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Simply put, during almost 40 years of writing and making music, Neil Young has given the world some of its best songs and some of its most intense concert performances. As a solo artist, as well as with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and Crazy Horse, Neil Young has always remained true to his muse. And now, Neil and his muse have given us a new album that's an instant classic. It's called Prairie Wind. It brings together the best qualities of Neil's acoustic music and adds new colors, takes his lyrical themes about relationships and nature to different places.
Q: Most of Prairie Wind was recorded right here in Nashville, wasn't it?
A: It was all recorded here, yeah.
Q: Where did you record it at?
A: At the old Monument Studios. It's now called Master Link. Used to be a church and a Confederate Hospital ...a Confederate morgue in the Civil War. And, you know, it was a hospital for a while. But mostly it was a church. And then it became Monument Recording Studios, where (Roy) Orbison recorded everything. Now, it's Master Link.
I'm actually trying to put together a group of -- or a small group or maybe even just one individual with myself to purchase it and preserve it. But we haven't been able to do it yet. But I'd like to. It's starting to be surrounded by high-rises and everything. I'd kind of like to see it come back to looking like the old church and still be the recording studio, but look like the old church on the outside, so...
Q: Because it has a façade on the outside now?
A: Yeah. and it's -- it's cool. It's nice. But it's -- I think it's a Nashville landmark. And I'd like to bring it back to -- I'd like to keep it doing what it's doing now, keeps the tradition going there...
Q: You first recorded in Nashville more than 30 years ago for the Harvest album. What motivated you to come back to record Prairie Wind?
A: Well I think Ben Keith, said, “Why don't you just come and record here. Everybody's here. And it always worked before.” And I didn't have any songs. I only had one song really. I just had The Painter. And a little bit of the melody to No Wonder. But eventually, I said, I'm going to come to New York to induct Chrissie Hynde into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March. And I'll come by Nashville on the way back and we'll do some recording. And we'll just see what happens. And, you know, everybody's here. All my friends are here. So it was easy to get all the old guys back together again, the ones that are still here.
Q: During the last two nights, you performed concerts featuring the Prairie Wind album at the Ryman Auditorium, the former home of the Grand Ole Opry. You were mentioning the studio being a church. That is a church where we were the last couple of nights.
A: That's right. It's gotten to be a big old music church. It's like being inside an acoustic guitar, that place. So it's a wonderful, wonderful place. And it has so much of a hallowed kind of feeling to it and the history, obviously, it speaks for itself. So we wanted to pay our respects to our roots and to the great musicians that have gone before us and to kind of reestablish the connection. I mean, I've got nothing against Opry Land, but it's -- it's not the Grand Ole Opry to me. The Ryman is starting to be surrounded by high-rises and everything now. But it's still -- it's all there. It's all there with the, you know, Tootsie's and the other bars right down there in the back alley that you can go from a honky tonk right into -- right into the Ryman. It's only like 100 feet from the barstool to the stage, you know. So it's a fantastic place.
Q: The shows the last couple of nights were filmed by Jonathan Demme. How did that come about?
A: Well, Jonathan's an old friend of mine and a friend of Elliot's, my manager. And he called -- you know, he's done some things with us before. I -- I don't often do songs for movies, but he called me up and asked me to try to see if I could come up with something for Philadelphia. And I had a couple of friends that -- you know, some gay friends that were -- one of ‘em had AIDS and they were just really -- you know, I'd known the fellow that had AIDS, I'd known him for a good 15 or 20 years at the time. And, you know, I was kind of close to the subject. And so I said, “Yeah, I'll do this.” And then I wrote a song, for the movie. And you know, I think it had a lot to do with the movie and it really fit in. And I felt really proud of it. And Jonathan really liked it. And Tom Hanks really liked it. So I felt really good about our relationship -- working relationship.
And then Jonathan came and filmed us – Crazy Horse and I -- on the last David Briggs album that we did, Sleeps with Angels, which we did at the Complex in L.A. And he filmed four or five songs there and made a little short film of that.
Q: Oh yeah, the Complex.
A: Yeah. That's one of the things we have in the archives that we're going to put out eventually in the series. So we have a relationship. And he just -- he's made some great films. I mean, obviously, I don't think he's ever made one that isn't great. So, he called and he said, “I've got a year off. What are you doing? Is there anything -- you know, is there -- do you want to do something?” And I said, “Well, I just finished this record.” Actually, it was almost finished. It was 90 percent finished. I had -- right up at the end of He Was The King. And I was still struggling with the last line of When God Made Me. And so, yeah, I said, “Yeah, I'll send you the tape, see what you think.”
