Neil Young: Gold Rush
Originally published in Guitar World, October 2009
Neil Young mines a treasure trove of his early songs, demos, videos and memorabilia for his new multimedia project, Archives Volume 1, 1963-1972. In this world-exclusive interview, the iconic guitarist tells the complete story behind the making of the most ambitious music anthology
ever created.
"How're you all doing?ā
Itās June 2009, and Neil Young is standing center stage at the O2 in Dublin, an ultra-modern, orb-like arena that seems as much a food court and concession stand as it does a music venue. Heās wearing baggy blue jeans, sneakers and a corduroy button-down over a faded black T-shirt. His hair is grey, and wild as ever, with bushy mutton-chop sideburns framing either side of his face. Young is nearing the end of a European tour in support of Fork in the Road, which is, roughly speaking, the 34th or so album of his solo career. Taking into account live discs, soundtracks, projects with other bands, and the nebulous nature of what exactly constitutes an āofficialā album in Youngās catalog, itās probably closer to being his 50th. Last year Young turned 63, but tonight heās been stomping the stage and flailing his body with abandon, all the while coaxing some incredibly gnarly, earsplitting tonesāeven for himāfrom āOld Black,ā the heavily modified 1953 Les Paul goldtop that in its own way looms as large in music history as Young does.
āWe got one for you,ā he continues from the stage. āMay not be the one you wanted.ā Young moves away from the microphone to cue the next song. Then he changes his mind and steps back up. āOr,ā he adds, āit might be.ā
With that, Young and his band launch into the jangly, upbeat āBurned,ā a not-quite-unfamiliar, but certainly not well-known, tune he first cut with Buffalo Springfield back in 1966, and which he once identified as his āfirst vocal ever done in a studio.ā Since that day more than 40 years ago, the song has rarely, if ever, been played live. But Youngās been in a different kind of mood lately.
Last year, for instance, Young took to performing āThe Sultan,ā a twangy, Hank Marvināinspired instrumental that he recorded in 1963 while a teenager in Canada, with his first real band, the Squires. The reference was probably lost on all but the most devoted fans in attendance, and Young added an extra layer of absurdity to his performance by having a man dressed as a sultan bang on a gong to introduce the song.
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Discussing this episode today, Young finds it all rather amusing. āWe had one lying around backstage,ā he says, referring to either a sultanās outfit, or perhaps an actual sultan. āSo we wanted to get him out there.ā
But beyond an easy laugh, thereās another reason Young has been unearthing songs like āThe Sultanā and āBurnedā on recent tours. Heās been knee-deep in a journey through his past, and now, with the release of the long-delayed, nearly 20-years-in-the-making Neil Young Archives Volume 1, 1963-1972, so are his fans.
The first of what Young envisions will ultimately be four or five installments (each spanning roughly a 10-year period of his career), Archives Volume 1 is, to put it lightly, massive. Issued in three formatsāas a 10-disc Blu-ray or DVD collection, each with a 236-page book, and as an eight-CD setāthe retrospective boasts more than 120 songs from Youngās first decade as a musician, beginning with the Squires and continuing through Buffalo Springfield, his early solo work, Crazy Horse, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The tracks are grouped by era: for example, the Buffalo Springfield period resides on a disc titled Early Years(1966-1968), while the Harvest record is chronicled on North Country (1971-1972). The Archives set features many of Youngās biggest and most enduring songs, from acoustic standards like āSugar Mountain,ā āTell Me Whyā and āHeart of Gold,ā to Buffalo Springfield and CSNY classics like āMr. Soul,ā āOhioā and āHelpless,ā to Crazy Horse barnburners like āCinnamon Girl,ā āDown By the Riverā and āWhen You Dance, I Can Really Love.ā
Practically half of these performances are unreleased recordings, live cuts, outtakes and alternate mixes. In addition, the Blu-ray and DVD sets house an excess of visual ephemera, including concert performances, TV appearances, photos, letters, newspaper articles, original manuscripts, audio and video interview clips, and the full version of Journey Through the Past, Youngās 1972 feature film directorial debut. These materials are organized around two primary tools: a virtual filing cabinet in which each song and its relevant audio and visual documents are gathered in their own individual folder, and an interactive timeline that runs through all the discs and places Youngās music within the appropriate personal and historical context.
