Waging Heavy Peace (34 page)

Chapter Sixty

F
arm Aid 26 is coming up next week. I haven’t played much lately. I don’t have a musical direction at the moment, other than my wish to play with Crazy Horse and explore the territory, see the view. At times like these, I am at a loss. Gigs that come up on a time clock don’t really work for the creative process and are a disturbance for the muse. That has nothing to do with my support for the farmers, a lifelong commitment. It has to do only with the muse. How can I play if I have no direction? It’s not just a job you do.

Usually I do benefits in October. That way I can prepare myself, figure out what I will be doing, and play three or four benefits during that month. This Farm Aid is happening at an odd time of year, August. If I’m not on the road, I’m resting in August, and that rest is very important. After a long time off, playing one gig takes at least a month of mental preparation to get an idea of what I’m going to do, where I will be drawing from. I have less than a week left now to prepare. I need to start playing every day so my hands are ready with calluses on my fingers and I know the words and songs.

I’m going to do my best Bob Dylan imitation! I will go out there with an acoustic guitar and harmonica. No electric. This will be a folk approach, based on story songs with lots of words and verses. I will be like a ghost from the past, totally a throwback to another time. (It’s funny; I call it a Bob Dylan imitation, but Bob never does it. It’s what everyone would like to see him do, and he never does it. I suspect it would be too lonely and singular for him, no band to hang with or friends to see every day when he gets off the bus.)

So that is my plan. I will play a few new tunes that I did on the last tour—“Love and War,” “Peaceful Valley Boulevard”—and do them differently, with a pushier groove and more harp playing with a straight acoustic rhythm instead of the more sensitive fingerpicking and bass-reinforced
Le Noise
sound. I may revert to history with some story songs like “Powderfinger” and a few others, punctuated here and there with some more personal lyrics like “Sugar Mountain” and “Comes a Time.” I will probably not play any other instruments, keeping it way simple and focused on the old-time folk music approach. Maybe I’ll play “Vampire Blues,” maybe not.

Basically I will come and go, just being myself in a really simple way. No bells and whistles at all. This is something I think I can do and make it work. I have been thinking about this for about three weeks and actually worrying about it. That is how a forty-minute set can take a month of preparation. It would take the same amount of preparation for me to do a whole tour.

—

B
ecause someone had the rights to the name PureTone, we changed our name to Pono. It is Hawaiian for “righteous and good.” We love our new name. Negotiations for the Pono project between Pono and WMG have been ongoing for about six weeks now, trying to settle on the details of the founding partners group. This process is distinctly different from most every other thing I have done in the past. My friend Marc Benioff told me that I need to remember what I’m in it for, saving the sound of music and rescuing an art form, and just focus on that. “Business is not like a song, Neil; there is no last note. It just keeps going on and on, and there is conflict almost constantly,” he told me one night when I called asking for his advice.

The exercise is very frustrating.

He pointed out that I need to focus on what I
can
do, not what I
can’t
do. I need to figure that one out for my own sake, because it’s too wearing on me. I need to let it happen the way it will and not try to control every little part of it. Control is my way of ensuring that things go right, and if I don’t have control, I worry that things are going to get away and not be done correctly. You know, the videos I have been making that showcase me playing Pono for musicians and music lovers are coming along so well, and I see the happiness on the faces of people who are hearing great sound and enjoying it, discovering that music can be much deeper an emotional experience than what they’ve grown used to recently. I feel this is so important, and it is so gratifying to watch all of these car interviews, some twenty-five now, as the editing continues on the ranch. The musicians and music lovers are of all ages, and they are all unified in their strong, supportive, and positive reactions. This is most positive and reaffirms what I believed in the beginning. I
should
be so happy to focus on that.

The goal is so great, and the success of this will be so gratifying. Yet everyone cautions me about the strength of Apple and iTunes. I think that no matter what, this project will force iTunes to be better and to improve quality at a faster pace. I just hope what Apple does is great enough, not some measured response that is hyped so much that the consumers feel they are getting the best when they are not.

The record companies are sort of held hostage in a weird way by the Internet’s dominance in their industry. But because the record companies still hold the gold, their high-quality music masters, it’s time for them to step up and take control of their own destiny. I realize the amount of cash Apple has far exceeds the amount of cash the United States of America has, and everyone is scared of that. But I think public opinion and social networking could win over money, just as it has upset the status quo in the Arab Spring and all of the other revolutions around the world organized through social networking. This is just another revolution. Quality sound can make a return and be reestablished for those who want the best. The best is just not available right now in a consumer-friendly way. The Sound Revolution could bring it back, if the cards the record companies hold are played. That is the big If. Will they have the balls to stand up and take care of the music?