Q: Last night, when you performed Prairie Wind live, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, the Nashville String Machine were all there -- there was about 35 players all told. So is the film going to replace you being able to take this out on the road?
A: Well, it depends on how I do it. I could play most of these songs with a core of about 10 people. But if I was going to take this particular show that I did tonight on the road, there's only a few theaters that could handle it, because I couldn't do it the way I did it. I don't think the crowd would be able to handle the long breaks while we set up. So it would have to be in -- because each song has got a different setup. And it takes a long time to get the strings in and get things all set up. The horns. You know, I've got Wayne Jackson of the Memphis Horns and he had his buddies with him. And then, like you said, the strings and the choir and all this stuff. So -- and my basic group, also. There's three -- three girl singers, three guy singers. Five musicians with a couple of ancillary musicians, a fiddler and, you know, a banjo. So there's a lot of stuff that we -- that comes in and out through the whole thing. And it would be very difficult to do that live and keep it going the way I'd like to keep it going. So there's only a few theaters in the country that could provide the elevated stages and the things coming in and out so that I could do it in a flow and not have to stop, and just go from one song to another. And we're looking at those theaters. There's New York, L.A., maybe Chicago and possibly Las Vegas, is the only places where I could perform this.
Q: The first song on Prairie Wind is The Painter. The character is a woman. Was Joni Mitchell an inspiration for that in any way?
A: Actually, my daughter is. My daughter is a painter.
Q: Do you paint?
A: No. I'm a terrible artist (laughs).
Q: In The Painter, you sing, “It's a long road behind me, it's a long road ahead.” Does it shake you up a little that you're about to turn 60 years old?
A: Well, it shakes me up a little bit, but not much yet. Actually, I had a dream last night about my daughter. And she was singing. She doesn't sing. She's got a great voice, but she doesn't sing. And, in this dream, she was singing this song. And she had a guitar she was playing that her boyfriend had modified for her. Her boyfriend's very handy and a very talented kid. And he had taken the strings and moved them so that there were two strings on the bottom, the thick strings. They were separated from the middle two strings by a whole space where there was nothing. And then the two strings on the top were separated from those. So there were like three sets of two strings on this guitar. And my daughter was standing there and she was not moving. Sort of like Emmylou. She doesn't move very much. But her fingers were going. And I was hearing this bass line going and this little rhythm and then this really fast picking, while she was singing. There were three different things going on. And she was singing away. And all of these words are just flying out of her mouth. And then at the end, she said, “Well, Daddy, what do you think? Has it got too many words? Is it too...” -- and I'm going, “How do you do that on the guitar? What are you doing?” You know, because she was like -- it was like super fast things going on. And, you know, rhythm, bass, and lead all at once. And she's singing non-stop words. And it was like great. I mean, I still can't get it out of my head. But she's not a musician, she's a painter.
Q: Well, speaking of dreams, in The Painter, you sing, “If you follow every dream, you might get lost.” Were there times in your career that you thought you followed a dream and got lost?
A: Oh, all the time. I think I got lost every time. You know, that's one of my trademarks (laughs).
Q: You know, a few months ago, we heard that you had a brain aneurysm that resulted in you being hospitalized and having surgery. Exactly what happened and how are you feeling today?
A: Well, they took care of it and I feel good. I have to take some medicine for high blood pressure. And I don't like that, because it kind of puts a clamp on me. So I'm trying to figure out a way around that.
Q: Around the medicine?
A Yeah. I'm trying to figure out a way to keep a grip on the -- on that problem without taking the medicine. I've reduced it from a lot of pills down to a half a pill a day, already, you know, over the course of six months. But apparently, if I continued unchecked, that would be risk of another one and there'd be -- you know, they're dangerous. Don't want anymore of those.
Q: No. Were the Prairie Wind songs written before or after you got sick?
A: They -- well, it's not really a sickness. It's a condition, kind of. You know, it comes on. You don't know. Like, my doctor told me I've had it for 100 years. It's this Chinese fellow, Dr. Sun. And he said, “Oh, Neil, you -- nothing to worry about. You've had this one maybe 100 years now.” And I'm, you know, lookin' at him. And he says, “That's nothing. We'll take care of it. Look, though, it's big.” Showing me on the screen, you know. It looked like Florida or something off, just hanging off of this thing. So they filled it up with platinum coils. They went in and -- anyway, it's quite a weird procedure. And it tricked my body into thinking that it was scar tissue. And my body grew scar tissue all around it. It was more of an intervention.
