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Q: The next song on Prairie Wind, Falling Off The Face Of The Earth, you look back on a relationship. The high parts of your voice, you hit a place in that song I don't think I've ever heard you go before. It's so tender and fragile and straight from the heart. How do you get there when you're singing?
A: You just go. You just go. There's nothing. There's nothing to stop you. It's a wide-open thing. You just go wherever you want to go. Nobody can stop you. You know, music just takes you wherever you want to go.
Q: And the song was inspired by a phone message?
A: Well, that's what got it -- you know, that's what jarred it loose. Some of the words in there are from a phone message from a friend of mine. And some of the words are, you know, the other side of the phone message, another point of view, you know. And I just put it together like that. But it really it's -- it all comes out to be more than just a phone message. It comes out to be, you know, a message.
Q: I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the sounds on Prairie Wind. Some songs, like It's a Dream, have this beautiful string section. And you've used strings in the ‘60s with Jack Nitzche, going all the way back to Expecting to Fly. The London Symphony Orchestra was on Harvest. But on Prairie Wind, they sound‑‑they sound different. Did you have a certain sound in mind that you wanted to bring to the table?
A When I wrote It's a Dream, and came in the studio the next morning and recorded it, then I said to Ben -- Ben Keith, I said, “Ben, you know, this might be one for strings. What do you think?” And he said, “Yeah, I think it is.” And I said, “Let's call Chuck.” And that's what I love about Nashville. We call our friend, Chuck Cochran, who did the strings on Comes a Time. He comes in, a couple of hours later, he walks in. We haven't seen him for like 15 years. “How you doing?” You know. “Listen to this. What do you think?” “Well, give me a CD. I'll take it home. When do you want to do it?” “Well, how about tomorrow morning?” “Okay. Well, I'll round up the musicians and we'll -- I'll get back to you and let you know if we can do it.” so an hour later, we got, you know, five Stradivariuses and seven other players. And they're all coming in at 11:00 in the morning. And we're going to do it.
Chuck shows up the next morning with the charts. Puts them down and you know, I'm -- at that point, I'd been taking this medicine for the treatment that I had and everything. So I was -- I was kind of groggy. Kind of just feeling good, but trying to get an equilibrium. And so I was lying on the couch in the studio with -- kind of curled up on this couch behind in the playback. And they started putting these strings on. And I'm hearing it. And I was just going, my God, this is a beautiful thing that these people have created here. What is -- what are we doing? You know and I was just lying there. And I couldn't move. I was just listening. And then there's Chuck and everybody's hugging him and everything. Everybody gets real emotional. And then it was over. Mixed it and it's fun…done.
Q: There were strings on Four Strong Winds and there were strings on The Wayward Wind. And now we have strings on Prairie Wind. Strings are almost like an atmosphere there.
A: Yeah, they really are. They really are.
Q: Like a wind. What about the way you use the horns on the next couple of songs we're going to listen to, Far From Home and the Prairie Wind? They're subtler than, say, the horns on the album you did in 1988, The Bluenotes' This Note's for You. How did they come about?
A: Well, this is Wayne Jackson, you know, of the Memphis Horns. He's the soul of the -- you know, of the arrangements. He made these things up. You know, he's the one who came up with the Sam and Dave horn parts and everything you know. So he's -- he's great. I played Far From Home and we finished it and we got a track we liked. And Ben Keith says to me, he said, “You ought to have horns on this, Neil.” I'm going, “Horns?” He said, “Yeah, we've got horns. Let's call Wayne Jackson.” I trust Ben, you know. So I said, “Okay. Let's call him and see what happens.”
So Wayne comes in with Tom McGinley and they sit down and they start playing. And then they put it on again and again and make themselves, two guys, into this horn section. And they start playing on it. And, you know, Wayne just made it up on the spot.
Q: Your harmonica interacts with the horns. Why is the harmonica one of your favorite ways to express yourself musically?
A: Well, it's pretty direct. I don't have to worry about much.