—

T
hese days it’s all about closure of this and that for me. I have too many things to finish. How can I move on until I clean that slate? My film
Human Highway
is one of those things. It should be available to the public. Dean Stockwell and Russell Tamblyn, my old friends from Topanga Canyon, and Dennis Hopper, a good old friend, were in this movie with me, and we wrote the dialogue as we went along. It is the dorkiest damn movie ever and it walks a very fine line right on the edge of being too dorky. Some may say it falls over that line. The film was never put to rest to my satisfaction, and for the last ten years or so, Larry Johnson had been struggling, trying to find some pieces of that film that may be lost now. He was very occupied with getting the quality preserved for David Myers’s legacy. Not that we don’t have copies. We do. We have everything we need to edit together the film in a way I can rest well behind content-wise. When I finish something, I want it to be right, or as right as it can be.

As I mentioned,
Human Highway
is just one of those things. I am not Cecil B. DeMille. It is not a great commercial movie. But it has never reached its potential, so I have never been able to let it go. I have carried it with me all these years. It was released, bombed, and was buried before I even felt it was done. With Larry Johnson gone and David Myers gone and Dennis Hopper, too, I am left with this drive to finish. I went into the editing room on the ranch, which is actually in the train barn as fate would have it. (I love that I can leave the editing screens and walk around looking at the trains and work on some small detail of the layout or clean and polish some wheels while I work out some editing challenge in my head. That is so liberating. It is the combining of two different worlds in a good way for me.)

I asked Will Mitchell, Larry’s and my right-hand man, for all of the existing Shakey Pictures’
Human Highway
footage to be brought to the editing room, and when it all arrived, I sat down with Toshi Onuki and we reviewed what we had. There were three separate versions of the film. One version, which was based on the original cut, the director’s cut if you will, had last been worked on by Larry and Toshi. It was exactly what I was looking for. I asked to see it, and then I viewed it while taking notes. When it was all over, we took a little break and then went through the film, making corrections. It really got good when we made the changes. Humor is all about timing, and I have learned a lot about that in the thirty years since I first cut this picture. We had a hodgepodge of prints and qualities, but were able to cut together the story.

I now feel the picture is in its final shape, and I love it. It’s not the greatest picture in the world, but it is my picture, and I love what it does. It moves me now like I always wanted it to. I think it might still get panned, but I don’t care. I like it. That is what matters to me. Once the technical aspects are all pulled together and the final sound mix is done, I can rest knowing I have done my best. I hope it is what Larry would have wanted. That is a good feeling. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, David. Thanks, Dean and Russell. Thanks, Dennis. I love you guys. I’ll show it to you when I see you.

—

W
hen my studio album
Prairie Wind
was finished, I talked to Jonathan Demme about making a picture. We had discussed the idea a few times before but had no direction to go in. Now we did. We talked about the songs and the feeling on
Prairie Wind
for a long time, the musicians of Nashville, and the great history of country music. We talked about my home in Canada, my dad, my mom, my upbringing, my dad’s hometown on the prairies, my dad’s passing, my cousins singing under the direction of my uncle Bob, who was a great musician and my dad’s brother; we talked a lot about those things. What it all boiled down to was an appearance at the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry in its heyday. We decided to do a performance that was a tribute to those times, to that heritage, while also showcasing
Prairie Wind
for the very first time. We were going to assemble a cast of the great musicians and singers who played on
Prairie Wind
and perform it live at the Ryman in front of an audience of Nashville folks on the night of the August full moon! It was a great plan, and we were very excited to get started.

One night in Nashville we were eating in the restaurant at the Hermitage Hotel. It’s a wonderful place. We were enjoying some fine wine and talking about the picture. I’ll never forget the look on Jonathan’s face when I said I had invited the costume director down to meet him at the restaurant.

WHAT?
You’ve
chosen the costume director?
(Jonathan’s thought bubble!)