Q: So you had already started Prairie Wind and it was just during the course of this --
A: Well, I started it knowing that I had this. I discovered this just before I left to go start. And, you know, I had a symptom of something that was -- that made me curious about what's going on you know. So I had all these checks. And this doctor was a really diligent doctor. And he took me to five different doctors in about four hours. I mean, just led me around through all these places in New York to all these different guys. These were really heavy doctors and really good doctors. And I went to the head of this department and the head of that department and all these things really fast. And then -- then they did a, you know, MRI thing on me. And then they saw this thing and they discovered it. And then I went to -- I made an appointment to see the fellow who does these kind of interventions and then I -- and then I went to Nashville. And I had to come back in, you know, in four or five days to meet the fellow and talk about when we were going to do it. So I just went to Nashville and started doing what I was doing before, since I had it for 100 years. So who cares, you know? Might as well go in there and do what I was doing.
Q: The songs on Prairie Wind are in the order that you wrote them. And the next song is No Wonder, which is dreamy, but very intense. There's a vision of a church that recurs throughout the songs and beautiful visions of amber waves of grain that bow in the prairie wind. But there's also time running out and crooked politicians. Is there something to be learned when wonder like that is side‑by‑side with things that have -- don't have any wonder?
A: Well, that's -- that's the song, you know. It's just the picture. I don't know what the answer is. I just know that that's the picture.
Q: The band really cooks at the end of No Wonder. Your long-time musical partner, Ben Keith, is wailin' on the pedal steel. The album and the show, this is a very musical project. This is about, it seems to me, musicians being musicians. The arrangements are so beautiful, the subtlety of it. Did you envision those arrangements, or did the musicians also have a say in bringing them about?
A We did it all together, you know. I choose -- I choose the guys that can do it. you know. All the guys that play with me are -- they're living right then. They're not -- they're not there for anything else other than making a mark and doing everything they can to bring the song to life. We're all like brothers and sisters and we all have the same family, we're all going in the same direction. And so I don't have to think very much. I do lead them, but they all go real easy.
So, you know, we made a DVD that goes with the -- with the record. And it's a two-record -- it's actually a -- the deluxe version of it, which you can get at the same time as you can just get the CD, is really much more rewarding, because it has the DVD and you get to watch the entire record. So you see every note being played. You see everything as it happened. It's multi-screen, you know, so you watch each musician play everything. And then there's a documentary that's coming out in a couple of months that shows -- that shows actually the arrangements and everything being done. And there's no dubbing. There's no lip-syncing. There's none of that. You know, I think the world has seen enough of that already. So we have the real thing. And we had five hi-def cameras in the studio from the minute I walked in until when we finished the record. So everything on the record can be viewed and listened to in high resolution DVD quality 96/24 stereo. Not 5.1, because 5.1 you don't get -- you don't get the same quality. You have to compress it and go through all kinds of tricks to make it get all that action on there. But that's good for movies. But for sound and records, this stereo is multiple times more revealing and rewarding than a CD. So I recommend if somebody's interested in getting this to get the set that has the DVD so you can really see it and hear it at the same time.
Q: On the song No Wonder, the chorus of singers is otherworldly. It's haunting. And it's unique in your work. I don't recall you employing singers in that fashion before.
A: Well, I've used a choir before. I used a choir in Touch the Night, I think was the name of the song on Landing on Water or some album. I can't remember. But -- and it was a whole other thing, though. This song has got three different vocal groups in each verse. So, you know, it starts off with the three guys singing with me. And then it's -- then it's Emmylou and Peggy and Diana singing on the tick tock part. And then the choir comes in on the church part.
So each -- each verse has got these three different things going on. And then in the end, when it starts jamming more, then the fiddler comes in. And it's just -- you know, it goes on a long journey.
Q: In the song, you sing of hearing your friend Willie Nelson sing on the radio. And you mention fields of fuel rolling on for miles. I'm imagining that's a reference to the potential for those fields to be used for biodiesel -- that you and Willie both use to power your buses on the road these days.