To call Archives merely a ābox setā would be to miss the point entirely; it is, in essence, the most panoramic, comprehensive-to-the-point-of-obsessive audio-visual product ever issued by a recording artist.
āWhat weāve done is something thatās never been done before,ā Young says matter-of-factly, sipping a Guinness in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel in Dublin on the afternoon prior to the O2 show. ā āNecessity is the mother of invention,ā I guess is the phrase. And thatās where this came from. I needed this.ā
The invention that Young refers to is Blu-ray, his preferred platform for viewing and listening to Archives. In edition to offering superior soundāstate-of-the-art 24-bit/192kHz ultra-high resolution, compared with DVDās 24-bit/96kHz and CDās 16-bit/44kHz standardsāthe format allows two additional features unavailable on any other platform. Unlike DVD, Blu-ray lets users listen to music and scroll through documents simultaneously. This means that while playing the audio track to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Youngās āOhio,ā the listener can also peruse, among other things, recording information about the track, photos of the band onstage at the Fillmore East in New York, Youngās original handwritten manuscript of the lyrics, Time and Life magazine covers about the Kent State University shootings that inspired the subject matter, and a copy of the 45 single and sleeve. There is also audio of Young discussing the song in a radio interview, and video of CSNY performing it at a show in Boston, with the audience singing along to every word.
The other technological development at the center of Archives is BD-Live, which enables Blu-ray users to download free updates in the form of additional songs, videos and other documents, as Young makes them available. Once downloaded, these materials appear in their appropriate chronological spots on the interactive timeline.
As Young explains, BD-Live makes it possible for Archives to be an evolving, evergrowing project. āIt takes a certain kind of organization to come up with that stuff,ā he says. āThese arenāt things that somebody kept; these are things that everybody kept. And we had to find each person. We had a scanning network out there. And the reason itās so detailed is because we took a lot of time. A long time. So new pieces of material are always being uncovered. And because of BDLive weāll be able to continue getting it out there forever. Itās never finished.ā
That said, Young has already moved on to the second installment of Archives, which will take him into the early Eighties. He expects it to be assembled in less time than Volume 1. āItād be hard to not be quicker.ā He laughs. āThat one was, like, 20 years. I think weāll see Volume 2 in about two or three years, tops.ā
Young recently sat down with Guitar World for his first, and only, comprehensive interview about Archives Volume 1. In the following wide-ranging discussion, he expounds on the classic songs and great musicians heard on the collection. He also delves into the guitars, amps and recording techniques that went into creating the timeless music, and speaks candidly about songwriting and his own instrumental abilities.
Most of all, Young was eager to talk about the Archives project itself and in particular how, in his view, the benefits of the technology offered by the Blu-ray format will reverberate far beyond his own music.
āPeople donāt understand the value of sound anymore,ā Young says. āBut somebodyās going to have to have the nerve to rescue an art form. My responsibility here is to show that music can be supplied at a higher quality, and with deeper content. Iām making it available.ā
He continues. āWhere I came from, music was God. So I must be a dinosaur, you know? Like my day is over. But the fact is, my day is still ahead of me.ā
GUITAR WORLD Youāve been talking about the Archives project for close to two decades, and countless release dates have come and gone. Now that itās finally here, one of the things I find amazing is that as far back as the early Nineties you were adamant that certain technologiesāsuch as the ability to scan documents onscreen while simultaneously listening to the musicāneeded to be in place in order to deliver the project as you saw fit. You knew what you wanted, but you needed to wait for the technology to catch up.
NEIL YOUNG I knew that it had to be this way, and I believed it was gonna happen. I just thought it would happen sooner. I actually thought DVD would do it. But DVD didnāt cut it. So Blu-ray came along just in time. It was only about two years ago that we really saw what we could do with this format. And then it was only more recently that we discovered the BD-Live feature and the possibilities there. That was something that we uncovered while putting together the timeline that binds all the discs together. And new discoveries keep popping up. Itāll continue to grow as the Blu-ray standard grows.
The thing with Archives is that youāre not just getting a music Blu-ray; youāre getting something that no movie Blu-ray has ever done, that no educational Blu-ray has ever done. On a broader scale, weāre trying to create a new flow of information. In my case, the music is the glue that holds it all together. But it could be anythingāit could be art, it could be film, it could be history. As far as Iām concerned Archives is a great opportunity to build this platform, and weāve pushed the walls of the technology already. And the developers love that. Weāre helping.
