Neil's still Young at heart

By Peter Howell

PARK CITY, Utah His once-thick hair has turned steel grey and his sharp Western hat now provides warmth as much as it makes a fashion statement.

At 60, Neil Young isn’t attempting to fool anyone about the passing of the years, but neither is he resorting to cardigans and loafers. His all-black cowboy attire, set off with a silver string necktie, reminds a visitor of the anti-hero Paladin from the Have Gun — Will TravelÖ TV series of the 1950s and ’60s. But the most noticeable thing about the Canadian rock icon is his easy smile and relaxed manner.

He’s rarely been comfortable around journalists, and previous encounters with him more than a decade ago were terse affairs, his answers blunt and his eyes concealed behind sunglasses.

Come on in! he says, extending a welcome into the Western-themed Hotel Park City suite where he’s been holding court during the Sundance Film Festival. A picture window overlooks the snowy Wasatch Range, the tail of the Rockies. He’s sharing interview duties with Oscar-winning movie director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), the man who helmed Neil Young: Heart of Gold, an emotional concert movie that premiered at Sundance two weeks ago, signalling Young’s readiness to return to the public eye after a turbulent year mainly out of it.

The two friends are both in high spirits, pleased by the rapturous response to their movie and joking about aging, the ever-Rolling Stones and why it is that Young has suddenly become a raconteur, willing to talkx about his life, family and songs on stage. He used to just let his lyrics and his guitar speak for him.

We drugged him up! Demme quips, bringing another smile from Young.

Fans will see for themselves next Friday, when the movie arrives in theatres. Filmed over two nights last August at Nashvx ille’s storied Ryman Auditorium, the stage where Hank Williams made his Grand Ole Opry debut, Neil Young: Heart of Gold is a life statement that very nearly had no life behind it.

Five months earlier, Young underwent surgery to treat a brain aneurysm that, left untreated, could have killed him, or paralyzed him. The doctors tied off the aneurysm so well that his recovery was swift and he was left without speech difficulties or other after-affects.

They did an excellent job,” Young says, with a palpable sense of relief. “They stopped it from doing anything to me. They caught it and they tricked it. I did the concert after I had the operation, so what you see is what you get.

And what you see is a honeyed and homey look at a performer who is as beloved for his intimate folkie side as for his hard-rocking stadium alter ego. He’s captured on multiple cameras by Demme, the restless rock lover whose 1984 Talking Heads concert picture Stop Making Sense is considered one of the finest of the genre.

The first half of Neil Young: Heart of Gold is devoted to new album Prairie Wind, with Young accompanying himself on guitar, harmonica, piano and banjo before a painted backdrop of wheat fields and grain silos. It looks like he’s actually out on the Canadian Prairies, where he and his family lived for a spell.

The second half canvasses his huge catalogue of hits, including “Heart of Gold, Old Man, Harvest Moon, Needle and the Damage Done, Comes a Time and the film’s emotional highlight, a cover of fellow Canuck Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds.

Young calls the song “the most beautiful record I ever heard in my life, and says he used to play it over and over on the jukebox when he was a teenager.

The film closes with Young alone on stage, singing “The Old Laughing Lady, a tune from his eponymous debut solo album of 1969. A favourite of Demme’s, it includes the line, “You got to move, there’s no time left to stall.

The music is almost entirely acoustic. Young is backed by a large number of fellow musicians (including long-time guitarist Ben Keith), three male and three female back-up singers (including country legend Emmylou Harris and Young’s singer/guitarist wife, Pegi Young), a horn section and a gospel choir.

The Ryman concerts filmed were two months after the death, at age 87, of Young’s newspaperman father Scott Young, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In the movie, Young reminisces about how his father gave him a ukulele as a child.

I didn’t know what to do with it, but he said, `You might need this sometime.’.

Young Sr. could not have suspected that Neil would grow up over the following half-century to be a rock star of international renown, sharing the stage with such contemporaries as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, and penning tunes both sweet (Cinnamon Girl, Heart of Gold) and sour (Southern Man, Ohio).

When he debuted on the rock scene at end of the 1960s, as both a solo act and as a member of the politically aware bands Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the Toronto-born rocker’s plaintive yelp most often expressed his unhappiness with the state of the world.

Little did any of his early admirers think that Young would one day be performing shows, backed by his family and friends, where he’d be wistfully looking back on a life well lived.

This is the same flannel-shirted, guitar-charging artist, remember, who famously sang about how, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.

Prairie Wind has a tune called “Here for You, which Young wrote to his 21-year-old daughter Amber when she was preparing to leave home for college.

