Waging Heavy Peace (2 page)

With Crazy Horse—left to right, Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot, Frank “Poncho” Sampedro—on Malibu Beach, 1975.

Chapter Two

California, 2011

N
ot that it matters much, but recently I stopped smoking and drinking.

I am now the straightest I have ever been since I was eighteen. The big question for me at this point is whether I will be able to write songs this way. I haven’t yet, and that is a big part of my life. Of course I am now sixty-five, so my writing may not be as easy-flowing as it once was, but on the other hand, I
am
writing this book. I’ll check in with you on that later. We’ll see how it goes.

My doctor said it would be good for me to stop smoking weed because he sees a sign of something developing in my brain, and I am listening to him. My dad was a great writer and he lost his cognizance to dementia at about age seventy-five, so I am wary of that. When I stopped smoking weed, I threw in drinking, too, because I had never stopped both simultaneously and I thought it might be nice to get to know myself again. When my daughter stopped drinking a few years ago, I was very impressed by the example she set for our family. I love life with my wife, Pegi, and the kids, and want to live as much of it as I can, but not as a burden to anyone.

Although I have not written any songs in a while, a few songs that mean a lot to me and may have shaped my songwriting are listed here: “Crazy Mama” by JJ Cale is a record I love. The song is true, simple, and direct, and the delivery is very natural. JJ’s guitar playing is a huge influence on me. His touch is unspeakable. I am stunned by it. “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan is as fresh as the first day I heard it—I can still remember that afternoon in Toronto. It changed my life. The poetry, attitude, and ambience of that piece are part of my makeup. I absorbed it. “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes has a sound I always will love. It is in my soul. Ronnie sings it so great. The groove, the beautifully resonant background vocals, the track: It is all one thing. Phil Spector is a genius. Jack Nitzsche is a genius. “Evergreen” by Roy Orbison is one of the most beautiful sentiments ever recorded. I can still hear Roy’s voice and feel my girlfriend’s love. “Four Strong Winds” by Ian & Sylvia speaks to me always. It occupies part of my heart. There is a feeling in it. I love the prairies, Canada, my life as a Canadian. Of course I love songwriting, so I know someday I will write again.

I also have been thinking about Crazy Horse. To me, that band is a vehicle to cosmic areas that I am unable to traverse with others. Some people have asked me why I play with them. They say, “Why do you play with Crazy Horse? They can’t play.” The answer is blowin’ in the wind. I can go places with them. Pegi just recorded “I Don’t Want to Talk About It,” written by Danny Whitten, the original Crazy Horse guitar player and singer who’s all over
Early Daze
, an album of songs from the beginning of Crazy Horse that I have been working on compiling recently. Danny was every bit the artist that I am, but he died of a heroin OD in the early seventies. Every time I hear Pegi sing that song, it makes me tremendously sad. She sings it so beautifully, phrasing it to break my heart. She does it justice. You can see I have some unfinished business there, reckoning with Danny.

I have been working on
Crazy Horse: The Early Daze
for a few months, collecting unreleased tracks that tell a story of the band that no others can tell. Crazy Horse, formed at the beginning of 1969 with myself, Danny Whitten, Ralph Molina, and Billy Talbot, is still together today, in 2011. I love working on this
Early Daze
record. It makes me feel good. I told Ralphie, Crazy Horse’s drummer, about this and how cool it was. He remembered that there were a lot of things that never saw the light of day. Now they will. He was very excited. I just have to finish it. At least get it on the road to being done. I will have to be hands-on for that.

Danny’s playing is all over those early tracks. I miss him still. He would have grown to be great, and we would have really made history with him. I have some regrets there, but
this
record will set some of it straight. After Danny’s passing, I was devastated, but I was also booked on the road doing the Time Fades Away tour in 1973 with Jack Nitzsche, Kenny Buttrey, Tim Drummond, and Ben Keith. The tour went on. Danny was supposed to play in that band. Only Tim and I are left now.

