I Told My Boss I Was Taking a Neil Young Day


I just had the chance to hear the only two Neil Young interviews in the CBC archive. In one he speaks with Daniel Lanois about one of his latest records "Le Noise". The other one is from 31 years prior. It's fun to listen to a young Neil rail against the music industry :) You also get to hear Scott Young (Neil's Dad) speak a bit about Neil.

I highly recommend these interviews: http://goo.gl/TslVm.

He also speaks at length about the breakup of Buffalo Springfield. It appears that when Neil found those guys in '66 he really loved their sound. But by the end, creative rifts formed, and the energies were out of whack. Neil was producing some of the songs by himself, and he became increasingly indifferent to the work of the other members.
Remember Buffalo Springfield?
Neil also implies that at the age of 21 when he first showed up in LA, he already knew he really wanted to be a solo singer/songwriter. I often wonder how creative geniuses come by so much self-knowledge at such a young age. When I was 21 my creative ideas were so far removed from reality (and truly unmarketable mania to boot: read more). Perhaps I've said a few things in the decade since, but I mainly feel like I'm still constructing the fundamental building blocks of a voice, and I think that should be normal for any artist.

I suppose with rock bands the game was always about blowing young people up, making a big deal out of everything, putting on massive shows, etc... I suspect that has something to do with the human spirit in its natural state (if such a state exists), but it must also have something to do with how young rock stars are easy to manipulate by execs. And doesn't it kind of seem like as they were spinning all of that young energy into heaps of cash, that they were also leaving a bunch of disasters in their wake? I'm sure glad that model is utterly broken.

Hearing the Neil Young interview got me extra-stoked because I've actually been working on my own cover of After The Gold Rush lately. My vision for this cover is to leave it with no breaks, make it faster, and fill out the sound with heavy percussion:


Here's the entire 39 minute film that goes along with Le Noise:
Check out The Making of Le Noise video interview with Daniel Lanois:


Americana is what Neil's been up to lately:

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