GW So how many Archives sets are we looking at?
YOUNG Maybe four, maybe five. It depends on how much cutting and paring down we do, and how much we get into using BD-Live, which is really a great thing. Itās tremendous. Itās remarkable because we really only saw that aspect of it for the first time six or seven months ago. And even then it was cobbled together and the software was buggy. The developers didnāt show me too much, because they were still working on the technology. Iād say, āIs it working yet?ā And the developers would say, āNo.ā So all right, I donāt have to look at it. And then finally it got to a point where they said, āWe think itās working pretty good, you oughta check it out.ā And even then we were just looking at the technology: How does it work? Can you listen to music while youāre scrolling around? What types of updates can we do with BDLive? How are the updates going to sit on the timeline?
One thing that we figured out is that weāre going to be able to do progressive download updates. So for instance, around 1970 I played a show at the Cellar Door club in Washington, D.C. That show was taped, but we donāt have enough great takes to release it as its own disc. Instead, Iāll probably make the songs available as downloadable updates to Archives. Weāll drop them onto the timeline, one at a time. So one day you may receive an update that will allow you to download the first song from that show, and then maybe a week later, youāll get an update with the second song. And then the third song will come the next week. Before you know it, you have 40 minutes of music in high-def sound that you didnāt have to pay for, and that no oneās ever heard before.
GW On a more personal level, why did you feel the need to gather your work in this manner?
YOUNG Well, my music and the way itās presented here are really inseparable. I have this thing that Iām doingāIām telling a story. Itās something that Iāve wanted to do for a long time, and in doing it Iāve become part of the creation of a technology platform that is so much more far-reaching than what I originally envisioned. And Iām fascinated by that. My music has become a way to demonstrate a navigation system through time. And really, my life, my own content, is almost secondary at this point. I look at Archives and I go, āWell, thereās a hell of a lot about me in there.ā If youāre interested in that, then great. If youāre not interested in me, then just listen. Because what youāll hear is better than any record youāve ever had. And thereās an era coming up in which this level of sound quality, and this level of interaction, is going to be the standard. Much like the CD was the standard for the previous era.
GW Assembling Archives afforded you the opportunity to view the contents of your musical life fairly comprehensively. Was there any overall pattern of behavior that revealed itself to you in the process?
YOUNG One thing that really surprised me is how ruthless Iāve been in pursuit of the music. And for how long Iāve been like that. I always knew I was callousāif I had to do something I had to do it, and I didnāt make any excuses. That might mean changing musicians midstream, or dropping a project to go somewhere else entirely. If thatās what I had to do to keep the songs coming then thatās what I did. But when I saw it, and I remembered what happened, and thought about how I dealt with things in immature ways, it gave me a lot of pause. But nonetheless, I continue on, and keep doing it anyway.
GW Why change now?
YOUNG [laughs] Yeah, right. Why change. So itās good.
GW Something that became apparent to me was the incredible pace at which you were moving. To take just one span of time, say, mid 1968 through the end of 1969, you played your final show with Buffalo Springfield, released your first solo album, paired up with Crazy Horse for Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, began working on After the Gold Rush, joined Crosby, Stills & Nash, played Woodstock and cut DĆ©jĆ Vu. Thatās all in about 18 months or so.
YOUNG I was definitely doing a lot of multitasking. At one point I was recording with Crazy Horse in the mornings at Sunset Sound, cutting stuff like āI Believe In You,ā āOh Lonesome Me,ā the original āHelpless,ā āWonderinā,ā āBirds,ā all kinds of things, and then in the afternoons Iād go play with CSN. And the only thing I really remember about that is that it bothered them that I was doing both things.
GW It bothered Crosby, Stills and Nash?
YOUNG Yeah, a little bit. But I liked playing with them, and I would always be there on time and ready to go. So I didnāt see a problem. But I was also playing with Crazy Horse. It wasnāt like I was gonna choose. Because playing with Crazy Horse brings a whole other thing out of me that never happens anywhere else. And that was maybe hard for them to understand. So it was busy, but itās been really busy all the way through. Maybe in the last 10 years or so the patternās finally changing.
GW In what respect?
YOUNG Thereās less waste now. I had massive amounts of waste all through the Seventies and Eighties. The most wasteful period is coming up in the next Archives.
