Waging Heavy Peace (17 page)

—

W
e tried being on the boat with Ben, but it was not in the cards. Ben was a handful, and neither Pegi nor I was truly a sailor. The boat went around the world more or less, but we didn’t. That dream didn’t come true. There was something more important to me than that: my family. My Pegi and Ben.

Zeke was coming to the ranch for weekends, and Pegi was becoming a strong mother figure for him, too, building a strong family foundation, stability, and security for the kids. So we would fly out and meet the
Ragland
at different locations around the world. Acapulco, Alaska, Panama, Bora-Bora, Papeete, Huahine, Mooréa, the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas—we did have some really good times! Now that Ben is so big, it is largely impossible for us to travel on the
Ragland
as a family, and we
are
a family, so we have been trying to sell her for a few years. Eventually it will happen, and that chapter will close. But these memories will live forever.

Ben Young on my lap, David Myers, Pegi Young, and John Thompson on the
Human Highway
set, 1980.

Chapter Thirty

A
fter Ben Young was born, Pegi and I headed south to Los Angeles to begin filming
Human Highway
on a soundstage in Hollywood. I needed to do something besides music to keep fresh and have a musical perspective. Have you ever heard the expression “How can you miss me if I don’t go away?” That expression defines why I do other things. I love the variety, and the projects are all interrelated anyway. There is no reason to just repeat oneself until further notice. When we got to LA, we set up house at a hotel we really liked at the time called L’Hermitage, not to be confused with my favorite hotel in Nashville, the Hermitage.

Like movies made a long time ago in Hollywood, we used sets that were made to look like the real world. That’s how a storybook quality can be created, and I was trying to get that look. It’s harder to do that storybook quality, if not impossible, when you use real-life scenes and go outdoors. The
Human Highway
concept was for us to film on an indoor set that looked like a corner gas station in a fictional place called Linear Valley. Megapolitan City was visible in the distance, and a nuclear power plant was about a mile away in the background. We had a set designed and constructed that had a train track and a train that passed by occasionally. The action focused on the folks at the gas station and attached café, which was a caboose.

Three waitresses, played by Geraldine Baron, Sally Kirkland, and Charlotte Stewart, worked in the café. The part of the café cook was played by Dennis Hopper. Dean Stockwell, codirecting with me, played the proprietor. I played Lionel, a very dorky (think Jerry Lewis) mechanic working at the station, and Russell Tamblyn played Fred, a friend of Lionel’s who wanted a job. Pegi had a small part as a biker girl. David Myers was our director of photography, with Larry Johnson as assistant director and Jeanne Field in production. It was a sort of day-in-the-life concept, all taking place in one day, just a regular day, the day the earth suddenly ended in a world war. It was a comedy.

Every day we began with shooting the script we had come up with the night before. What a blast! We did some really crazy and fun things, riding bikes and using rear-screen projection—really old-time techniques. We came up with new wacky things to do every day. Some of the ideas were really old-school, and some of them were just plain dorky. There was a lot of improvising, and the set was very alive. It was purposefully made to look like a set, not real.

It was a big family, and we shot for six weeks. I financed the whole thing myself because we couldn’t get anyone to back the way we were approaching the film. It was a typical Shakey Pictures production! It was a definite high point for Larry, David Myers, and me. Pegi brought Ben Young down to the set on occasion to share the fun, and we were all having such a great time.

After we finished shooting, the film went through several versions in editing. We had a screening in San Diego and passed out info cards for people to comment on the film. It was a disaster, but a really funny one. People were outraged that I was playing such a dorky character, and some were advising me that we bury the picture because it would kill my career. I took that positively—it was a good sign that my character was getting a strong reaction. I felt strangely good about it.

It was my feeling that the film was what I wanted it to be, but the main area of concern for me was a dream sequence that was not quite what I had intended. Several versions of the film were edited and one was even put out on Pioneer LaserDisc. I still like the first cut, the director’s cut that I did, and today we are preparing it for a release as part of the Shakey Pictures collection on Netflix. I am going back in to edit and finalize that dream sequence when I get back to the mainland.

Larry’s great talent in filmmaking was partly his ability to get emotions from the scene in the editing room. His touch would bring out the soul and magic. He did an edit on the bonfire scene at Puye in
Human Highway
that he cut to my song “Goin’ Back.” It was magical to me. I think it is the turning point in
Human Highway
, where you forget about everything else and become in the moment with the counterculture, the hippies, the artists, the Indians. Everything in the film revolves around that scene to me. That was Larry. He went into the editing room one day and came out with that. Sheer brilliance. On top of that, he was so positive and energized, keeping everyone on their toes and having fun. His energy was contagious.

When we lost Larry in 2010, he was working with Toshi Onuki on revising
Human Highway
. Toshi is a very creative and important part of the Shakey Pictures team, who spent years with Larry developing the archives. Larry was upset because a piece of film was missing, and he never did get to complete the high-resolution digital version before he died. He wanted to maintain the quality of David Myers’s original film. I am less concerned with that than I am with content, although we will try to find the footage, and Toshi and I will hopefully get this done in a way that Larry would have liked once and for all.