Q: And the song Far from Home, where you have this interplay with the horns, it's an autobiographical song. And you told a little story at the show last night, the Prairie Wind show, about getting your ukulele. Was that your first instrument?
A: Yeah. My daddy bought me a plastic Arthur Godfrey ukulele from the music store where I used to go get these records. You know, I got -- I think I'd just gotten Bop-A-Lena by Ronnie Self and maybe Book of Love by the Monotones or something. I just picked these records up down at the store. These 45s.
And I saw that ukulele there and mentioned it to my dad. I said “Well, that's pretty cheap, you know.” Maybe “that's pretty nice.” Had a picture of Arthur Godfrey on it. It was a plastic little ukulele. So then, a couple of days later, my dad showed up and he had it with him. And he said, “Here, look at this thing,” you know. I got it for you.” I was going, “Wow. It's cool.” And then he picked it up and started playing it. And I never heard him play before. He never said he played. And then he sang a song to me. And I'm going, “My God, look at that.” I don't know how hold I was, eight or nine or something. And he's sitting there playing this thing and the sounds are coming out and he's laughing away and singing this silly sad song to me. And I was just -- you know, (it) blew my mind.
Q: I can't think of many songs of yours that are really autobiographical like this one about your younger days. I think about Don't Be Denied, which is many, many years ago. So the scenarios in Far From Home of you making music with your family and walking with your ambition own the Trans-Canada highway, is that pretty much how it went down?
A: Well, you know, I took some liberties and put a lot of things together that happened at different times. You know, it's a song.
Q: Even though you've spent so many years living at your ranch in Northern California, do you still dream of going back to Canada some day?
A: Yeah, I do. I do.
Q: ‘Cause, you sing of family a lot on Prairie Wind, about growing up in Canada and the spaces there. On the song, Here For You, it sounds like it was written for one or all of your children. You're an empty nester now, right?
A: Yeah. Yep.
Q: What's sparked Here For You?
A: Just that feeling. I just want my kids to know that I'm there. And I don't want to be in the way, but I don't want them to -- I want them to always know they can get back to me, if they need to.
Q: Your boys, Zeke and Ben have cerebral palsy and there's the annual Bridge School benefits that you put on with your wife, Peggy. And you've raised an incredible amount of awareness and funding to help disabled and non-oral children.
How does the work that Peggy and you do affect change for the children?
A: Well, we have this great school that she came up with. And we've been doing these benefits. And it started a long time ago. We got Bruce Springsteen to come to the first one and kick it off. And since then, it's just been on a roll. And we make a lot of money. It costs a lot of money to run the school. And the school is a model school for other schools. It creates programs that other schools can use in teaching developmentally disabled, non-oral children how to communicate through the use of technology and other methods. So we've made a difference in making that happen. And, you know, I wish we had a huge endowment so that it would keep on going and everything, if it ever comes to the point where I can't sustain it myself.
But, you know, aside from that, I really don't have any worries about it. It's run by great people. And we've got a really good organization. And we've gone through a lot of changes getting it as together as it is now. And I feel really good about it. And the kids are all great. And we have ‘em come -- we have alumni now. We had one of the kids who was one of the first kids that came to the school, recently graduated from university, with her little -- with her device and everything. And she's got her talker and her device that she has on her chair that she used. And she graduated from university. And so we're very proud of her. Her name is Ton Dyep (phonetic). And we have other ones coming up that are going to do that, too. But they're all successes. They're not all going to graduate from university. But in varying degrees, we've made their lives a lot better. And we've supplied an alternative to the‑‑ what was the existing method of dealing with these -- with this part of the school system. And so it's getting better.
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Q: We're talking about the children that go to the Bridge School. So much of Prairie Wind is about family relationships. You sang about your father on Far From Home. And on the title song, Prairie Wind, you look back. You say, “Trying to remember what Daddy said/Before too much time took away his head.” Your father, Scott Young, was a wonderful writer who passed away in June. Did he influence you to be a writer?