GW Define āwaste.ā
YOUNG Things that were unfinished, things that never really got started, things that were finished and never used. Thereās just so much music and nowhere to go with it.
GW What you characterize as waste is to some fans your most valued materialāunreleased songs, out-of-print albumsā¦
YOUNG Thatās true. One thing Iāll tell you about the next volume of Archives is that Time Fades Away II is in there [the original Time Fades Away, a long out-of-print live album from 1973, is among the most soughtafter releases in Youngās catalog]. And itās interesting, because the whole thing has a different drummer than what was on that album. I switched drummers halfway through the tourāKenny Buttrey was in there for the first half, and Johnny Barbata came in for the second. Itās a completely different thing, with completely different songs. So thatās interesting. Thereās lots of stuff like that that Iām working on right now for the second volume.
GW Among the many revelations on Archives is the wealth of materialārecordings, photos, documentsāof the Squires, the band you led in the mid Sixties while still living in Canada. While songs from this part of your career have been unearthed previously, this is by far the most complete picture fans have ever had of what was a pretty significant part of your development as a musician.
YOUNG The Squires was a very real thing. In one of the document folders on the first disc thereās a list that [bassist] Ken Koblun kept of all the shows we played. And itās a lot of shows. I mean, thatās a bandās life right there. And Archives brings that into focus.
GW Overall, the material gathered on the first disc paints a picture of an artist in search of his own style. You move pretty rapidly from the instrumental surf-rock of the Squires to the Jimmy Reedāstyle blues of āHello Lonely Womanā to a solo acoustic version of āSugar Mountain,ā which you cut as an audition for Elektra Records in 1965. That song would become one of the defining tunes of your early career, but on this version you sound very unlike yourself, as if youāre approximating what you believe a folksinger is supposed to be.
YOUNG That was probably what was going on. I was just trying to find who I was. And it was very uncomfortable for me to hear some of this stuff. In the case of āSugar Mountain,ā I couldnāt listen to it. I knew what it was and I listened a little bit but I just thought, God, thatās terrible. Because I can tell I was very nervous. I was just trying to beā¦something. But I didnāt know what it was.
GW At what point do you think that changed?
YOUNG When did it kind of consolidate into something real and I found some little bit of footing? I actually think thereās some showing of it earlier than the Elektra demos, on the Squires songs where I sing lead and that we cut for CJLX radio in Fort William in Ontario with [producer] Ray Dee. Thereās two songs on the Archives from those sessions: āIāll Love You Foreverā and āI Wonderā [Young eventually reworked the latter song with Crazy Horse as āDonāt Cry No Tearsā for his 1975 album, Zuma]. Those are both pretty good.
GW Speaking of your time in Canada, in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan told a story of how, while on tour last year, he made a pilgrimage of sorts to the house in Winnipeg where you lived during the Squires days. He said he wanted to see your bedroom.
YOUNG I read that. Jack Harper, the original drummer for the Squires, sent me a copy of the article. It was a big deal in Winnipeg. That was remarkable.
GW Do you think he found what he was looking for?
YOUNG Absolutely. Iām sure he found it. I donāt know what it is, but Iām sure if I went to his house Iād find it there too.
GW Maybe you should go.
YOUNG I think Iād better. Iāve actually been through Hibbing [Minnesota, Dylanās birthplace], but Iāve never been to Bobās house. It might not even be there anymore. But thereās something to finding out where people came from. Itās interesting archival stuff. And you know, Bobās a real musicologist. Heās a guy who could do something like Archives. Iām sure that he has his thing organized to some degree.
GW As far as your development as a songwriter and a guitar player, thereās some information to be gleaned from the versions of āEverybody Knows This Is Nowhereā that bookend the Topanga 1 (1968-1969) disc. The first one, from early 1968, was recorded with the backing musicians you used on the Neil Young album and is a breezy, acoustic take, accented by woodwind instruments. The version that closes out the disc, cut the following year with Crazy Horse, is in the ragged country-rock style you became known for with that band.
YOUNG Yeah that first one is veryā¦organized. Whatās going on there is the difference between recording in a very contrived manner and just playing with a band. One is built, the other just happens.
GW So with Crazy Horse it just āhappened.ā
YOUNG Well, I knew those guys. I knew them for a while, from back in Laurel Canyon, and I used to jam with them when I was still in the Springfield and they were still called the Rockets. And after doing that first solo record they were what I neededāI needed to play. I needed to go out and do things. I knew it was gonna be good with Crazy Horse. It was free.
