking mix.

00:44:09Marc:It kind of is.

00:44:10Marc:Yeah.

00:44:10Marc:And I like when you were talking about the French horn, when you say traveling, there's a time travel element.

00:44:17Marc:That the one thing that music affords you, outside of any messaging, is the only time travel machine that we really have.

00:44:24Marc:That's reliable.

00:44:25Marc:It's a good one.

00:44:26Marc:Yeah.

00:44:27Marc:And like, that's what's curious to me about this relationship, which is probably the longest in your life you have with that guitar.

00:44:34Marc:Yeah, that's a good one.

00:44:35Marc:Right.

00:44:36Marc:But like, you know, like, you know, I can tell I'm projecting it onto you, but you respect the history of things.

00:44:47Yeah.

00:44:47Marc:and you you you understand the magic of things and also the the the depth of of what what an object that that makes music can do right because that organ what is that organ on that record on mother earth the organ is it's a pipe a pump organ an old one yeah you got it in a junk shop

00:45:06Marc:And what's that, but you've used other organs that are like old-timey ones, right?

00:45:10Marc:Mm-hmm.

00:45:11Marc:But that one was, that's as old as.

00:45:13Guest:Yeah.

00:45:14Guest:I used an organ on Country Girl, and I've been waiting for you also a long time ago.

00:45:19Guest:But that was from, that was in Glendale, a huge organ.

00:45:23Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:45:23Guest:A church building.

00:45:24Guest:You went and you recorded it there?

00:45:26Guest:Yeah, I recorded it there, yeah.

00:45:27Guest:But this one is just a pump organ that I can play and sing at.

00:45:31Guest:Uh-huh.

00:45:31Guest:So that was live.

00:45:32Guest:We did that that way.

00:45:33Marc:and and the in but the guitar what is it the when you because that guitar has gone through a lot of yeah well yes it has and what you play a few guitars but you're not a guy that's got 90 are you well i got a lot of guitars but i you know i just get guitars because i like them usually for for writing right but when you go on stage it's only a couple right yeah i play two or three on stage you play that big gretch

00:46:00Marc:Yeah, sometimes I'll play that.

00:46:02Marc:And that Black Les Paul, what is the story on that Les Paul, man?

00:46:05Guest:I got that guitar from Jimmy Messina.

00:46:08Guest:Uh-huh.

00:46:08Guest:He traded, I think it was a trade.

00:46:10Guest:Yeah.

00:46:11Guest:Something to do with, I'm not sure, I think it was a trade.

00:46:15Guest:It's kind of hazy.

00:46:16Guest:Yeah.

00:46:17Guest:Yeah, and I got that from him.

00:46:19Guest:It was a gold top that someone had shellacked with black paint?

00:46:22Guest:It was black and it had a lot of finished ivory put around it and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

00:46:28Guest:And it would have half fallen off.

00:46:30Guest:Yeah.

00:46:30Guest:And still a couple of pieces of it left.

00:46:33Guest:Yeah.

00:46:35Marc:Did you just maintain it?

00:46:37Guest:no no just let it be what it was i mean uh larry craig my guitar tech maintained it for me and still does i mean he does the he does the real lion's share of the work on it but going back a little further into the the time travel thing that thing you did with jack down in nashville in the story tone album

00:46:56Marc:yeah in the machine that's literally a time travel machine oh that voice that was what's that called that album was called a letter home oh yeah yeah and that's yeah that was a yeah voiceograph yeah and you just did that because you thought it would be interesting to do it in the voiceograph

00:47:14Marc:Yes.

00:47:15Marc:Yeah.

00:47:16Marc:It was kind of, and it was all covers.

00:47:17Marc:Yeah.

00:47:18Marc:Some of them by guys you knew.

00:47:19Guest:Yeah.

00:47:20Guest:I wanted to make a record that sounded as old as the songs that I was singing.

00:47:24Guest:Yeah.

00:47:25Guest:And it really does sound like they were, you know, in some cases you'll listen to it and go, wow, maybe that's like from before when the record came out.

00:47:33Guest:You know, it's so old sounding.

00:47:34Guest:So it's unique in that respect.

00:47:37Guest:I thought it was a very, very rewarding project.

00:47:40Guest:And he did two Gordon Whitefoot songs.

00:47:42Guest:Yeah.

00:47:42Guest:Did you know him coming up?

00:47:44Guest:Yeah, I met him a few times.

00:47:45Marc:Yeah, he's Canadian, right?

00:47:47Guest:He's a real good guy, yeah.

00:47:48Guest:Yeah, he wrote some good songs, huh?

00:47:49Guest:He's written some great songs.

00:47:51Marc:Dylan thinks he's one of the very best ever.

00:47:54Marc:So when you were starting, because there seems to me to be something that...

00:47:59Marc:This is how I work, because I heard about your issue with setless.

00:48:03Marc:This is what it looks like of what I wanted to talk to you about.

00:48:07Marc:It's a fucking mess of words that I'm going to come at it like a collage.

00:48:13Marc:I wrote here, I wrote, the sadness and anger that floats eternal.

00:48:19Marc:Because there's a quality to your music that it doesn't ever date itself, Neil.

00:48:24Marc:Like, it's better than time travel because if you put on most of your records, you know, outside of, you know, some production elements later, but there's no time to it.

00:48:36Marc:It's timeless.

00:48:37Marc:Do you feel that?

00:48:38Guest:Well, I just, I try to be early into it.

00:48:41Guest:Right.

00:48:42Guest:While I'm doing it and, you know, let that all happen, you know, whatever it is.

00:48:47Guest:I don't think about it that way.

00:48:50Guest:I really think about each day and each performance and each song as a unique thing, and that's where I put my energy.

00:48:57Marc:Right.

00:48:57Marc:What's your writing process?

00:48:59Guest:There isn't one.

00:49:00Guest:It just comes to you sometimes?

00:49:01Guest:Yeah, sometimes I just get it.

00:49:03Guest:I'll put down anything to finish a song or to do something if I have an idea.

00:49:07Marc:Yeah.

00:49:07Guest:Whatever I'm doing will be second.

00:49:09Guest:Yeah.

00:49:09Guest:So I always have learned that if you're going to do something, you know, and you have a musical gift, it's like you have to accept the gift.

00:49:18Guest:It's not like if I'm sitting there thinking of what I'm going to do, I'm fucked.

00:49:22Guest:Yeah.

00:49:22Guest:Okay.