Back to the Horse. In 1974, after Danny’s death, Poncho Sampedro was introduced to me by Billy Talbot, our bass player, and we became Crazy Horse again with Poncho on guitar. It was a different band, great in a new way. To his credit, Poncho would not try to play anyone else’s parts. He was Poncho. That was a really good attitude, and it enabled us to stay true to ourselves, pick up the pieces, and move on. So we did, with
Zuma
,
American Stars ’n Bars
, and
Rust Never Sleeps
. We are a great live band, and playing with Crazy Horse is transcendent for me. If I only had a few new songs . . . I need new to get there.

Redoing old songs doesn’t work very well. New blood. That’s what the Horse needs. So I have a plan: Crazy Horse at the White House. Get together on my ranch in the big White House, a sprawling ranch-style bungalow made of redwood, painted white, located in the redwoods on the Corte Madera Creek. It has been the center of music-related activity on the ranch since I purchased that part of the property in 1972. (This is not to be confused with the little White House, a small home for working folks on the old ranch back in the day that is now used to house visitors who may be working on musical projects.) The plan: Set up in there and record, leave the equipment at the ready for a year or so until we have a great record. Just keep playing and let the
muse
back into the fold. Gently now. No searching. No working. No trying. Just let the
spirit
come back in and don’t be greedy. Be ready. That should put my straightness to the test.

I want to use our old tube recording console known as the Green Board (I think it is the best soundboard ever) and record 8-track on two-inch magnetic tape for the fattest analog sound possible. The Green Board is full of history. The Beach Boys’
Pet Sounds
and “Heroes and Villains,” Cream’s
Disraeli Gears
, the Monterey Pop Festival, and Wilson Pickett were all recorded through the Green Board. We will run Pro Tools digital alongside just to have the modern tools for fixing our mistakes, but I want that old tube sound. I love the tubes, with their chemical and gas reactions creating the sound. I think this will be fun and will work, and I am going to get that started today. I’ll keep you posted.

I want to release this Crazy Horse recording as my first PureTone release. That would really be cool. You know, the way people experience music today is so different from how it used to be. It’s not the same part of the culture that it was. I think a lot of that has to do with the quality of the sound, so I am addressing that with PureTone. The music is not the problem. It’s the sound.

Years ago, we always would listen to acetates (reference vinyls that can only be played a few times) and hear what we had done in the studio. That is how we listened. The feeling would be there immediately, and off we would go into the spirit world, listening, feeling, and absorbing the waves of sound. That was an amazing time. It is gone now, but we could get it back with a quality sound that is visceral.

Today music is presented as an entertainment medium, like a game, without the full audio quality. It’s like a cool pastime or a toy, not like a message to the soul. So things have changed.

So I am making music again. That is the plan. Go for the music again. So here I go. It’s always been good to me. I just want to feel it. I need to feel it in my body, sing lyrics that make me want to play my heart out in long instrumental passages that only the Horse can carry me on. I remember once in the studio we were recording and I caught Ralph’s eye. He was in pure ecstasy just for a moment; we made visual contact, and I have never lost that feeling. It is like we felt the force of the Horse all at once! Now Ralph always says, “Don’t look at me while I’m playing.” I know why. He wants to not think about how he looks. He wants to play. So we ride together, but we also ride alone. Crazy Horse is an animal unto itself. Anyone who has witnessed a full-on barrage from the Horse knows that of which I speak.

When I think about music today, I am struck by the history of it all, how important that has become to the audience. Knowledge of the roots of rock and R&B is coveted. Tracks of that music will live forever. Those times were magic, and I know that they will never be lived again. I know that if I can bring them all back in their pristine glory with PureTone, it will be a revelation for music lovers today, to actually hear these songs the way they were with the original resonance, creating the feeling that moved a generation’s hearts in the beginning. This is getting closer with every passing day . . .