Jonathan Demme always chose his own costume directors! Of course I have the greatest respect for Director Demme’s taste and knew he would love Manuel, who originated in Nudie’s shop in Hollywood. Manuel was the man who made every country artist’s clothing. He made Elvis’s gold lamé suit. He made Dolly Parton’s and Porter Wagoner’s clothes. He was
the
man. And there he was, walking into the restaurant. He joined us. He was wearing a very cool shirt and looked like he was already in a movie. Accompanied by a young lady and a young man assistant, he sat down at the table and took a little sip of wine. Then he started talking. It was fascinating. He blew everyone’s mind with his stories. Then Jonathan told him the whole concept for the show, describing the backdrop art, the Ole Opry atmosphere, the
Prairie Wind
songs and feelings, the ambience around the songs being written, my life-threatening situation at the time, the newness of the music, the audience itself, and the camera angles, and asked him what he wanted to do.

“Don’t worry,” Manuel said. “It will be perfect, like a dream you are having.”

Manuel did not offer one detail. It was a moment to remember. Manuel was totally in control. Jonathan was seeing a living legend. This was a great moment.

We went on to make the movie, and it is something that will last a lifetime. We are all very proud of this film. We paid tribute to those who had come before and left an enduring document to the greatness of country music and the tradition of Nashville. My favorite shot is one taken from the back of the stage. You can see Emmylou Harris and me singing “This Old Guitar.” It looks like it’s from the forties, a perfect time capsule. And through beautiful camera work, lighting, and a great instrumental performance, we left a living picture of one of the greatest country music artists of all time, Ben Keith.

Chapter Sixty-One

Y
ou may remember Nina. She is Pegi’s new dog. All curly and soft, little Nina weighs about twenty-five pounds. She went through that broken-down Cadillac Eldorado episode with me out on Interstate 5 in the 106-degree heat. We bonded. Well, now Pegi is on the road with the Survivors, and I am at home with Nina. Nina sleeps at the foot of the bed whenever I am sleeping. It feels good to not be alone. Pegi calls quite regularly to tell me what to do with Nina in this case or that case, and that is always helpful.

Last night Nina was barking incessantly at something outside. I let her out and she just kept on barking. This is something that has just developed recently, and whenever I told Nina to stop barking, she would just ignore me completely. The barking just went on and on. I was beginning to get irritated with this development. Was this dog going to take over the whole house? She was really cute, but she was really LOUD, too. Once she started barking, she would never stop.

I tried yelling at her, “STOP BARKING, NINA!” in my biggest “man voice.” It had no effect. I was getting pissed. Eventually, she got tired and stopped, but it had gone on for a long time. My always active imagination was now getting the best of me in a barrage of images and thoughts. I was starting to visualize a dog barking for the rest of time.

The next morning at about six, Nina and I got up and went out to the kitchen. I put on some water to boil and opened the door and we went outside. I stood there with her as she peed on the lawn. She went about her business, sniffing and carrying on in doglike fashion. Eventually, we returned inside and I made some tea. Sitting down at the computer to check my morning mail, I heard her growling softly, then more loudly, until it developed into a full-on bark. Nina was standing in the kitchen, barking! I sat there, digesting the situation. She continued her barking.

In an epiphany, I softly called her name and gave her my special little whistle that was just for her. She came over to me and I held her little head and in a very soft voice told her, “Nina, there is nothing out there. Just lie down here with me and chill out. Everything is fine. It’s morning now, and it’s all good. Just you and me right here, you on the floor and me with my morning mail.” I patted her little head. She lay down on the floor at my feet and fell asleep. The dog is my new guru.

—

D
rummers are very important to my music and the success of any band playing my music. Ralph Molina is the drummer in Crazy Horse, and his feel is a big part of that Crazy Horse sound. He is very sympathetic to improvisation and can quickly go with any flow change. That is really a key thing if you are playing a long jam or instrumental à la “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Down by the River,” “Big Time,” “Change Your Mind,” “No Hidden Path,” or “Rockin’ in the Free World,” to name just a few. Those songs require the drummer to listen to the subtle changes in guitar leads and rhythms, and follow with changes in the groove. Ralph is the best at that for me. Combining that with Billy Talbot’s simplicity, soul, and aggression, Crazy Horse’s rhythm section is solid as a rock.

Yet at the same time, Ralphie is extremely subtle and can express emotions beautifully in both a ballad and a laid-back song. He is completely unique, emotional, and driving at the same time. His flourishes with my feedback at the end of a long song are always right with me, as if he knows right where I am going. Fact is, we are going there together, feeling our way, and that really applies to all of Crazy Horse. That is what makes the Horse as great as it is, and as cosmic as it is. That is the Force of the Horse. Making the new albums,
Americana
and
Psychedelic Pill
, I have found that this cosmic force has increased, not diminished, with time.