00:49:23Guest:That's not it.

00:49:24Guest:Right.

00:49:25Guest:That's not it.

00:49:25Guest:You know, if you get something that comes to you, that's it.

00:49:29Guest:Grab it.

00:49:30Guest:Don't do anything else.

00:49:31Guest:Whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing.

00:49:33Guest:Stop and go and follow whatever that idea is.

00:49:37Marc:Yeah.

00:49:37Marc:And that's how I write.

00:49:38Marc:Something that connects with your music is heavy hearted.

00:49:44Marc:Yeah, but I'm a happy guy, really.

00:49:45Guest:I'm not an unhappy person.

00:49:49Guest:No, no, you're right.

00:49:50Guest:You look at me, you can see that I'm here and I'm doing okay.

00:49:54Guest:I know.

00:49:55Guest:The thing is that the world is not quite there.

00:49:58Guest:There's things going on in the world that people don't see.

00:50:02Guest:Yeah.

00:50:04Guest:And there's a lot of damage being done and we don't see it.

00:50:07Guest:And so that makes me a little heavy hearted.

00:50:10Guest:That it seems so hard to get the message out.

00:50:15Guest:And it's so hard to actually, even with the technology we have today, it's so hard to get through the murk of the technology.

00:50:25Guest:I mean, I know this is a podcast, but, you know, for listening to music,

00:50:31Marc:it's it's very degraded it's less than five percent of what uh you heard on the pono but when you go but when you do like um you know stuff from you know all the way you know from the first record you know through uh zuma which is like for some reason that's like out of all your records i listen to zuma a lot i was walking on zuma this morning you were yeah listening to it no just the beach yeah listening to the ocean yeah yeah yeah and the seagulls

00:51:01Marc:But did you feel this pressing idea that there was something, some darkness afoot, you know, all your life?

00:51:07Marc:Not depression, but that, you know, the tone of what is unknown is somewhat menacing.

00:51:13Marc:It's there.

00:51:14Marc:Always been there.

00:51:15Guest:You've got to, you know, recognize it.

00:51:18Marc:Yeah.

00:51:18Marc:You can't ignore it.

00:51:20Marc:It's just, you know, no fear of no fear.

00:51:23Yeah.

00:51:23Marc:But these fears, I guess what I'm trying to get at, that what people are afraid of, that what you've sort of been through in your career, they were always sort of the same in the 60s.

00:51:37Guest:Now it's what they're not afraid of that bothers me.

00:51:39Guest:Like what?

00:51:40Guest:Well, what's going on in the climate, what's going on in the environment, what we're doing to the world, the amount of animals and living things that are just going away, we are not seeing what's going on.

00:51:59Guest:The insects are threatened.

00:52:00Guest:They have 10% of the fish in the ocean that we had when I rode after the gold rush.

00:52:04Guest:Yeah.

00:52:06Guest:Yeah.

00:52:06Guest:We've lost 90%.

00:52:07Guest:It's crazy.

00:52:09Guest:There's three times more of us than there were then.

00:52:12Guest:So, you know, you just got to look at it.

00:52:14Guest:Don't do the math.

00:52:16Guest:We're doomed.

00:52:17Guest:It's ugly.

00:52:17Guest:We're doomed.

00:52:18Guest:So, but no, we really, it's more than a word.

00:52:21Guest:It's more than something to say or to make a quick joke about.

00:52:25Guest:Not that you're joking about it, but people do.

00:52:27Guest:Yeah.

00:52:27Guest:That's what they do when they hear someone say something like this.

00:52:30Guest:It's like, oh, you know.

00:52:32Guest:What are you going to do?

00:52:33Guest:Neil is just, you know.

00:52:34Guest:He's out there.

00:52:34Guest:Yeah, he's out there.

00:52:35Guest:What is he looking at?

00:52:37Guest:Crazy old hippie.

00:52:38Guest:I got this stuff.

00:52:39Guest:Yeah.

00:52:40Guest:I got this stuff.

00:52:40Guest:It's going to make everything okay.

00:52:42Guest:So I say break it out.

00:52:43Guest:Let's try it.

00:52:44Guest:Yeah.

00:52:46Guest:Yeah.

00:52:46Guest:Break out that stuff.

00:52:47Guest:It's going to make it all good.

00:52:48Guest:Yeah.

00:52:48Guest:There's urgency to it for you.

00:52:50Guest:Yeah, there is.

00:52:51Marc:For at least the past decade, a very specific urgency around war and seeds and people and pollution.

00:52:58Marc:We just have to keep a...

00:53:00Guest:keep a record of a point of view you know that's that's what i'm trying to do keep a record of a point of view what's going on because this is the times these times in the history of what's going on in the world right now they're going to be looking back at this hopefully as well that was the yeah well not in the too distant future yeah but they'll be looking back at this going wow you know during this time

00:53:23Guest:So many things could have been done to keep what it is that we now only have pictures of.

00:53:28Guest:Right.

00:53:29Guest:And what we read about.

00:53:30Guest:But, you know, we'll see what happens.

00:53:32Guest:Mother Nature is incredibly strong.

00:53:35Guest:Yeah, it'll adapt.

00:53:36Guest:We might not.

00:53:37Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:53:38Guest:Exactly.

00:53:38Guest:exactly yeah we might not make it yeah mother nature will be fine yeah actually i think we're gonna make it i really do no i don't feel like a dark i don't feel dark i feel like earth is just mistreated and i think it's uh you know you just have to keep pointing it out and maybe people will want to make a change you know want to eat food that

00:53:59Guest:They know is cleaner and better for the earth.

00:54:02Marc:Yeah.

00:54:02Marc:Study the way things are done.

00:54:04Marc:Well, sadly, with humans, it seems it's something fairly catastrophic and very, you know, more than just a gradual erosion of climate or that's something horrible.

00:54:16Marc:has to happen that's tangible to most people all at once.

00:54:21Marc:Yeah.

00:54:21Guest:You would think that something like Hurricane Sandy would have been that.

00:54:25Marc:Not big enough.

00:54:25Guest:But it really wasn't big enough.

00:54:26Guest:No.

00:54:27Guest:No, it was not as big as it.

00:54:29Guest:And even the biggest thing that happens.

00:54:31Guest:Yeah.

00:54:31Guest:You know, it's hard to say, you know, climate change is one of the great profit centers.

00:54:36Guest:Yeah.

00:54:37Marc:And, you know, that's what they don't look at it like that's going to be some good business coming out.