—

I
’m going back to the train barn to see if I can fix the derailment that ended my last visit. It should be easy. After that, I will let a little time pass and see what happens in there. Maybe take my computer with me and keep on writing this. That is the way I wrote the script for
Greendale
, by not stopping for anything. I just carried a pad with me and would write whenever something came to mind. At first I didn’t know I was writing a story, just thought it was a bunch of songs that featured the same characters. Anyway, I’m going to pack this thing up and go over there.

It’s summer now and the insects are all out. On the way to the train barn I notice that the swans who live in the lake in front of our house have no way to quickly make it back into the water if they are out walking and sense a bobcat, mountain lion, coyote, or other threat. We have lost a few birds lately, and this is something that needs to be taken care of.

Back at the railroad, the derailment was between two crossover track switches. That is where two mainlines now coincide. There used to be two mainlines at this location. Originally, Chinese laborers, working for the railroad, had built some beautifully intricate trestle bridges over a feeder track that passed under the original twin mainlines. When an earthquake shattered the ancient structure in the early eighties, the railroad, having fallen on hard times, was unable to finance the reconstruction. To get things moving again and recover lost revenue as quickly as possible, the mainlines were quickly consolidated into a temporary bridge that carried a new single mainline over the underlying feeder track that was still in use. This resulted in a congested location that was not originally planned for and has consequently become the site of more than one derailment and ensuing safety inspections.

It was not an easy task to fix the derailment, and took over five minutes. The two switches had to be placed into manual mode for the reassembly of the train after the derailed cars were re-railed. Once again, my expertise at re-railing by touch instead of vision—the result of many years’ experience—saved a lot of time and got the railroad up and running before an official inspection was necessary. Having dodged that bullet, I sit down to continue my writing.

Chapter Three

I
have to tell you what happened at the meeting yesterday at Feelgood’s.

The gentleman representing the new owner of WMG came by, and I took him and my partner Craig Kallman, CEO of Atlantic Records, for a ride in my 1978 Cadillac Eldorado to listen to PureTone. It was very important that the gentleman, Alex, understand what we were doing and advise his boss it would be a good idea to finance this endeavor, so I gave it my best. He got the difference in sound quality immediately, and I was very happy. So was Craig. This is important stuff. The making of musical history, repossessing our sound, and bringing it back to the masses. After all, improving the quality of life is the ultimate goal of technology.

With that in mind, I was demonstrating the Revealer, a feature that allows the listener to compare PureTone with lesser formats like CDs and MP3s. Suddenly, Craig was tapping my shoulder rather frantically. Looking up, I noticed I was on a collision course with another vehicle! I stopped just in time to avoid a head-on crash. It was my road and I was not expecting a visitor, but the lady driving the other car was the wife of the catering chef I had hired for this meeting, and she was bringing down some BBQ sauce. With that episode in the past, I regrouped and moved on with the demo.

Mark, our PureTone CEO candidate, had told me that as part of the demo I should show the video I had made of musicians riding in the PureTone Eldorado, listening and testifying to how they loved the sound of PureTone. Tom Petty, Mike D of the Beastie Boys, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Kid Rock were all in the video, along with Mumford & Sons and My Morning Jacket. They were all espousing the merits of PureTone, truly enthusiastic about the prospect of listeners actually hearing the same quality that the artists heard in the studio when the masters were recorded. Mark had told me to show Alex the video on the iPad—the same iPad I was using as the user interface to control the PureTone player. That would be the Silicon Valley way. And, after all, we are a Silicon Valley company, bringing artists’ music and record companies together with the Cloud to save the sound of music. I deftly extracted the iPad from its holder, brought up the video, and played it back
from the middle
! Realizing my mistake, I took it back from Alex and got the main page up, returning the video to the top and starting again—only to realize that I had turned the sound off, mistaking the sound control for the control for the position of the video. Mr. Silicon Valley! Was I cool or what?

This demonstration was going nowhere, but I finally got it back on track. Thank God the video is very cool and makes a great point. Alex said he liked it a lot, and the whole idea seemed to be a hit. It will be the first of many episodes we plan on rolling out on Facebook just before the launch of PureTone, one video per day for over a month. What a demo! We still don’t know what Alex is going to tell his boss: invest or pass? This is a heck of a business, this start-up thing. Not for the faint of heart.