A: Well he was writing all the time. He would tell me “If you can't write, you've got to sit down and write anyway. Whatever comes out is okay. Don't worry about it. Just write. And some days, when you don't think you've got anything on your mind, you'll be surprised what's on your mind. Just don't think about it. Don't judge it. Don't worry about it. Just do it.”
Q: Did he instill in you a love of open plains and the environment?
A: Well, you know, both of my parents did that. My granddaddy was from South Carolina. And he moved up to Canada. And he spoke with a heavy drawl. And he was a great old guy. And he used to go duck hunting with my mom and dad. And then he'd come back and my mom would cook the ducks and make them with the wild grains, with the wild rice. And we'd have roast duck with wild rice. And they'd come back and maybe have 50 birds or something. It would get us through the winter with a -- a couple of times a month, we'd have a big, you know, roast duck dinner and everything. It was really cool.
And there were a lot of pictures of my dad in Sports Illustrated magazine with my grandpa. And, you know, they did articles on duck hunting in Northern Manitoba. And, you know, it really was like, you know, they go out there hunting for the birds and if you went at the right time, you actually couldn't see the sun there were so many birds in the sky. I mean, it just was black when they'd all take off at once. It was…got dark.
That's how many birds there used to be. Now, where are they? What's going on? You know, there's too many signs. Our leaders need to realize that there are big signs. Not the dollar signs. They need to take a look around and see what we're doing to the planet and what's going on. I know there's a lot of people just shaking their heads, because I might sound like a tree-hugger or something. But, you can put a label on a person like me, an environmentally-conscious person and dismiss it. It's an easy thing to do. A lot of people are taking the easy route. But there's a price to pay for that.
And, you know, all you have to do is remember what your grandparents said and what they talked about and look around and see what we've got now and wonder, what are you going to tell your kids? And what are their kids going to remember from what you said when you're their granddaddy? What have you got left? What are they going to have left? I mean, we really have to be careful here.
I don't know, I'm trying to do the best I can to eliminate that in my own way. And guys like Willie are trying to do it. And we're just doing what we do. But the politicians in this country I mean, and especially the group we've got now. I know that a lot of them are decent people and everything, but they just don't see this. They just don't see it. They don't appear to understand that there's a balance of nature that needs to be maintained. And things like destroying the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, which -- to dig these holes and take this blood out of the earth, this old dead stuff, to keep the -- if we only use what's in Alaska and we didn't use anything else, it would only last us six months. So that's really a short-sighted thing to do that.
But, you know, it helps the big oil companies and everything. And the whole thing is just a rolling ball. And it's a big rolling ball. So somebody's got to, you know, stand up and get squashed. Maybe a lot of people have to get squashed before we can slow it down.
Q: Neil, family members of yours, in another way, are your guitars. You have a song about them on Prairie Wind, called This Old Guitar, with Emmylou Harris. Some lovely harmonies. You were playing a Martin last night that belonged to Hank Williams at the Ryman. That was unbelievable. And you acquired it here in Nashville years ago?
A: Yeah, bought it from -- a friend of mine, Grant Boatwright, put me together with this fellow, Tut Taylor. He had an old collection of guitars. And I went down there and there it was. And he took it out of the back and brought it out and I bought it. And I couldn't believe that I could buy it. That I…you know. But I did. And now I have it. And, you know, I've got it for a while. And I'm taking care of it.
Q: But you're generous with it. You've lent it to some of your friends.
A: Well, I -- you know, for a while, my bus -- you know, Bob Dylan was using my bus. He didn't have his own tour bus yet. And he was just getting into using buses. And so I let him use mine. And when I gave it to him, I told him that Hank was in the back, and if he wanted to use Hank, that Hank would be there for him. So I don't know what he did with it, but he had it with him for a long time. I don't know what he wrote or what he did, but I know something must have happened back there.
Q: You not only collect instruments, but you've collected vintage automobiles over the years. And I was at your website the other day and it said, “Shakey's Used Cars coming soon.”