00:54:41Marc:I think that's true.

00:54:42Marc:And I think that's disturbing is that, like, you know, the free market can absorb and accommodate this.

00:54:46Marc:And there's going to be a big business in these environments that need to be created.

00:54:50Marc:Yeah.

00:54:51Marc:Where people can breathe.

00:54:52Marc:Imagine the money.

00:54:53Marc:solar power that would be so good that solar power be easy it'd be would be easy but no but that's not a big business as uh enclosed cities there's the big business neil that would be what an air conditioner that would have oh yeah yeah all right well you know yeah i think it's going to work out one way or the other i do too can we talk a little more more about the old days

00:55:15Guest:sure whatever i'm okay i'm you all right i'm in your garage yeah this is it let's let's do what you want to do in here it's nice thank you man it's a nice place folks there's a lot of clutter there's a lot of clutter in here a lot of nice a lot of good books uh there's a i see uh the the something doctrine the school doctrine by naomi klein right there

00:55:36Marc:Have you read that?

00:55:38Guest:No, I haven't.

00:55:38Marc:You know, I'm not an avid reader.

00:55:40Marc:That's the shock doctrine.

00:55:41Marc:Oh, the shock doctrine.

00:55:43Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:55:43Marc:That's right up your alley, actually.

00:55:45Marc:Yeah.

00:55:46Marc:Well, you know, there's a lot of interesting things in here.

00:55:48Marc:But when you did, like, when you did, like...

00:55:51Marc:And I know you've gone over this stuff before, but to track what you're saying that, you know, this history of consciousness, when you were able to turn around the song Ohio to really actually, you know, come out in a short enough time that was relevant to the time that that shit was happening, there was an urgency that you feel now that's the same back then.

00:56:10Guest:Well, there's no way to, if something happened and we wrote a song about it, there's no way it would come out.

00:56:14Guest:Right.

00:56:15Guest:It's just nowhere to play it.

00:56:17Guest:Oh, now.

00:56:18Guest:Now.

00:56:18Guest:Right.

00:56:18Guest:You'd play it.

00:56:19Guest:Right.

00:56:20Guest:Right.

00:56:20Guest:If you heard it.

00:56:21Guest:But back then.

00:56:21Guest:You might not know what happened.

00:56:22Guest:Right.

00:56:23Guest:Because it never would be on the radio.

00:56:25Guest:People wouldn't be talking about it because radio and TV and all the media and everything's all controlled by a certain amount of people and corporations.

00:56:35Guest:Right.

00:56:35Guest:Before, it used to be many, many people doing this.

00:56:38Guest:But the Telecommunications Act in 1996 or so made it possible for corporations to own all the media.

00:56:44Guest:So it's six companies.

00:56:46Marc:Well, but it's also fragmented.

00:56:47Marc:It's a divide and conquer media landscape.

00:56:49Marc:Back then, they were corporate owned, but there was only five of them.

00:56:52Guest:it was intimate you know it was always corporate owned but at least like they were like uh on the pulse enough to go like well i think the kids like this music and you know and they had people working for them that could make their own minds up that's right that was part of the way they did it those were the days when people could make their own decisions in the studio about what they were going to play

00:57:10Guest:now there's a format coming out of philadelphia it's coming out it gets all the stations get it that subscribe to it it's like could be like 300 stations all playing exactly the same thing no and yeah it's horrible you know so that's it's you're in rotation on some of those stations programming yeah it's programming i i feel dizzy already from that rotation

00:57:31Marc:But at the time that you did the stuff with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and that there was a shifting of the guard, I think that what you speak to and what I'm experiencing as well is that nobody's on the same page, really.

00:57:47Marc:Everyone can pick their own page, and it doesn't matter if the page is bullshit or not.

00:57:51Marc:But it seemed that somehow or another you guys were able to get through because the corporations that were in charge of the music business wanted to sell records for kids, and you guys got out what you wanted to say.

00:58:01Guest:Yeah, because kids were listening to the radio stations.

00:58:04Guest:Right.

00:58:05Guest:And then around the time of Woodstock, you know, business realized, wow, there's a whole generation of people here.

00:58:13Guest:The 500,000 of them came to listen to these bands.

00:58:16Guest:Yeah.

00:58:16Guest:We've got to start making commercials with bands in them.

00:58:18Guest:Right.

00:58:19Guest:You know, and we've got to get ourselves involved in this.

00:58:22Guest:We've got to sell out the 60s.

00:58:23Guest:Yeah, we've got to make this happen.

00:58:25Guest:We can use this energy.

00:58:26Guest:Right.

00:58:26Guest:And that's what happened, and that's the way it goes, you know.

00:58:30Marc:But those records that you continue to make that even after everyone knows there's another way, after the gold rush harvest, time fades away, that these records that happened that were intimate records and that later became these revered classics, you had already pulled away from collective consciousness in a way to do your own thing, right?

00:58:52Marc:Yeah.

00:58:52Marc:Well, you know, I wasn't thinking about it that way.

00:58:54Marc:Well, you think about it that way now a little bit.

00:58:55Guest:I just didn't want to do what I did before.

00:58:58Guest:Yeah.

00:58:58Guest:And I wanted to keep changing and trying things.

00:59:01Marc:And what they call, who gave it the name, the Ditch Trilogy?

00:59:06Marc:Oh, I don't know.

00:59:07Marc:Somebody.

00:59:08Marc:Not me.

00:59:09Marc:I know, right?

00:59:10Guest:Does that bother you?

00:59:11Guest:No.

00:59:12Guest:You know, that's what it's for.

00:59:13Guest:If I can make things and put them out there, then it's up to other people to decide what they are.

00:59:20Guest:That's not what my job is not to decide.

00:59:21Marc:Sure, you're the artist.

00:59:23Marc:I just want to create it.

00:59:24Marc:And what do you think that, you know, like an album like On the Beach and Tonight's the Night, or Tonight's the Night, that the story around that record was that it was very...

00:59:38Marc:played all at once, right?

00:59:41Marc:It wasn't a lot of time you spent in the studio.

00:59:44Marc:No.

00:59:45Marc:And it was a direct reaction to the loss of your friend, Danny, right?

00:59:49Marc:Yeah, Danny and Bruce.

00:59:51Marc:Both of them.

00:59:51Marc:Yeah, two people.

00:59:53Marc:And it was sort of, I think, a realization culturally at that time of how horrible heroin was as well.