—

I
t’s the next day. I’m back at Feelgood’s waiting for a three-o’clock meeting with our new partner, WMG, to get a grip on our PureTone plan going forward. The Skylark is looking good. I just got new license plates for it. They are old California plates I bought on eBay. Other cars in Feelgood’s right now include a ’47 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon woodie I brought to the ranch in 1970, a ’54 Corvette I bought back in ’74 (in which I first learned that Carrie, Zeke Young’s mom, was pregnant), a ’57 Eldorado Biarritz convertible that Pegi and I bought at the San Mateo County Fair Antique and Collector’s Revival back in the day, and a ’57 Jensen 541 I bought in Fort Lauderdale in 1975 while I was refitting the
WN Ragland
, my 1913 Baltic Trader, with my old buddy Roger Katz. Every car tells a story. They are all packed with good memories. My latest purchase, a 1963 Avanti, is in the shop getting ready to take up a residency in Feelgood’s. Someday I hope to write a history of every car I have ever owned. Cars all have stories to tell.

I used to think that buying a car or a guitar was like buying someone’s memories, feelings, and history. I would always get a song out of it. I will do anything to get a new song . . . An old car can take you new places. An old guitar, well, that’s a whole other story.

The Green Board is sitting twenty feet away here in Feelgood’s, looking like a museum piece. I want to bring it back to life—and myself with it. Sitting around here waiting for this meeting with all these things and stories attached to them, that’s the way my life is. I’m a material guy it turns out, looking to unload in a way that helps everything get lighter.

Waiting is not my strength in most matters. I may be a very impatient person when I am focused on something I would like to see happen. I think things are moving along, but I can’t play them like a guitar. That is obvious. Being a musician enables a person to bend the notes and express things that are inside you, no matter what. That is probably why I am so happy when I am playing music or making a record. I am very excited about using the Green Board to record this next album. I love the sound, and though I don’t have even one song or idea at this point, I am looking forward to expressing something through music, anything. It is this process of getting away from music and doing other things that lets me stay really into music. I need relief from music so that I can appreciate it when I have the chance to partake. Just thinking about playing makes me feel more at home.

My friend Paul feels the same way. He loves music but has to get away from it to stay vital with it. It is certainly a balancing act. Paul and I are friends because we both knew and loved Linda, who I met first during Buffalo Springfield days. Linda was a wonderful girl and lady. Today we are in touch periodically and talk about music or whatever. I like Paul a lot. He played at the Bridge School Benefit for us a few years ago and was really great. He reminds me a little of a modern-day Charlie Chaplin, the way he moves and the attention he pays to his art.

Next week there will be a big meeting about Lincvolt, another project of mine that I have been working on for four years now, repowering a huge car to make it more energy efficient. Why? Because if I can do this with a big car, people will imagine what can be done with a small car. And people in this country are big. They have an urge to travel long distances—the roads in North America are long and beautiful. The scenery is God. Using a big car for an electric project resonates with the wandering spirit of America and brings attention to the cause, makes people talk about it—even if they think it’s a dumb idea and go out of their way to say why it is, I am succeeding because people are talking about how they would do it better. How do we lose our dependence on fossil fuels? By not using them and doing it in dramatic ways that attract attention.

That is one reason the generator in Lincvolt runs on ethanol. Oh my God!
Ethanol?
I have heard so many bad things about this fuel. It uses food stock and takes away from the supply of food. No! There is a lot of misinformation about ethanol. Ethanol does not replace the food we are using. The amount of corn we are using for food has been the same for years. It is flatlining. We are using ethanol from corn, but it is not taking away from our food. It isn’t taking away from our feed for animals, either. Ethanol suppliers like POET in South Dakota actually produce food for animals from the waste of ethanol production. I have gone another route with ethanol. Lincvolt uses cellulosic ethanol from biomass—and we have a lot of biomass on this continent. We could use it for something constructive.