A Yeah. We really got something going with that now. About a year ago, I called Willie and I said, “You know, we could power Farm Aid with biodiesel, with fuel grown by farmers. Do you think we ought to do it?” And he said, “Yeah, we ought to do that! Let's do it.” So we did it first on the West Coast, up in Seattle. And all the trucks were running on it. We had farmers brining in their tankers and filling up the trucks and we ran the generators off of it and we powered the lights and the sound system and the whole venue off of vegetable oil. And, you know, RudolphDiesel, who invented the diesel engine, it originally ran on peanut oil. Diesel fuel is not a petrol fuel. It's not from Saudi Arabia or it's not from the sands. Diesel fuel originally was grown. In Europe they've been using biodiesel for a long time. They use vegetable oil in cars like Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen. And cars made in Europe are -- the systems that drive them are -- they work really well just on pure vegetable oil, because they're designed and there's computers in ‘em that make them -- that make them burn the fuel a certain way. And we don't have that in Fords and Chevys. They don't have that technology, which is really too bad.
I mean, I think that's one of the things that kind of bothers me about what's going on today. We've got these huge vehicles -- I've got nothing against a huge vehicle. I'm -- you know, I'm a North American. We've got a lot of roads. And we've got a lot of space. And there's nothing wrong with driving around in a big car. I don't think so. But my car runs on biodiesel and it runs on vegetable oil, whatever I want. I've got an H1. You know, I love to take it in the forest and I love to barrel down the highway at 70 miles an hour in it. I don't care. You know, it's a great vehicle. But you don't have to burn petrol fuel to have a big vehicle. If that's what you want and you can take all your friends with you and you can go camping or you can do whatever you want to do and you can pull trees out and you can go down creekbeds with it, whatever you want to do. You don't have to burn a bunch of petrol diesel.
Q: Well, since it's the answer to dependence on foreign oil and a way to help the family farm, is what's holding us back the fact that some of these automakers haven't equipped their cars to employ it?
A: There's no equipping that really needs to be done to run on biodiesel.
Q: What's holding us back?
A: I don't now. You folks out in radio land ought to figure that one out for us.
Q: Amen.
A: You might be looking at some of the reasons right on the street. So it's like -- it's just one of those things. We have to come to grips with it. You know, there's very little that would have to be done to the whole infrastructure of this country. Let the farmers take care of a great percentage of our fuel needs.
Right now, there's really enough usable land that's being used to take care of 10 percent of the diesel needs of the country. Now that doesn't seem like much, but it -- it's interesting, if you take a little bit of biodiesel, a little bit of vegetable oil and put it in the mix with diesel fuel, then you don't need the sulfur anymore for the diesel fuel. It doesn't require the sulfur. And the sulfur is what causes acid rain and causes all this ozone depletion. So you can clean the fuel up just by putting a little bit of this bio diesel in it. So...
There's so many reasons to use it. And the fact that if you use pure biodiesel that you can only do 10 percent, it doesn't mean that you couldn't have biodiesel in every vehicle and sell biodiesel all around. They just have to be a lower percentage. And you know, so people need to understand that a low percentage of biodiesel in your fuel, mixing it with petrol, takes away the sulfur that needs to be added to the petrol fuel to make it go bang and make the car go. You know, that's where the dirt is. That's where the nasty stuff is that causes the acid rain and the ozone depletion. Unless you're one of our government members and figures that those things really don't cause ozone depletion. And then in that case, you have no problem at all. That's an easy solution.
Q: It makes way too much sense. You mentioned Farm Aid. This year is the 20th anniversary of Farm Aid. Can you tell me a couple of ways Farm Aid's made a difference and what can still be done, in kind of a nutshell?
A: Well, what can still be done is, you know, we can just keep on going and keep on supporting the family farmer and keep on talking about what can be done. And, you know, things -- other alternatives, like, you know, there are other plants that can be grown and can be processed into fuel. It's a very clean way to go. The alternatives are scary. The future is big. There's a sliding scale of availability and consumption. Chinese people are starting to get to be more like Americans and Canadians. They're starting to use a lot of things. They're starting to like the big cars. They're starting to do all the stuff we did. And now, they're starting to consume at a greater rate than we are, which means that the price is going up. It could be $5 a gallon by the time Bush is out of office. You know, could be $10 a gallon. Who knows? By the time the next president comes along. So ignoring it is not an answer. I mean, there was a candidate -- and I'm not politicizing, so I'm not going to say which one it was. But there was one candidate that did say, “This is not a problem that you can drill your way out of. You're going to have to invent your way out of it.” That is the one thing and the only thing said in the whole presidential campaign that I remember. It's the only thing worth remembering. The rest of it is, you know, just kind of entertainment or something. I don't know what it was. |
Neil talks about recording in Nashville