There was a time I used to write these kinds of songs for girls my own age, he quips. The album and the movie are so emotionally charged, it raises the question as to Young’s career intentions. Is this a stocktaking or a leave-taking?

Yeah, Young says, pondering the question for a long minute. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.

Demme interrupts with his own interpretation. “It’s a state of the heart. It’s not the state of the union; it’s the state of the heart. That’s what I see it as, literally.

Demme has done a lot of thinking about this. “Everybody talks about the Ryman being the mother church, the church of country music, he continues. And my little secret theory, Neil, is that that was like the confessional dimension of the church. When you were up there saying what you said, you were confessing.

Young doesn’t comment on that, but he does allow that he’s been looking at life a lot more intensely since his health scare.

Since that happened, I feel much more aware of my mortality. I realize that things happen and you don’t know about them. I was lucky. By accident, we caught this thing. It had nothing to do with the symptoms that caused us to go looking for it. It was just a fluke. I was just lucky.

And I’m very fortunate to have probably the best surgeon ever to perform the operation or the procedure.

He’s not sure if he could tour behind Prairie Wind, his best-reviewed album in at least a decade. He may have said all he can say on the stage at the Ryman, where he played a well-worn guitar formerly owned by Hank Williams, which Young bought 35 years ago.

Well, you know, you never know what’s going to happen, he says, wrestling with the idea of touring once again.

I’m sure if I went out and did this on the road I wouldn’t be telling that many stories. That’s the part, that’s the key thing that tells me it would be difficult to do this.

Because after people have seen this, (they’ll know) it’s a very sincere and original version of all this stuff. I was surprised by the emotion of it. I was pleasantly surprised and elated, actually, at the quality of the emotional communication we were able to get.

To go out and do it again, would not be the same.

He clearly wants to hit the road, but his health may not be up to a lengthy tour.

It would be fun to go out and celebrate these songs and play them live and do the show for people. But I don’t know how many times I can do it.

You know, it’s a feel thing. We’ll just see how it happens. How the movie goes, we’ve got the album out. I have other things I could do. Those other things include a possible Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion, for an album, a tour, or possibly both.

I have a CSNY album and tour that is out on the horizon, just a breath away from commitment. I know I’m going to do it; I just don’t know what the sequence of events is going to be.

One thing that won’t be holding him back is his age. He doesn’t see turning 60, which he did Nov. 12, as any reason for slowing down.

I could do this indefinitely. Willie (Nelson) is over 70, he’s out there doing it so we’ll just see what happens with me.

Music is good that way. So we’ll see what happens. The Stones keep rolling.

But the Stones, who are also in their 60s, don’t like to admit to getting older. There was a scandal recently when it was revealed that organizers of Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast from Ford Field in Detroit didn’t want dancers older than 45 to be on the field when the Stones perform at the halftime show. The edict was rescinded after a vocal protest by rock fans.

Young hadn’t heard of this. He laughs at it. “Who said that? He shakes his head in wonder.

Demme interjects with a joke about an old Stones tune: “I heard that Mick changed the title of that song to “Let’s Take A Nap Together.

Young roars with laughter as he repeats the punch line: “Let’s take a nap together!

If the Canadian rocker is feeling mellow about his life and music, he still retains the passion for the integrity of his art, which he refuses to compromise in any way. He had a hit in the late 1980s with “This Note’s For You, a song about his refusal to accept commercial sponsorship, and he refused to perform at the Woodstock ’94 event because Pepsi sponsored it.

I don’t see any advantage in sacrificing the validity of the music to the corporate world. I don’t think it shores up people’s belief in the words.

I still feel as strongly about it as I did in the first place. I haven’t done any commercials and some places I play where there are signs all over, that’s not my problem. They’re not paying me. They’re saying they’re presenting all the music that plays there, but they have no deal with me. I have no deal with them. They just bought space.

And when I play a television show and it comes on afterward that this musical guest was brought to you by Budweiser or something, I’m going, `I never talked to Budweiser. I don’t have anything to do with them.’ You get (union) scale when you play those shows. You don’t get paid. So you know, they “brought you? What the hell is that? Where is the beef? They didn’t bring anything, man.

Does it bother him that other rock icons of his generation have sold their songs to big corporations, as the Stones did for Microsoft and Dylan did for Victoria’s Secret and the Bank of Montreal?

No, it just leaves more room for me. Speaking of Dylan, Young has no intention of writing his memoirs, as his friend Bob has been busy doing of late.