00:59:59Guest:Well, yeah, and, you know, Danny and Bruce were just two that I knew.

01:00:03Guest:I mean, you know.

01:00:04Guest:Sure.

01:00:05Guest:It's everybody.

01:00:06Guest:That's what it was about.

01:00:07Marc:And at that time, it was really all over the place, right?

01:00:10Marc:That was after the 60s, the crashing of the 60s.

01:00:13Marc:It was a crash going on, you know.

01:00:15Marc:And Hendrix, you know.

01:00:17Guest:So, you know, yeah, it's just real feelings.

01:00:21Guest:These people were friends of mine.

01:00:23Guest:I worked with them and had great times with them and admired them.

01:00:26Marc:And there was nothing you could do to stop them.

01:00:29Guest:No.

01:00:30Marc:That's the most fucked up thing about that shit.

01:00:32Guest:It's bad.

01:00:33Guest:So, you know, I reacted to it.

01:00:35Guest:And just like I'm reacting to things now.

01:00:37Guest:It's just same thing, the same guy, same MO, same damn thing.

01:00:41Guest:Yeah.

01:00:41Guest:Nothing unpredictable about it at all.

01:00:44Guest:It's the same thing over and over and over again.

01:00:46Marc:Right, in your heart, but the only thing that's unpredictable is how you're going to handle it with your creativity, which is what you like to do.

01:00:53Marc:Well, yeah, I don't know that either.

01:00:55Marc:Right.

01:00:56Marc:Yeah, you know what, Alm?

01:00:57Marc:I just got recently, I picked up the Rockabilly record.

01:01:01Marc:Oh, that's a wild record.

01:01:02Marc:It is, man.

01:01:03Marc:Yeah.

01:01:04Marc:I mean, that was like sort of an interesting time there.

01:01:06Guest:I did a record before that either, I don't know what it was.

01:01:10Guest:What, Trans?

01:01:11Marc:yeah and a guy from a record company said neil why don't you just play some rock and roll man why don't you just get you know just do your thing that guy yeah and you just did your thing here you go when you do something like that that was sort of like isn't that you paying a somewhat of a homage to what you know what you grew up with i mean isn't that isn't that there you're like kind of fun music to play right yeah yeah i you know it was a culmination of things you know working on that one yeah what you what like what

01:01:40Guest:well i thought at that point in my life that uh and i was still very young yeah i was i said well here i'm walking down a hallway now i am in my painting period uh-huh and uh and i'm gonna do all these different uh you know yeah it's gonna be different times uh-huh different characters and different pictures

01:01:59Guest:for like a few records you mean well each record was a different one and they just they're there starting at like reactor somewhere yeah yeah i don't know but you just said why not just fucking explore it all and go into different beings i can do whatever i need to do now because it doesn't you know i've there's no sense in doing things over again yeah i'd seen i saw a lot of people doing things over and over again and it didn't work for them

01:02:22Guest:No, no, because... A lot of them didn't even live.

01:02:24Guest:I mean, they just lost what it was they had.

01:02:27Marc:Because the record company pressured to repeat themselves.

01:02:30Guest:Whatever.

01:02:30Guest:I don't know if the record company or their own soul or their own manager or their wife or what.

01:02:36Marc:Or fear.

01:02:36Guest:I have no idea.

01:02:37Guest:Sure.

01:02:38Guest:And it may be that they just wanted to stay where they were because they succeeded.

01:02:42Guest:Any number of reasons to repeat yourself.

01:02:44Guest:And you just never want nothing to do with that.

01:02:46Guest:Well, like I said, in my own way, I've been doing the same thing over and over again for my whole life, which is just doing what I want to do.

01:02:52Marc:Right.

01:02:53Marc:But you have a voice.

01:02:54Marc:You have not the voice voice, but you are as a point of view.

01:02:57Marc:Yeah, I have a point of view and it changes all the time, but it's mine.

01:03:00Marc:That's right.

01:03:01Marc:You know what it is?

01:03:02Marc:It's style.

01:03:03Marc:Like, you know, there are certain, even if it's a note, even if you're doing something like, if I listen to trans, there's a melody there that I know is you.

01:03:12Marc:Yeah, okay.

01:03:12Marc:So you're a melody.

01:03:14Marc:It's point of view, but it's a tone.

01:03:16Marc:It's a Neil Young tone.

01:03:17Guest:There's something in there.

01:03:19Guest:I can still remember doing the trans stuff and having people boo me when I would do that.

01:03:24Guest:I'd put on a little microphone and sing through the machine with the vocoder and somebody playing the melody that I'm singing and I'm enunciating the words and the melody's coming out of my mouth through the machine kind of thing.

01:03:35Guest:It was like...

01:03:35Guest:And it was all based on my son not being able to talk.

01:03:39Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:03:40Guest:Okay, I had a son who couldn't talk.

01:03:42Guest:Okay, he can't do anything.

01:03:43Guest:He can't move.

01:03:44Guest:Yeah.

01:03:45Guest:You know, so, you know, I was... Trying to get through to him?

01:03:48Guest:Well, I was trying to represent what that must be like.

01:03:50Guest:Right.

01:03:51Guest:So I was trying to get through to the audience in a way where they knew that they couldn't understand what I was doing.

01:03:57Guest:That's just like my son trying to talk to me.

01:03:59Marc:Yeah.

01:04:00Marc:And do you, like, over the years, like, I imagine, do you have a way of communicating with him?

01:04:05Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:04:06Guest:No, we're very, it just comes in the eyes and sounds and body language.

01:04:11Guest:And that's Zeke?

01:04:12Guest:No, that's Ben.

01:04:13Marc:Ben.

01:04:13Guest:That's Ben, yeah.

01:04:15Marc:Ben's the one who's... Ben's a quadriplegic, yeah.