A: (Laughs)
Q: So what's the deal? Are we going to be able to buy some of your older cars that you --
A: Yeah, I'm going to unload all that stuff. You know, I've got a lot of material things and I'm looking more for -- you know, I'm a big collector. And I've collected a lot of things. And I love cars, you know. I really do. And they're fun. But, you know, I don't have to have them anymore. I've had them already. So I'm selling a lot of them to other people who love them now. And they get just as excited as I was when I got them. So somewhere along the line, I'm going to start unloading them.
Q: Shakey's Used Cars...
A: Shakey's Used Cars. Sounds very reputable, doesn't it? (Laughs)…
Q: That sounds a little shaky to me! Are you still going to hold on to your model trains?
A: I'll hold on to some of ‘em. You know, I've got a lot of old post-war Lionel stuff and I'm an owner of the company. I do a lot of technology development for them. And we're just coming out with a new control system now. So that's keeping me busy on the side doing things.
Q: I've heard you've been pretty busy for a very long time working on an anthology of your work that includes many of your unreleased material and things that never made it to CD. It's going to be called Archives. And you've said that's your next project. So how -- how are you envisioning that at this point?
A: Well, Volume 1 is a -- there's, I think four or five volumes. And Volume 1 is an eight-disc set from 1963 to 1973. And it has -- you know, it has film of performances. It has my earliest recordings, released and unreleased recordings from 1963 on. It has a performance series. And Volume 1, 2 and 3 -- or Part 1, 2 and 3 of the performance series are included in the Archives. Now, they may be sold separately, one or two of them, but there is a spot for them in the box. And you can just slip them in there. And it's coming out on CD and it's coming out on DVD. And I recommend the DVD because it has got much better sound and it has -- of course, it has film, it has an actual filing cabinet you can go into and get all the documentation of all the original lyric sheets, all the original stuff that goes with everything. It's kind of like a museum. It's a virtual museum filing system. And you just go through the -- open up the door and file through it and find a song, lift it out, read everything about it. You can read newspapers that were at that time. Reviews of it when it came out. The original manuscript, pictures, all this stuff. If there's any film or video from those -- from that era, chronologically -- it's all chronological, everything is in order. So you just -- you can find anything you want and see how songs that were released on albums years later were actually recorded at a different time. And so it gives you another slant on the way things were. Tells you what albums these things came out on. Gives you the full picture of what happened, chronologically, rather than the records I produced.
Q: It was hilarious when you put in a DVD for Neil Young's greatest hits and saw the original vinyl and the needle and the space in between the songs. That was a good one.
A (Laughs)
Q: So does that mean that in the course of archives, things from Time Fades Away or Journey to the Past might make it onto digital now?
A: Yes. And there may be -- any live album that I did. There will be other takes. All of the other takes that we had for the live album that we didn't use will be available, too. So, you know, that's more depth.
Q: And the films, like Human Highway or Muddy Track would they be a part --
A: They'll all be part of it. And they'll come out independently, some of them, as this unrolls, you know, as it comes out. But there'll be spaces for them in the box. And they all come -- there's space in the box. They'll all have numbers that go with them so that if you wanted to collect them, when you've got the whole set, they'd all fit together and you'd have a complete set.
Q: Wow, that's great. And of course, the director -- famous director, Bernard Shakey, is involved with a lot of these films.
A: And he's working behind the scenes (laughs).
Q: Speaking of Shakey, there was a pretty exhaustive Neil Young biography a couple of years back with your -- with the name Shakey. Did you ever read it?
A: Yeah, I read it once.
Q: Were you all right with it?
A I chose that writer because I liked his style and I liked his, his brutal honesty. And I didn't want a watered-down thing. But I think that he drifted from his course, and he became -- he drifted from his course. But, you know, that's -- I just -- I always say -- whenever I sign that book, I say, you know, “Remember, don't believe everything you read.”
Q: Unless it's the Greendale book. Then --
A: Then you can believe it all, because it's so vague (laughs).
Q: Before we wrap up on this day in 2005 in Nashville, Tennessee, I was going to throw a couple of names at you and see what came to mind when I said, BuffaloSpringfield.
