NEIL YOUNG Interview: Gettin’ Down Downunder

Rip It Up, Issue 91, 1 February 1985, Page 18

NEIL YOUNG Interview: Gettin’ Down Downunder

With Neil Young making his first visit to these shores, the obvious thing to do was chase up lan interview with the chameleon-like one But 1 Neil's] too; busy playing with his kids T and windsurfing to manage many interviews these days ... but he did consent to a phone interviewj with THple M 89 FM’s Mark Everton 1 and we plugged in. Mark and [ Neil 1 had an amiable chat about the , things that matter in life ... like, y’know, havin’ a good time and lf!?B

Well firstly, could you run through the format of the show we can expect here in New Zealand? "Well, we have actually rehearsed about 40 or 50 songs and it’s hard to tell which ones I’m going to play when I get there. I guess we have a sort of an idea what we re going to do. but we expect a lot of change during the shows, as we go from place to place. "I plan to do just about every kind of music I can. It should be a fairly long show, because the band I’ve put together covers a lot of different areas. It starts off with Crazy Horse and the Crazy Horse albums we’ve done, I know all the

songs off those. "And then I have the International Harvesters on stage, who are Rufus Thibodeaux on fiddle. Ben Keith on steel guitar and Anthony Crawford on guitar and a few other instruments. And theyll be doing a lot of the things with me that I did on Harvest and Comes A Time, plus a lot of new songs we have in that vein.” Is your involvement with the Harvesters an indication of the direction you’re moving in? "Well, last year we did a tour last year and I'm still using Rufus, Ben and Anthony but now we have Crazy Horse as a rhythm section for the

Harvesters when we play the country type music and the more acoustic, less all-out rock n’ roll s tuff.«M "Then, in the second half of the show, after a little intermission, were gonna play some of the old Crazy Horse classics that we did back in the 60s and early 70s and then throw in the ones we did in 1978 and then two or, three new ones were working on currently. So I’m gonna be playing quite a t few different! kinds of music and we should have a real good time That’s really why I’m going to play in New Zealand and Australia,

because I want to have fun and play my guitar and get a lot of sun and have a good time. Everybody’s so healthy looking down there in all the pictures we can’t wait to get down there and get a little bit ourselves.”

Is there a time on stage when it’s just you and your guitar? 1 “Yeah, I’m gonna do some songs like that. I would imagine it would amount to less than a quarter of the show, but almost that much. And this is how I see it now, it may develop into a different thing, but I would anticipate that I would do at least four or five, maybe six songs by myself in the course of the night. I may do them all at once or I may do them spread out. "I did a tour a couple of years ago here in the States, where I did big colosseums and everything, alone with my guitar and banjo and harmonica. And I made it through that tour (laughs) but I cant even really imagine how I did it when I think back about working out in front of all those people by myself.” You’ve been playing with Crazy Horse since 1968 do you still get a big charge out of playing that style of music with them? “Yeah when we rehearsed the other day it was the first time we’d played the old songs in a couple of years, I guess, because the last tour I did with Crazy Horse was the Rust Never Sleeps in the United States. And so we played a couple of the songs we did in that show and then we played a couple of really old ones ‘Cinnamon Girl’ and ‘Cortez the Killer* and a couple of things like that. And they sounded great I thought they sounded better than the originals when we cranked them up there. "We still use all our old tube amps and everything, so we were quite at home and really enjoyed playing it. That’s the whole idea. I’m gonna bring my family over and we’re looking at it not exactly like a vacation, but we hope to have a good time playing great music and meeting a lotta people.”

I’m sure there are a lot of fans here who will be over the moon that you’re making it here ... ‘Well, we’ll be ready for 'em. It may not be the tightest show they’ve ever heard but it’ll show 'em a good time anyway.” You’re a keen windsurfer, aren't you? There’ll be plenty of opportunity for that here. "Well I’m really not that good at it actually, but I love to do it. I’m more a boardsailer type I don’t do any of the hot-doggin’ on waves or anything like that. I’m still in the sort of beginner and intermediate stages of going out and cruising and trying a tack or a job and then coming back to shore. I love to get out on the water” One of the most fascinating aspects of your career has been your ability to keep changing in the face of people’s expectations as to what your music is supposed to sound like. How’s it been, losing a whole lot of fans and gaining a whole lot of new ones several times over the last 20 or so years? Well, yknow, it’s kinda hard to say why I do this, keep changing and everything. I don’t even really try to consciously keep changing, it just seems

that when I feel like doing something, that’s what I feel like doing and I made out all right doing that before, so I just keep on doing it and it’s always a different thing that I think of doing. “So now I’m playing a lot of this sort of country music, with the fiddle and steel and I love playing that kind of music. But it’s the generations that have changed, I guess, since I started. And a lotta people who used to listen to Crazy Horse, used to listen to rock ‘n’ roll here in North America, they switched over to listening to some kinds of country music some hard country, like Hank Williams Jnr and Wailon Jennings. So it’s always interesting to keep changing and play what I wanna play. I don’t wanna be tied into just playing one style or repeating myself over and over again but I don’t think I’d still be doing it if I’d done that.”

I imagine there are fans about who’d say that Neil Young has never made a bad record. What would you say? “Oh, well I’d like to meet a couple of those people (laughs). But I’ve made some pretty bad ones

along the line there somewhere. But I had to put them out anyway ‘cause that’s where I was at, I guess. Time Fades Away wasn’t very good .. but it was pretty nervous and I was pretty nervous at that time in my life, so I put the record out because it represents what I’m about, what I'm doing.” Perhaps people have such a personal idendtification with you because they can appreciate the artistic path you’ve chosen to tread and the way you’ve never really deviated from that sort of aspiration. “Well, I’ve tried to keep it real interesting for myself, because I figured if I really lost interest in what I was doing it wouldn’t be worth trying to get anybody else to listen to it. So I just keep doing what I want, enjoying it even if sometimes it gets me into trouble with record companies and different things like that, I just keep on goin! I got nothin’ else to do ...” (laughs) You’ve been in the studio recently do you have much idea of what direction the new recording will take?

“Well I think if I was going to compare it with any of my other albums, it’s going to be a little bit like Harvest or Comes A Time, with a little harder beat. Those two albums were seven or eight years apart and it’s been about that long since I put out Comes A Time. It seems like they just come cycling around at about that time and this is sorta like the third one.

“We’ve recorded over 30 songs for the record and I’ve narrowed it down to about 12 songs now, which I’ll be thinking about while I'm over there in New Zealand and shortly afterwards when I’m back home, I’ll make the final decisions and put them out.”

Well, finally, do you have any message for the people who will be at the concerts? “Well, I’d just like to say that I’m real glad to be makin’ it down there, after all these years of people listening to my music down there and everything and I appreciate it and I hope everyone enjoys the show ... and not to expect too much, I’m just another guy with a guitar.”