01:04:18Guest:and you and he still travels with you everywhere yes he goes with me on the road as much as he can yeah and it's sort of uh like uh is he's your best audience i'd imagine he's great he's great i just like to travel with him he enjoys traveling yeah you know he's in a moving vehicle yeah you know he's always in a wheelchair you know so just to be jostled around in a moving vehicle and flying down the road i mean for him it's a great experience he loves it and trans was sort of a way for you to try to understand

01:04:45Guest:a way for me to emulate what it must be like to be trying to talk and not have a voice and be trying to communicate and not have what it is that people expected you to do and you're still trying to get through and that's what all that record is yeah yeah i'm in that machine yeah yeah trying to get out of the machine to get through and some people just were going what the heck is going on fuck them yeah yeah but i'm going this is it here we are this is good

01:05:12Guest:you know two albums later you do a country record you know i worked that shit out i like that i figured that out yeah and now moving on i've always uh i've always loved music and i like all kinds of music and i have no uh i'm not trying to be uh uh what do you call it like somebody said to me when i did that that

01:05:35Guest:well you know people they don't trust you because uh you know they don't think you you change styles yeah it's like so they can't believe you yeah yeah i'm going well you know that's that's okay yeah they don't have to they'll get over it yeah either that or they won't but i don't have to worry about it let them go listen to the old records if they want to yeah or maybe one three or four down the line who knows somebody will hit sometime bound to connect up with them again

01:06:00Marc:The experience of living with a kid that had that difficulty, like, I don't know the pain or joy of that.

01:06:09Marc:But there must be, not unlike your sort of open-mindedness around engaging animals and engaging the world and having fearlessness, there must be some sort of understanding of Ben's joy that is something that you couldn't even access, that, you know, the way he feels things.

01:06:26Guest:He's just a great human being, and I love him, and I know he loves me, and we enjoy a lot of things together.

01:06:33Guest:And he has so many things that we would consider to be hard things to deal with.

01:06:39Guest:But that's the way he's always been.

01:06:41Guest:So when I see people complaining about struggling to get something where they can't get it, I'm going, oh, man, I...

01:06:49Guest:i think that you know yeah i've seen people with a lot bigger problems in my family yeah yeah you know i've seen this and uh you know so i just have another perspective and you're and you have another son that has some problems as well well you know he's he's been uh he he's got cerebral palsy uh but he's a very uh you know he's he gets around great yeah and he's a very smart

01:07:12Guest:Very smart man.

01:07:13Guest:Uh-huh.

01:07:14Guest:And he's incredibly brilliant at the things he does.

01:07:18Guest:And you have a daughter, too, that's an artist?

01:07:20Guest:Yeah, she's an artist.

01:07:21Marc:She's great.

01:07:22Marc:That's great.

01:07:22Marc:Yeah.

01:07:23Marc:A couple other things.

01:07:24Marc:It's hard because I know there's, like, so many huge Neil Young nerds out there.

01:07:29Marc:And, like, if I don't cover...

01:07:31Marc:You're never going to do that anyway.

01:07:33Marc:You'll never satisfy everybody.

01:07:35Marc:I know.

01:07:36Marc:I can't.

01:07:36Marc:Just do what you want to do yourself.

01:07:38Marc:You know, that's going to work.

01:07:39Marc:Well, I'd like to know about the film work as well, working on Dead Man, which is a fucking masterpiece.

01:07:45Guest:Isn't that a great movie?

01:07:47Marc:It's a great movie.

01:07:47Guest:Unbelievable movie.

01:07:48Guest:I can't believe it.

01:07:49Guest:And the soundtrack's amazing.

01:07:50Guest:Well, thank you.

01:07:51Guest:I told Jim Jarmusch, I said, Jim, this is a classic.

01:07:56Guest:You don't even need a soundtrack.

01:07:57Guest:Right.

01:07:57Guest:This could be a silent movie.

01:07:59Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:00Guest:And it's still a classic.

01:08:01Guest:You can't miss with this movie.

01:08:02Guest:This is a great movie.

01:08:03Guest:Yeah.

01:08:04Guest:And he said, well, I really want you to play on it.

01:08:06Marc:So I did.

01:08:07Marc:But what was amazing about it was that to really hear you just space it out like that, it was a way that I had not heard you.

01:08:18Marc:to where you're just honoring what's going on on screen, but it's so clearly your shit, you know what I mean?

01:08:24Marc:But it wasn't all about what you were doing.

01:08:27Guest:I stood in a room about three times the size of this room with about 30 television sets.

01:08:33Guest:and they were all playing the movie and i had all my instruments in there it's maybe five times the size of this space but i had all my instruments and i just watched the movie and we did it twice and yeah and i just played all that live yeah we did it twice and we ended up using the end of the first one and the

01:08:49Marc:the beginning of the second one uh-huh up to that and that was the soundtrack for the whole thing and you've like you've done other film work too i mean well i mean demi works with you over and over again to do the concert movies yeah we did some and you did uh did you do something with dean stockwell too uh we did human highway oh yeah i didn't see that i need to check that one out yeah yeah i recommend that one yeah i think you'll enjoy that one you're still friends with him right who dean yeah yeah oh yeah yeah i love dean

01:09:17Marc:You guys go way back.

01:09:18Marc:I love that you have these relationships.

01:09:20Guest:Back to Topanga in the 60s.

01:09:22Guest:It was pretty distant back there, but he was already a big success by the time I met him.

01:09:27Guest:Yeah.

01:09:28Guest:He was already rocking and rolling.

01:09:30Marc:And what's the story after the Gold Rush?

01:09:34Marc:Was it based on a screenplay that he wrote?

01:09:36Marc:A screenplay that he wrote with Herb Berman.

01:09:39Marc:Uh-huh.

01:09:40Marc:And you read it?

01:09:41Guest:I read it, and I wrote all the songs.

01:09:43Marc:And it never got made?

01:09:44Guest:And it never got made, right?

01:09:44Marc:And here's another thing that I ended up doing this morning was that I saw Out of the Blue, the Dennis Hopper film.

01:09:50Marc:Oh, man.

01:09:51Marc:That's a dark film.

01:09:52Marc:Holy shit, man.

01:09:53Marc:Great film, though.

01:09:54Marc:I saw it when it came out when I was in college in Boston.

01:09:56Marc:Did you screen that movie?

01:10:00Marc:Because they used a song in it.

01:10:01Marc:Yeah, no.

01:10:02Marc:It's Dennis.

01:10:03Marc:Whatever you want to do.

01:10:04Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:10:05Marc:You were friends with him, too?

01:10:06Marc:Yeah.

01:10:06Marc:He was an intense guy.

01:10:08Marc:Very intense.

01:10:09Marc:That is a dark film.

01:10:10Marc:I have not seen or heard of it in a long time.

01:10:12Marc:Oh, it's a classic.

01:10:14Marc:It's a little, yeah.

01:10:15Marc:It's brutal and it's a classic.

01:10:17Marc:Now, if I can ask, your relationship with Willie Nelson, he's a real country dude.