GW Is that around the same time Old Black came into the picture?
YOUNG I think so. Thatād be about then. I traded Messina for it. [As legend goes, former Buffalo Springfield bassist and producer Jim Messina, who also played on Youngās first solo album, gave up the 1953 Gibson Les Paul goldtop in exchange for one of Youngās Gretsch guitars.]
GW How essential was Old Black to the development of your guitar sound?
YOUNG I donāt know. I really donāt. I mean, that guitar was a different guitar then than it is now. It had a different treble pickup. The Firebird pickup went in after the first one got lost, and that happened a few years after we did Everybody Knows. The first pickup had a really bad buzz, and I sent the guitar to a shop to be fixed. When I went to get it, it was gone. And by that I mean the store was gone. The whole place just wasnāt there anymore. So that was the end of that. When I eventually got it back I tried a Gretsch pickup in there for a while, and then around the time of Zuma the Firebird went in. And thatās been the sound ever since.
GW People think of the Crazy Horse sound as this brute force, but the guitar interplay between you and [Crazy Horse guitarist and vocalist] Danny Whitten was actually a very nuanced and subtle thing.
YOUNG Thatās exactly it. If you listen you can really hear how intricate it is, especially with the hi-def sound on the Blu-ray.
GW On āCinnamon Girl,ā to use just one example, your stylistic differences are more pronounced. Youāre doing these voice-leading-type lines with a fairly dirty tone, while Danny has a much cleaner sound, and plays nice, ringing arpeggios across the neck.
YOUNG Dannyās tone was always much cleaner than mine. And what youāre hearing with the Blu-ray is basically the way it sounded to us in the studio. Itās almost as good as what we heard. Itās not quite as good, but itās as good as it can be. Right now, at least.
GW What guitars did Danny use?
YOUNG He was playing a Gretsch most of the time.
GW Through any specific amp?
YOUNG Ummā¦Probably not. Probably just through one of my amps. Maybe a [Fender] Twin or a Bandmaster.
GW Did the two of you ever discuss what you were going to play, or work out your parts together?
YOUNG We never had to. We just started playing, and thatās what it sounded like. Danny was a great player. Phenomenal. And that part of Crazy Horse is now lost forever [Whitten died in 1972 from a heroin overdose]. The Crazy Horse that came along with Poncho [guitarist Frank āPonchoā Sampedro, who joined Crazy Horse three years after Whittenās death] is a different band, and a completely different approach. You donāt hear that same interplay. You only get that on the things Danny was on.
GW On āDown By the Riverā you can hear how Danny continually alters his rhythm part behind your solos.
YOUNG Itās unbelievable. His work on that song is a masterpiece. The rhythm guitar position is a very powerful slot. You have to understand youāre part of an orchestra. Youāre the backbone. Youāre putting horn parts in. Opposition. Changing the groove. Every time you change the groove it changes what the lead guitar does. And with Danny and me it just happened. We never talked about any of it.
GW Thereās great video on Archives of CSNY performing āDown By the Riverā on ABC-TVās Music Scene, in 1969, and you and Stephen Stills are trading solos on a pair of big Gretsches. In terms of dynamic, how was playing with Danny different from playing with Stephen?
YOUNG Well, Stephen is a lead guitar player, but he can also be supportive. And Danny was a guitar player, and he was always supportive. He was totally confident in his role. Stephen and I are a little more competitive, in a brotherly kind of way. Then thereās the jacked-up part of CSN, which is the drums and bass arenāt as open. Itās more of a big deal. But the original is Crazy Horse. Everything else is just a version of that.
GW How would you evaluate Nils Lofgren, who joined you for After the Gold Rush?
YOUNG Nils I had known for a long time as a musician. I met him at the Cellar Door when he was 17. Then he came out to California and played on After the Gold Rush. He had a lot of energyāhe practically walked from the airport to Topanga Canyon! And I just loved his guitar playing. When weāre matching up and playing dual guitars on āTell Me Whyā itās fantastic. But he played too well to play with me. So for most of that album I put him on piano. He doesnāt play piano, but he was more challenged that way. It controlled all the extra playing, put everyone on the same level. Because I like to keep things simple.
GW With songs like āDown By the Riverā and āCowgirl in the Sand,ā which feature extended instrumental breaks, how many takes were cut in the studio?