A: Well, I think Stephen Stills.
Q: Crazy Horse.
A: Danny Whitten.
Q: Crosby Stills Nash and Young.
A: Crosby Stills and Nash.
Q: Prairie Wind seems a definitive snapshot of where you're at today as you approach 60. And it's a beautiful piece.
But in the hundreds of songs you've written, it's been rare that you've sung directly about God. I think of maybe Red Sun, maybe Star of Bethlehem. And they're not as direct as the song we're about to hear, When God Made Me. You premiered this at Live 8 in Ontario. What were the circumstances of you composing Prairie Wind's final song, When God Made Me?
A: First of all, I didn't know what I was doing. There's a little room with a piano in it. And the piano is locked in the room. It'll never leave the room, unless they destroy the room. It can't leave, because the room was built around it. And the room is in a church. And the church -- the studio is in a church. So the ceiling of the studio has got a few little vents in it. And if you stand on top of a ladder with a flashlight and look up through the holes, you can see the church windows and this old, huge roof and everything. It's closed off because to get the right sound and everything, they made a lower roof. But when you see that, it really gets you.
And so I was sitting in there and I just, you know, I'd been working on He Was The King and, you know, Elvis singing his gospel songs and thinking about that. And the church just kept coming back to me through the songs, No Wonder and everything. And then I just started playing this hymn. And you know, Spooner Oldham is one of the most beautiful – he plays, beautiful gospel, on the organ. And it's just great. And he really has it -- I mean, he's just alive with it. So, you know, I've learned a lot from him, over the years, just listening to him. Some of the passing chords and the blending of things together.
But all hymns seem to have these little passages on the piano between them that sets up the next verse, kind of gets everybody in the key, and kicks it around and gets ready to go. So I found myself just playing this. And I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And I have -- still don't. But, you know, this building that I was in was an old church from the 1700s. It was a morgue – a Confederate morgue. It was a Confederate hospital. It was a church again. Then it was Monument Recording Studios. So there's a lot, you know. Just the name, Monument, you know, in this church. I mean, so there's a lot of spirit in this place.
And one of the things that bothers me today is how religion seems to have been hijacked and been politicized by the administration. The thing that bothers me the most is how one political party can say that the other political party is not faith-based. That - how can you say something like that? You know, of the founding fathers, there was -- there was, I believe, 15 or 20 percent of the founding fathers of the United States of America were religious, god-fearing men. Okay. Now, today, in our government, it's like 100 percent or 90 percent of the cabinet and all of these people surrounding our president are all leaning towards Jesus Christ and Christianity and their interpretation of what's right for -- in faith. And, you know, they have every right to believe what they believe. And I respect that. But I think it's out of balance. And I think that doesn't represent America. It only represents part of America. And I think that faith has a lot to do with family and loving God. And it doesn't matter -- you know, we all want to be right before God. And it doesn't matter whether you read the Koran or whether you're a Buddhist or whether you're -- whatever you are. You're still trying to get in touch with the one thing that made us all who we are, the Great Spirit.
And so I feel like that's been taken away from us. It's being used as a tool against some people. And so that bothers me a lot. I don't like to go into church and hear the Star Spangled Banner. That's a song about bombs bursting in air. Let's have God Bless America, if we're going to sing a song like that. I don't think that one's really needed either. But if you're going to have one, let's have one that tries not to think about our country only. Let's have a song that tries to think about humanity and, you know. So, you know, one of my friends went to church last week here in Nashville and had to stand there while we sang about, you know, bombs bursting in the air. That was the first thing.
So I just think that -- I don't believe that. And I think a lot of Americans and Canadians and just citizens of the planet don't necessarily go along with that. And that's why there's such an upheaval in the church and that, you know, attendance is off. Some places it's up. But a lot of places, it's not up. It's down. And it's because the church has been taken to all these different places. And really, it should be everywhere. It shouldn't be a tool.
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Neil talks about getting his first instrument 