01:10:25Marc:And you guys are obviously pretty good friends.

01:10:27Marc:And you have your hearts in a lot of the same places.

01:10:30Marc:Now, when you put together Farm Aid, when you got you and Mellencamp and Willie Nelson...

01:10:35Marc:That still goes on, that organization.

01:10:38Guest:Yeah, that's continuing on, yeah.

01:10:39Marc:And the fight now is mostly against genetic engineering, or what is the fight?

01:10:44Guest:It's about educating people about the food that they eat and the choices that we have and the way that the earth is damaged by certain things.

01:10:55Guest:You know, this industrial farming is very bad for the earth.

01:10:59Guest:Yeah.

01:10:59Guest:It's not like...

01:11:00Guest:Good.

01:11:01Guest:It's not what makes things go on forever.

01:11:03Guest:Yeah, depleting.

01:11:05Guest:It's very taxing on the planet, all of that stuff, the way they're doing it.

01:11:09Guest:But they own it.

01:11:10Guest:It doesn't make more food.

01:11:12Guest:That's a myth.

01:11:13Guest:Yeah.

01:11:14Guest:It's like we're not feeding the world.

01:11:16Guest:The world is basically, a lot of the world is starving, and we're not feeding the world with these chemicals.

01:11:21Guest:What they are doing is they're controlling things.

01:11:23Marc:And subsidies as well, where you just get all this stuff.

01:11:26Marc:If they're making cat litter out of corn, there's a problem.

01:11:29Marc:If there are people starving and they're making cat litter out of corn, somehow something's wrong.

01:11:33Marc:There's a lot of things.

01:11:35Marc:There's a lot of things wrong.

01:11:36Marc:But it's the way it goes.

01:11:38Marc:And what about performing with... There's something about performing... What people call garage band, you like to fucking play rock and roll.

01:11:49Marc:and yes and you know the the there's something about performing live and performing as as real and in the moment as possible on records that that is what it's really about now what is that what it's that's always what it's been about yeah and this and earth is a real representation of that yeah record really is really good bands a really good band playing together yeah having a great time and improvising all the way through it oh yeah yeah yeah and what about with Pearl Jam did you like playing with those guys playing

01:12:19Marc:with that, it was fun.

01:12:20Marc:It's just like rock and roll, man, right?

01:12:24Marc:And your guitar sound, how long did it, and that's a dumb geek question, but when did you arrive on that, man?

01:12:31Marc:Because that's another thing that stays pretty consistent.

01:12:34Marc:When you're playing electric guitar, I know it's you.

01:12:36Guest:19 well you know like the way it is now really started in the mid 70s yeah but before that i just i had the same guitar and the same amp i just didn't put the gizmos in there oh yeah yeah to break it up to make it you know i just didn't add the other things to it and the motors and all that stuff that you know yeah and okay two other records and we're done

01:12:55Guest:Is that all I got left?

01:12:58Guest:Two more records?

01:12:58Guest:No, no, no.

01:13:01Marc:I think you're making it.

01:13:02Guest:Who was that?

01:13:03Guest:Two more records and you're done.

01:13:05Marc:I shouldn't have done that podcast.

01:13:08Marc:Shit.

01:13:09Marc:Who was that?

01:13:10Marc:Put the hex on me.

01:13:11Marc:Put the curse on me.

01:13:12Marc:No, but the Greendale record dealing with all of these issues that you find important, but making almost a stage play out of it and building it around a family and around the struggles of that.

01:13:25Marc:And was that totally conceived?

01:13:28Marc:Was that a one thing that you were thinking of?

01:13:30Guest:Well, you know, all these projects kind of go together.

01:13:33Guest:That project is a lot like Tonight's the Night.

01:13:36Guest:Because it was the same kind of a thing.

01:13:39Guest:It's a story.

01:13:40Guest:There's a thing in there that I'm talking about all the way through it.

01:13:46Guest:And Greendale I wrote in my car on the way to the studio every day.

01:13:52Guest:Mm-hmm.

01:13:52Guest:i'd be what were you recording i was recording the song green so you're writing so every day i go to the studio i drive across the ranch in my special deluxe plymouth yeah and i stop and i'd start writing songs and then when i couldn't think of anything more i'd drive another hundred yards and stop again new location

01:14:13Guest:New information.

01:14:15Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:14:15Guest:So I was pretty sure that where I was on the planet made a big difference to what I was getting.

01:14:21Guest:Yeah.

01:14:21Guest:So I tried to see, well, how far do I have to go, really?

01:14:25Guest:Very far?

01:14:26Guest:Or is it, you know, like miles?

01:14:27Guest:Or is it feet?

01:14:28Yeah.

01:14:28Guest:So I had my writing tablet, and that's how I wrote every song on that album.

01:14:34Guest:I would get up in the morning and play a few chords, and that would be the basis of the song, the first things that I played.

01:14:41Guest:I wouldn't think about it.

01:14:41Guest:I'd just pick it up, and whatever happened, I'd just go, okay, I'm going to do that over and over again.

01:14:46Guest:That's the song.

01:14:47Guest:Then I'd write the words on the way over, and then we'd develop the song in the studio and finish it that night.

01:14:52Guest:That's how I did Greendale.

01:14:53Guest:Yeah.

01:14:54Marc:And then the stage play was created... It was created on the story because the story is told in the songs.

01:14:59Marc:Right.

01:15:00Marc:And Prairie Wind was a sort of a eulogy record, was it?

01:15:05Guest:Prairie Wind was a unique record because it was...

01:15:10Guest:When I found out I was in New York and we were doing something, I think I was supposed to go and be at the Hall of Fame in Canada or something.

01:15:18Guest:And I'm sitting in the hotel and I had a couple of incidents with my vision.

01:15:23Guest:Yeah.

01:15:23Guest:And then I went to a doctor and they found a brain aneurysm.

01:15:27Guest:Yeah.

01:15:27Guest:And then they decided that, well, I'm going to have to have this taken out.

01:15:31Guest:And I said, well, okay, I have an operation on my brain.

01:15:34Guest:And they said, yeah, we're going to do that.

01:15:36Guest:And I said, well, you know, we got a really good guy to do this.

01:15:40Guest:When can we get in and do it?

01:15:41Guest:You know, so it was like eight or nine days away.

01:15:44Guest:Yeah.

01:15:44Guest:So I went to Nashville.

01:15:46Guest:Yeah.

01:15:47Guest:I started taking the drugs that they gave me, which are like slowed me way down.