Even Henry Ford was intrigued by the possibilities. The other day, when I was doing some research, I came upon a paper by Bill Kovarik, a Ph.D. who works at Radford University, called “Henry Ford, Charles Kettering, and the ‘Fuel of the Future.’” Here’s my version, partly derived from Kovarik’s defining work. It’s called “Lincvolt and the Ford Legacy.”

Back in the early 1900s, Henry Ford was thinking about the future and was receptive to building electric cars. As time passed, news reports had Ford’s EV coming in 1915, then 1916. Details varied: It would cost somewhere between $500 and $750 (between $10,000 and $15,712 today) and would go somewhere between fifty and a hundred miles on a charge. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford’s business partner and friend, divulged no details in an interview with
Automobile Topics
in May 1914. “Mr. Henry Ford is making plans for the tools, special machinery, factory buildings, and equipment for the production of this new electric,” Edison said. “There is so much special work to be done that no date can be fixed now as to when the new electric can be put on the market. But Mr. Ford is working steadily on the details, and he knows his business so it will not be long.”—Bill Kovarik

We will never know how Henry Ford’s vision of the future would have turned out if his dreams of biofuel-powered cars had come true in the early twentieth century. What would it have been like if we had not powered our cars with gasoline? A classic Lincoln Continental convertible originally produced by Ford Motors in 1959 may just give us a glimpse. Repowered as a series hybrid with a 200KW prime mover and a Ford Hybrid 2.5L Atkinson engine, Lincvolt may be like Henry Ford’s dream car. Lincvolt’s Ford 2.5L is fueled by E 100 ethanol or E 85 ethanol from biomass. An A 123 battery pack stores the power for silent running around forty miles. The Lincvolt Continental Electro-Cruiser, built with American components, will be on the road in late 2012, making many aspects of Henry Ford’s dream a reality.

The innovation will not end there. Building on the tradition of user-friendly technology, Lincvolt will feature the world’s best-sounding audio system, PureTone. Taking full advantage of Cloud-based libraries of recordings by your favorite artists, Lincvolt will simply sound like no other car on earth. Lincvolt passengers will enjoy PureTone SQS (Studio-Quality Sound), making Lincvolt audio sound superior in quality and digital resolution to any music ever heard in a car.

Am I a dreamer or what? I write blog articles like this all the time, hoping I can make it happen one way or another. Now I have AVL, a prototype builder of electric cars for many automakers, building the electric drive train and controls, Paul Perrone of Perrone Robotics making it autonomous to help it gather even more attention, and Roy Brizio of Roy Brizio Street Rods building the final shape around this behemoth concept. A 1959 Lincoln Continental convertible is one of the largest cars ever built, measuring 19.5 feet overall and weighing about six thousand pounds with my modifications. It is smooth as glass and whisper quiet, runs about forty miles on a charge—about an average daily commute—and has unlimited mileage without stopping to recharge because of its ethanol-fueled generator system, the result of years of experimenting and failing with different approaches.

I did that experimenting, and it wasn’t always fun. It sucked watching a tape of my electric car in a warehouse burning to the ground at three
A.M.
(more on that later). It hasn’t been easy to do, but we just keep trying and knowing eventually a solution will rear its head. Many talented people have had to come together to show this could be done, and it is being built right now and on schedule for completion in 2012. Sometime I’ll tell you a few other parts of that story, like the many times I had to go to Wichita, where the car was being repowered, and wait for something to happen that never really did happen. Or the two weeks my good friend Larry Johnson and I spent waiting around in Wichita, after taking a train from San Jose, having been assured by Johnathan Goodwin, the master mechanic hired to perform the repower, that Lincvolt was ready to roll out of Wichita as soon as we arrived. Yes, sometime I’ll tell you . . .

It can be frustrating and it may stress relationships with family to the limit, and there is no guarantee of success or recognition of success. I don’t know why I have to try these things and become so engrossed and obsessed with them. For sure music is a huge release from these types of projects.