YOUNG Maybe three or four overall, and the final version was usually an edited take. So, you know, maybe what you hear on the record would be take one, but with a couple pieces of something else in there. I could look it up. We have all the track sheets. All that information could be made available through Archives updates. We could make it so you could go in and figure out exactly what take youāre listening to of a specific song.
GW Archives features tons of great photos of you onstage with the Danny Whittenāled version of Crazy Horse, particularly on the Live at the Fillmore East 1970 disc. But one thing I noticed is that thereās no video footage of the band.
YOUNG Thatās because we canāt find any, anywhere. But if people want it in the Archives it can be there. They just have to come up with the stuff. And also realize that once they get it to me itās probably gonna be given away for free, but that doesnāt mean they lose it. It just means that I get the chance to duplicate it, create the best possible copy of it for mass distribution, and place it where it belongs in a timeline, with stories and information about what it is. Thatās what I can do that would be hard for anybody else to do.
GW One thing you canāt be accused of is cherry picking the archival documents. There are some less than complimentary reviews scattered throughout the set, including one about a show at the Cellar Door that you read out loud in a video clip. The reviewer describes your onstage demeanor as being āas stimulating as watching your nails grow.ā
YOUNG [laughs] I think itās good to have that stuff there. When you see it in perspective itās just as interesting as anything else. Itās a valid reaction. I mean, people wrote negative reviews about my Massey Hall concerts, because they were upset that I was playing songs that nobody knew. [For these shows Young debuted much of the material that would eventually make up the 1972 album Harvest.] What the fuck are you gonna do with that?
GW In that respect, the show documented on the Live at Massey Hall 1971 disc features what is in effect an embryonic version of what would become your biggest hit, āHeart of Gold.ā Here, however, itās merely a small piece of the song āA Man Needs a Maid.ā
YOUNG Right. Thatās the way it originally came out. It was just a little piano thing in the middle of a larger song.
GW How did it become its own composition?
YOUNG It just morphed. It grew. Itās interesting, because thereās another version of that song on Archives where Iām playing it live on acoustic. I put that version on there because that was the first time I ever used the harmonica onstage in front of people. But I have to think: did that version precede the recorded one?
GW Well, it appears in the track listing before the studio version.
YOUNG So then it happened before. Thatās good to know, because I wasnāt playing the harmonica very good on that live take! Itās much better on the recorded version. And thatās probably whyāit was later on. And youāre able to establish which came first because of the Archives. Things like that, as simple as they may be, theyāre difficult to perceive without all the information laid out in front of you.
GW To bring up another instance of the Archives affording deeper insight into a song: On the Live at Massey Hall disc thereās a great video interview of you and your ranch hand, Louie Avila, shot at your Broken Arrow ranch in 1971. Even casual Neil Young fans tend to know that you wrote the song āOld Manā about Avila, but few have ever seen him or heard him speak before.
YOUNG And now you have. Itās like, āI believed that. But now I believe it.ā Itās good to have evidence.
GW At one point in that video, the interviewer asks about the song āOld Man,ā and Avila says something to the effect that itās āreally nice.ā You sit there silently, and eventually say, āThatās really an amazing tape recorder you have there.ā
YOUNG [laughs] Thatās good.
GW Which reveals a greater truth about you that, in my opinion, has been displayed in countless interviews over the years: You donāt like to talk about specific songs, or the act of songwriting.
YOUNG Itās not really worth talking about, as far as Iām concerned. Itās so hard to nail down. Itās something that happens. Itās like breathing. Itās like a wind change or something.
GW But people do wonder about your process.
YOUNG Well, I canāt say what it is! Because itās different for all the songs, and I canāt remember half of them anyway. They all have their own little story of how they came along, but I donāt knowā¦ I will say that the best ones come really fast. And theyāre complete. Thereās no editing or anything. You just get it.
GW In your introduction to āMr. Soulā on the Sugar MountaināLive at Canterbury House 1968 disc, you identify that song as one of the āfastā ones. You say it took five minutes to write.
YOUNG Yeah, that was one like that. And thatās how long it should take, about as long as it takes to write it down. So, I mean, whatās the process? The bottom line is there is no process. The process is, there it is.
GW How about your process as a guitar player? In particular, around the time of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, were there other guitarists who influenced you as far as your pursuit of the louder, noisier side of the music? Jimi Hendrix would be an obvious point of reference, but anyone else?