01:15:51Guest:Yeah.

01:15:51Guest:I went to Nashville and recorded, wrote and recorded Prairie Wind in Nashville during those eight days.

01:15:58Guest:Yeah.

01:15:58Guest:So that was a just-in-case record.

01:16:00Guest:It could feel like a eulogy, but it just felt like I'd like to say a few things just in case.

01:16:07Guest:Yeah.

01:16:08Marc:One never knows.

01:16:09Marc:Do one.

01:16:10Marc:Had your dad passed around that time as well?

01:16:13Marc:Yeah.

01:16:14Marc:Yeah, so it was a lot going on.

01:16:15Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:16:15Marc:Mortality record.

01:16:16Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:16:17Marc:It was a passing study of it.

01:16:20Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:16:21Marc:The just-in-case record.

01:16:22Marc:Yeah, kind of.

01:16:23Guest:But, you know, it's a better late than never kind of record.

01:16:27Guest:Right.

01:16:29Marc:Then not at all, too.

01:16:30Marc:Yeah, really.

01:16:31Guest:I mean, you know.

01:16:33Guest:I'm so far late as working for me.

01:16:36Marc:Yeah, keep it late.

01:16:38Marc:Outside of the songs and outside of working this stuff out, processing these emotions and music, do you occupy yourself with much of that mortality thought?

01:16:52Guest:Not really.

01:16:53Guest:I mean, you know, it creeps in every once in a while.

01:16:55Guest:Yeah.

01:16:55Guest:I mean, I'm 70.

01:16:57Guest:Yeah.

01:16:57Guest:So it's bound to creep in.

01:16:59Guest:Yeah.

01:16:59Guest:Every once in a while, I'll see a little glimmer of light around my field of vision.

01:17:03Guest:Sure.

01:17:03Guest:Not yet.

01:17:05Guest:Who's there?

01:17:06Who's there?

01:17:06Wait a minute.

01:17:07Guest:I'm not ready.

01:17:08Marc:I'm not ready.

01:17:08Marc:Go ahead.

01:17:09Marc:Get out of here.

01:17:09Guest:I'm recording.

01:17:11Guest:Get back in your box.

01:17:12Marc:Exactly.

01:17:13Marc:That's why you keep working.

01:17:14Guest:You can't do it at work.

01:17:16Guest:I'm working.

01:17:16Guest:Look, I'm looking at all your little gizmos on the floor down here.

01:17:19Marc:I get those first.

01:17:19Marc:Are you that for your guitar playing gizmos?

01:17:21Marc:They give them to me.

01:17:22Marc:I don't know.

01:17:23Guest:Are those plug-ins?

01:17:24Guest:Is that what they are?

01:17:24Guest:No, they're guitar plug-ins.

01:17:26Marc:Yeah, those are, you know, effects boxes and Earthquaker sends them to me and I don't know what to do with them.

01:17:32Marc:You know what they are?

01:17:32Guest:They're really the new digital version of the kind of shit that I had in my, you know, I got all that stuff that I've got.

01:17:40Guest:I got old analog things.

01:17:42Guest:Yeah, fuzz pedals and shit.

01:17:44Guest:Yeah.

01:17:44Guest:Even, you know, older, like original fuzz tones.

01:17:48Guest:Yeah.

01:17:48Guest:don't have a pedal but you know it's just the sound yeah yeah and so i'm wired in and out of them and i got it all wired into that thing on my yeah that my i can hit with my feet i got a whole bunch of selections but i'm the only one who knows what they are because they're not labeled and they're not they're not digital

01:18:05Marc:No, none of them are.

01:18:06Marc:They're all early.

01:18:08Marc:Yeah.

01:18:09Marc:Yeah, these are all new things that they send me, and I'm just a bedroom guitar player, not just a hobbyist.

01:18:14Guest:I mean, there's echo in there.

01:18:15Guest:Yeah, sure.

01:18:16Guest:There's a repeat.

01:18:17Guest:There's phasers and buzzers.

01:18:18Guest:I've got analog tape machines running inside a box under my amp.

01:18:22Guest:You do?

01:18:23Guest:Yeah, it's always blowing up, and they bring out another one and fix the tape and everything.

01:18:26Guest:It's great.

01:18:27Guest:It's a constant battle just to get through the show and have the amp hang in there.

01:18:32Yeah.

01:18:32Guest:It's so fantastic.

01:18:34Guest:I mean, what a great relationship.

01:18:35Guest:Yeah, that's the excitement of it.

01:18:37Marc:Are we going to make it?

01:18:38Guest:It is.

01:18:38Guest:Or not.

01:18:39Guest:Or is the whole thing going to, is this the night it's going to, like, explode and catch on fire?

01:18:44Guest:My amp goes to 12.

01:18:46Guest:Yeah, you got it.

01:18:48Guest:It's a regular production amp.

01:18:49Guest:I don't know how it happened.

01:18:50Guest:Right.

01:18:51Guest:You know, Spinal Tap.

01:18:53Guest:The joke is the joke.

01:18:54Guest:I got my amp.

01:18:55Guest:It says 12.

01:18:56Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:18:57Guest:It's not like I'm not even saying anything.

01:18:59Marc:So then...

01:19:00Marc:Well, that locks into it right there.

01:19:02Marc:The way you approach life is exactly that, where it's sort of like, I don't know if it's going to make it through.

01:19:10Marc:I'm not sure.

01:19:11Guest:I've heard these cars are great just before they blow up.

01:19:15Marc:yeah exactly it's the motor sounds great it never ran so good yeah and then it's boom yeah but that but that's the edge man that's the edge right it's nice to live there that's where it feels alive i hope i hope that you know it's a long cruise yeah it's going well so what what

01:19:33Marc:But what is the commitment to analog and to machinery?

01:19:36Marc:I mean, I'm with you on that.

01:19:37Marc:Just the tone, man.

01:19:38Marc:Just the tone.

01:19:39Guest:It's the expression.

01:19:40Guest:It's real.

01:19:41Guest:It's real.

01:19:42Guest:It's the real deal.

01:19:43Marc:It's a relationship.

01:19:44Marc:I grew up with that.

01:19:45Marc:Right.

01:19:46Marc:The relationship with the equipment, not the illusion of the chip.

01:19:50Guest:No, the chip is a replacement.

01:19:52Guest:It's the simulation.

01:19:55Guest:Everything's simulated, copied.