It was a wild time. Devo and I were doing “Out of the Blue” in the studio and a lot of stuff from
Trans
on the radio, plus Devo’s performance of “Worried Man,” the Kingston Trio classic. There was a lot of Devo in
Human Highway
; they contributed three performances. Add to that some of the off-the-wall scoring things we did with Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and I am sure we will have something very memorable for the sound track.

I will be excited to close the book on
Human Highway
. There is certainly a lot to do to pick up the pieces strewn around from this long life so far, but I have an excellent crew and am confident that we are up to it. Of course, time must be set aside to have fun.

—

R
ight near the end of filming at the soundstage, Pegi started having some headaches. They were really bad ones. She was in a lot of very intense pain. At this time I must confess to one of the worst low points I have had. Pegi was in the hospital and they were looking at her brain, giving her some tests to find out why she was having these terrible headaches. The shooting on set was finished for
Human Highway
and we were having a wrap party. I got stoned and way too high to be visiting her in the hospital, but I went anyway. She had been having a bad time there, and her mother was visiting her when I arrived stoned. Pegi knew it right away and threw me out of the room, seeing the shape I was in. I really let her down. She was always there for me, and I had blown a chance to be there for her. Her mother, of course, had no idea why Pegi threw me out. It was just very confusing for her and a real low point for me.

Anyway, we had some tests done and found out that Pegi had a disorder in the veins in her brain called an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), and pressure was building. These AVMs often go undetected until something catastrophic occurs, such as stroke or death. They are also very often inoperable because of their location in the brain. So we were lucky on both counts. It was decided that this area of her brain had to be operated on. Major brain surgery was performed at Stanford University Medical Center. They had to cut off all her beautiful blond hair. I remember her sitting upright in her bed like a little girl, wrapped in a white hospital gown, with her hair all gone. She looked so beautiful and so innocent. I was so scared that something might happen to her in the surgery. It was possible. The brain is a very risky thing to operate on. I tried to show Pegi that everything was going to be fine, but I was really scared. That Pegi might never be the same or might be greatly injured as a result of the operation was a fleeting thought. I quickly pushed it out of my mind. After I left the hospital, I went out with Briggs and got really stoned. When I went back to the hospital the next day, Pegi could see that I was all hungover. It must have been so disappointing for her. I had let her down again.

The time arrived for the surgery, and it was successfully performed. During recovery, which took quite a while, Pegi spoke very slowly; over a period of about three months her speech gradually returned to normal. She used to go out into the garden and sit there, pulling weeds and doing simple things, while the sun rose and set. I was always thinking how much I loved her and how I never wanted to lose her. I can still see her sitting in that garden like a little girl, with her hair so short. I wanted her to get her laugh back. And she did. Her laugh started coming back slowly, and it returned to its full glory in a few months. I was so happy. Day after day. Week after week. She came back. My Pegi and I have been through a lot of life together. I am so thankful for every day.

—

W
henever I think of Larry Johnson, I am always struck by the amount of time he dedicated to helping others have a good time. He was always doing things for other people. In his work with me, he made sure that everything was ready for me to contribute when I arrived at the scene. Materials were lined up. People were ready. Larry was always looking out for everyone—except Larry. When he started getting tired in the afternoon and needed to take a rest, I should have known something big was wrong, because he was taking time out for himself. If I had really noticed that fully, it would have registered loudly that something was amiss. Of course, I was preoccupied, as is my nature, and I often miss important things going on with others around me. I was focused on something that had to do with me, or one of my creations, which is also my nature. So I missed helping the one person who helped me when he needed it most. That is the nature of life, to learn lessons too late in some instances. People like me learn the hard way. Now I am looking out for these signs in my loved ones more than ever before.

I will never be as giving a person as Larry—at least it is highly unlikely because I am so possessed. But
never
is also a big word, and things do change. Maybe someday I will evolve to a place where I have some of the qualities Larry had. Even the people who got the wrong end of the stick loved Larry. If you offended Larry, you went straight to the penalty box, and it was not easy to get released. If a professional did not do a great job and failed to deliver quality when he was offered an opportunity, that person went straight to the box. If you were focused on something other than your responsibility to Larry and he had given you a good chance, off you went. Some people spent years in that box. Larry had his reasons. But everybody loved him, even those put in the box.

He had more women in more places than anyone I know. They all loved him dearly and they all understood that there were others. This was not totally comfortable for him, but he would juggle and balance it like a magician. When we held a celebration of Larry’s life, the women he loved were all there together, and his most recent girlfriend was snubbed by the others. Somehow that made sense. She had certainly not established herself as being on the same level as Larry’s previous ladies; they all knew one another, but they didn’t know her.

When we first met, Larry was with Jeanne Field. “Miss Field,” as Larry used to call her, was a jewel of a person and still is today. We were all working on
Journey Through the Past
and having a big old time. Miss Field was doing production. Larry had us down in Asheville, North Carolina, interviewing an old black couple, Sandie and Levie, who were a part of his early life. They were recalling the slave days, and Larry was hanging on every word. The footage was beautiful. We have not used it yet.

I am sure it will hold some great meaning for me now. It was like that. Larry did things and much later you would discover why. He often joked about being a redneck cracker. He carried a white kerchief and dabbed the sweat on his forehead, playing the part of a gracious southern gentleman, tipping his hat to lady passersby. I am sure he is doing the same in heaven, or something a lot like heaven.