YOUNG Not really. I mean, Jimi certainly. I liked him. He was on my radar. But not too many others. [Producer and occasional Young collaborator] Jack Nitzsche and I used to listen to the early Jimi Hendrix Experience 45s that came out of London before we did my first solo album. He was the latest, greatest thing from over there, and we were checking it out. Wanted to see what was going on.
GW What about any of the metal players? For example, you were getting pretty thick, detuned tones on songs like āCinnamon Girlā and āWhen You Dance, I Can Really Love.ā Were you aware of, say, Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath, another guy who tuned down his guitar?
YOUNG Not so much. But I love that music. Itās like classical rock and roll. The Scorpions, Iron Maidenā¦ That whole thing is quite strong. Itās an art form in itself. Thatās the thing about metal: some people think one band is great and another is just shit, while a normal person standing there couldnāt tell the difference between the two. So I was never a metalhead, but Iāll listen to a guy like Zakk Wylde play the guitar. And I know a lot of metal guys. They come to our shows because thereās something we do that I guess they connect with.
GW But there was nothing directly influencing you at the time you were first getting loud with Crazy Horse?
YOUNG Well, you knowā¦when you really listen to it, Crazy Horse didnāt get very loud. Not until [1979ās] Rust Never Sleeps. The early Crazy Horse, with Danny, is not a big, whomp-āem, arena-rock sound. That happened with the second version of the band, when Poncho joined. āCowgirl in the Sandā and āDown By the Riverāāwhen you listen to āem, theyāre not that loud. Though they can be, especially when we do them now.
GW Much of the ābignessā thatās associated with Crazy Horse, I suppose, is a result of the grit in the guitar tones, and also the space between the instruments.
YOUNG Yeah, thereās a lot of room in those records. Those songs were written to be explored forever. Thereās no finished version.
GW How would you characterize your lead playing?
YOUNG It sucks! Itās just a fucking racket. I get totally lost when Iām playing guitar. Iāll just play a melody over and over again and change the tone, bend a string, do all that. Iām totally engrossed in what Iām doing. At one with it. But I suck. Iāve heard myself.
GW Some people would beg to differ.
YOUNG Well, I have moments where I really express myself on the guitar. But I canāt play acoustic like Bert Jansch, and I canāt play electric like Hendrix or J.J. Cale, who are probably the two best electric guitar players Iāve ever heard. And Jimmy Page, heās a great one. I really love the way he plays. Heās so slippery. Heās very, very dangerous. Those are three classic guitar players to me.
GW What would you say are your strengths?
YOUNG I have melodies, and I have a sense of rhythm and drive. But itās not about me, anywayāitās about the whole band. Itās about everybody being there at once. When I play Iām listening for everything, trying to drive it all with my guitar. My guitar is the whole fucking band.
GW Perhaps an example of what youāre describing would be the famous āone-noteā solo in āCinnamon Girl,ā which encompasses everything youāre talking about: lead, rhythm, melody, drive. Though my contention has always been that itās not really one noteā¦
YOUNG Itās not! Everyone says that, but thereās about a hundred notes in there. And every one of them is different. Every single one. They just happen to have the same name. [laughs]
GW Does it amuse you that people spend so much time evaluating the things you do?
YOUNG You know, I just thought I was playing the right solo. I mean, can you imagine anything else in there? Like, some fucking fast-note thing. Who needs that? Itās rhythm.
GW That said, is there any particular song or moment on Archives that really captures the essence of Neil Young as a musician?
YOUNG No one thing. No one thing. Itās too big. Thereās too much information. And you can zero in as close as you like, but then you wind up going too far, and you gotta pull back out. Itās big-picture stuff. But itās all there. You know, one day Iām gonna put out a download update, and when you open it up, thereāll just be several photographs of kitchen sinks. [laughs] Thatās it.

āIām sitting on the couch with a guitar, and Jeff is standing over me. He pulled out a notebook with lyrics and doodles, started singing, and that was Graceā: How Gary Lucas made guitar magic with Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefheart and Chris Cornell

āI donāt think I have the agility on the neck to do a traditional guitar solo ā Iām more from the Kurt Cobain schoolā: Interpol frontman Paul Banks on making landmark records, his favorite John Frusciante solo and why heās no fan of the Fender Twin