No, I’m not going to be doing that, he says firmly. “I’m just organizing my music. That’s what the songs are about. A chronological rollout of everything I’ve ever done. I think that’s the only way for me to do it.

After more the 40 years as a composer and performer, it’s still all about the music for Neil Young. He still loves to perform live, and his songs still mean something to him, which is why you have to believe he’ll be back on the road again, and for as long as he is able to.

When you don’t see me any more, Young concludes, wishing his visitor a warm farewell, “you’ll know I’ve stopped caring about it.

Article from thestar.com

Neil Young at life's different stages

By David L. Coddon

UNION-TRIBUNE CURRENTS WEEKEND EDITOR

February 24, 2006

Jonathan Demme's “Neil Young: Heart of Gold, opening in movie theaters today, isn't the first time the intrepid director has turned his keen filmmaker's eye on this rock icon. It may not be the most riveting, either.

Before “Heart of Gold, there was “The Complex Sessions. In the fall of 1994, upon the release of Young's last album of towering stature, Sleeps With Angels, Demme captured the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and his favorite collaborators, Crazy Horse (Frank Poncho Sampedro, Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina), jamming in the middle of the night in the softly lit Complex Recording Studios in Los Angeles. The 27-minute film, in which the camera manages to be up close and in the moment, yet unobtrusive at the same time, includes no chatter or tuning or rock-star posturing. Just takes of four songs, all of them from Sleeps With Angels, the dark and haunting record inspired in Young by the suicide of Kurt Cobain: My Heart, Prime of Life, Piece of Crap and the serpentine Change Your Mind. As documented by Demme, Young never seemed more at one with his band, or his music.

The Complex Sessions remains available only on VHS, but for Neil Young fans unashamedly into his performances preserved on film, the DVD options are numerous. Among them:

Rust Never Sleeps (1978) – Young (calling himself by his nom de plume, Bernard Shakey) made this one himself. Though its pace may be deliberate and its camera work at times amateurish, the theatrical-length film's recording of a memorable concert in San Francisco has its enduring images: the giant amplifiers and microphone on the Cow Palace stage; the roadies – Young calls 'em road-eyes – (dressed in monks' robes); the crowd wearing 3-D glasses, the better to watch the band rust; sound snippets from Woodstock and Sgt. Pepper as a stick-thin Young bids the hippie era goodbye while, with scorching renditions of Sedan Delivery and Hey Hey My My (Out of the Blue) at the same time embraces the punk onslaught.

Neil Young in Berlin (1982) Accompanied by the Trans Band (which included Nils Lofgren and former Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer), Young rocked the Deutschlandshalle in Berlin in this odd but appealing concert. Odd as in Young in a dress shirt and necktie. Odd as in several tunes from the controversial Trans album, sung through a vocoder. Appealing as in a cordial Young addressing his German audience: You having a good time tonight? That makes two of us.

Freedom Live (1990) With 1989's Freedom, Young delivered the comeback album his disciples had been waiting (hoping) for during his artistically uneven '80s. This hour-long, solo-acoustic concert is notable for a moving performance of Ohio that references the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square, and the powerful anthem Rocking in the Free World.

Year of the Horse (1997) Jim Jarmusch's behind-the-scenes (on stage, on the tour bus, in hotel rooms) jaunt with Young and Crazy Horse is shot in grainy, hand-held-camera style that makes for a hit-and-miss film. But archival footage of a mid-'70s Young and the band (a highlight: the accidental setting fire of a vase of flowers) and a model-train sequence set to the thumping rocker Big Time are great fun.

Red Rocks Live Friends and Relatives (2000) A concert in the pouring rain at Morrison, Colo.'s, Red Rocks Amphitheatre should have been more exciting than this. The so-called friends and relatives lack the ferocity of Crazy Horse, and the overall experience is plodding. It is an opportunity, however, to hear Young render the rarely played Bad Fog of Loneliness.

Silver & Gold (2003) This acoustic concert delivered at Bass Concert Hall in Austin, Texas, is another of Young's Shakey Pictures productions. It focuses on songs from the album of the same name, and from CSNY's trite Looking Forward disc.

Also of note:

Greendale (2003) Young's cinematic album about the Green family, the equivalent of a home movie made by someone who could afford to make one right, is nevertheless for aficionados only. It's far from his best music, and even at 86 minutes feels long.

Weld (1991, on VHS only): If you can find a copy of Weld, it's worth a look/listen, for Young and Crazy Horse playing at their loudest and joyfully sloppiest, and for the relentless crescendos that culminate most of the performances.

Article from thestar.com