01:19:57Guest:And, you know, the original stuff still rocks.

01:20:00Guest:Yeah, it's the fucking shit.

01:20:01Guest:Yeah, it is.

01:20:02Guest:And that's why the vinyl of Earth sounds like God.

01:20:06Guest:It's amazing.

01:20:08Guest:But so does the high-res Pono version.

01:20:10Guest:And the CD sounds pretty good.

01:20:11Guest:But other than that, I don't even sell it.

01:20:15Guest:And I will say to your listeners, because this is a podcast, if you want to get it, you know, I think they play the whole album on Tidal in a couple of weeks.

01:20:26Guest:Yeah.

01:20:26Guest:Go on to Tidal and just record it off a Tidal.

01:20:28Guest:Sure.

01:20:29Guest:It's going to be 44-1.

01:20:30Marc:Yeah.

01:20:31Guest:So that way everybody can get it.

01:20:32Marc:Ready?

01:20:32Guest:Because I'm not selling that.

01:20:34Guest:I'm not selling the MP3.

01:20:35Marc:Yeah, we're just about ready.

01:20:36Marc:We're going to do it.

01:20:36Marc:I'm going to have one more question.

01:20:38Guest:When I start talking like that, my manager shows up.

01:20:40Guest:He's nervous?

01:20:41Guest:Yeah, he is.

01:20:41Guest:Hey, don't give it away.

01:20:42Guest:Hey, wait a minute.

01:20:44Guest:Yeah.

01:20:44Guest:no we want everybody to have it i don't give a yeah it's like how long have you been with elliot i can't sell that crap somebody else has to you go make it yourself and take it home 50 years 50 years with that guy not easy for him no it's not easy for him either so i guess the the in closing neil i do you are you a spiritual man do you consider yourself that

01:21:09Guest:i must be i'm a i may be a pagan though sure that's all right and that's yeah that's pretty good i mean i i i got nothing against god or anything yeah i i prefer to think of god as the great spirit yeah because i i just don't like the uh i don't like the pictures i don't like the pictures and the stories i don't subscribe to the to that to this but i i recognize everyone has a right

01:21:33Guest:to have a story yeah that they can believe in that kind of organizes things for them gives them something to relate to uh-huh but i don't think people should profit off of that i think that should be just something that you have and then you can keep to yourself yeah yeah yeah right you can do it yourself but that's just my view all right well i guess that's that's good you feel all right about it i feel good ah did i do all right i think you did great

01:21:58Guest:that list you got over there i think you've covered you know at least three or four of the things on the list the uh oh the last waltz well that you did that that was fun right yeah yeah as far as i remember it was great i was up for 48 hours when i did that one i was like

01:22:14Guest:I got a little out of control.

01:22:16Guest:I started that day in Atlanta, Georgia.

01:22:19Guest:Yeah.

01:22:20Guest:And I did two shows.

01:22:22Guest:Right.

01:22:22Guest:Then I stayed up all night and then I flew.

01:22:24Guest:Doing the drugs?

01:22:25Guest:Yeah.

01:22:26Marc:Yeah.

01:22:26Guest:It was pretty shaky.

01:22:27Guest:Yeah.

01:22:28Guest:And then I got, you know, that was probably one of the low points of the high points.

01:22:32Guest:Yeah.

01:22:32Marc:Yeah.

01:22:33Marc:Well, I know people say that you're pretty fucked up.

01:22:35Marc:You look like you're having a good time.

01:22:36Guest:I was doing all right.

01:22:37Guest:I was kind of grinding my jaw a little bit.

01:22:40Guest:It's kind of like on ice.

01:22:42Guest:It was not good.

01:22:43Guest:And captured for posterity.

01:22:44Guest:Yeah, right.

01:22:45Guest:Why not?

01:22:46Guest:There it is.

01:22:46Guest:That's what it looks like.

01:22:48Marc:Well, you lived, man.

01:22:50Marc:The thing is, I didn't continue doing that, but that made a difference.

01:22:56Marc:To the living.

01:22:57Marc:Yeah, sure.

01:22:58Marc:Yeah, definitely.

01:23:00Marc:The guys like you and Clapton and Crosby and fucking Stills, a lot of the real warriors and great artists are still around.

01:23:09Marc:I know a lot of them are gone, but you guys all went pretty hard.

01:23:13Marc:Music is good for you.

01:23:14Marc:Thanks for talking, Neil.

01:23:15Marc:All right.

01:23:17Marc:Wow.

01:23:22Marc:Yeah, so that was me and Neil Young.

01:23:27Marc:It was one of those interviews where it happens a lot with the Giants.

01:23:35Marc:The music, the heroes, where I get a little like, oh my God, I'm talking to Neil Young.

01:23:42Marc:And I was nervous about it, and that happens to me.

01:23:47Marc:After the interview, I was like, how did that go?

01:23:50Marc:Was that okay?

01:23:52Marc:And a friend of mine, I'll just share this story with you.

01:23:55Marc:A buddy of mine was at a family get-together, and he was talking to someone who was on set.

01:24:00Marc:for a Dan Rather interview that happened at Neil Young's house the afternoon of the day that he came to my house.

01:24:08Marc:And apparently they were like setting up lights and stuff when Neil got there.

01:24:13Marc:And Dan Rather was just, you know, trying to make small talk with him to pass the time.

01:24:17Marc:And he asked him, what have you been doing today?

01:24:19Marc:And I guess Neil said, I just had this great interview.

01:24:22Marc:Some guy named Mark.

01:24:23Marc:We did it in his garage.

01:24:24Marc:And apparently Dan Rather asked him what made it great.

01:24:28Marc:And Neil said...

01:24:29Marc:He was fearless.

01:24:30Marc:He wasn't afraid to fail.

01:24:32Marc:He didn't need to know all the answers.

01:24:34Marc:And so we actually had a conversation.

01:24:36Marc:I wouldn't even call it an interview.

01:24:39Marc:Neil Young said that.

01:24:41Marc:And I got to be honest, you know, it's the best praise I could get.

01:24:45Marc:Because I barely call myself an interviewer.

01:24:52Marc:I call them talks.

01:24:55Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all the WTFPod stuff.

01:24:58Marc:You can go to WTFPod.com slash tour for my dates that are coming up.

01:25:05Marc:What else?

01:25:06Marc:Let's play some guitar.

01:25:08Marc:A little bit.

01:25:09Marc:For Neil.

01:25:54Guest:Boomer lives!