Kenny Buttrey, on the other hand, is a finesse player with a master’s touch on any song he plays. His grooves on
Harvest
are in the pocket, and yet so original at the same time. On drums, he just doesn’t sound like anyone else. Kenny was a complete original who I was lucky to know and play with. His bass player was usually Tim Drummond, a master in his own right. The two of them together were just what my music needed. Tim Drummond also played with Karl T. Himmel on many of my recordings. They also played with JJ Cale on a lot of his early stuff, which just had that amazing groove. The International Harvesters’
A Treasure
is one of the best illustrations of the massive talent of Karl T. Himmel. Karl played on “Comes a Time” and “Four Strong Winds,” as well as a lot of tracks on
Prairie Wind
. Karl’s feel is so fluid and sensitive, and I still love playing with him today.

Chad Cromwell is a unique drummer, different from all the rest. He is very strong and steady, the most reliable. You can count on Chad to always be on the money. A band could hang on his groove because it never falters. His playing on
Prairie Wind
and with the Bluenotes is totally awesome. Equally at home in any genre from country to blues to rock, Chad is a very authoritative, consistent, and powerful drummer who just kicks ass. His drumming on “A Day in the Life” was amazing when I played it with him on my marathon tour with the Electric Band throughout the world in 2007 and 2009. He just rolled with the changes in that song, one of the most difficult and challenging songs for any band, including the Beatles, to play live. When Paul did it with us in Hyde Park at the end of our tour in London, I know he was impressed with how we took that song and delivered it live to the masses.

Chad also played “Words” from the
Harvest
album with its alternating time signatures on that tour. No one other than Buttrey could even play that song, but Chad took it by the horns and slapped it around. The groove with him and Rick Rosas on bass was so huge that we left the ground every night we played it. Save the original version, “Words” was played the best by Chad and that band. The first time I ever saw Rick and Chad playing was at Farm Aid one year with Joe Walsh. I loved the way they supported Joe. I asked them to play a little with me, and we did
Freedom
, the Bluenotes’
This Note’s for You
; then we did
Living with War
, and most recently, the Electric Band’s
Fork in the Road
. These were all wonderful groups, tours, and records. Rick is a pretty quiet guy until he starts telling jokes and getting funny; then he is hilarious. We’ve had some great bus rides. He’s a slinky bass player with a lot of soul. I always enjoy playing with him and Chad, and we have a lot of fun together.

Dewey Martin of the Buffalo Springfield is possibly the fastest and lightest drummer I have ever heard or played with. His kick drum on “For What It’s Worth” is what holds the whole thing together. Drummers are the heartbeat of a song, and it has to be good or you die. So yes, I have been lucky to play with all of these guys.

—

T
he Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is hallowed ground in my mind. Originally founded by Ahmet Ertegun, Bob Krasnow, Jann Wenner, and Jon Landau, the Hall was a great idea and an amazing place to imagine. Originally, it didn’t really exist as a place, and that was fine. I supposed it was big, kind of like the silver lining around a cloud. Not something you could actually see or touch. It was the honor of a lifetime for me to be inducted. A dream come true.

All or most of my heroes were already in the Hall of Fame when I was inducted: Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry—the pioneers and architects were all there. It is the biggest honor in rock and roll, and rock and roll is what it is.

When people got up to accept their inductions in the first few years, you could feel the energy. It was electric. It was their chance to say what they thought, their moment to be heard and be real. People spoke from the heart and said some outrageous things. You never knew what to expect. A few video cameras captured the moment. People spoke off the top of their heads or from a little sheet of paper. People cried and laughed and settled scores. A lot of them settled scores. There was a lot to say for some of them, and this was their best chance.

Some of these artists had not been active in years or had not had more than a moment in the light and certainly did not make a fortune in the music business. But they all had soul. Some did make a lot of money, of course, but the Hall was about the music, about rock and roll as a way of life. Phil Spector, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and several others have made long speeches that covered things they needed to say and they had every right to say, and they exercised that right. It was amazing to hear their takes on life, how they had been done right or wrong, who they blamed for their problems and thanked for their victories on the road to the Hall. It was an honor to hear them talking to their peers, to the others who aspired to be like them, and to those who they felt had attained even higher ground than they themselves had.

My favorites spoke with no notes. Some cried. Some laughed. Some thanked. Some just lashed out at those who had screwed them out of royalties and security later in life. Rock and roll is no cakewalk. It was and is a shrewd and unforgiving business if you made some bad decisions about your representation when you were young. A lot of bad moves were made, particularly in the early days, as great as they were, and this was a chance to set it straight, and the inductees did, exercising their new power and rights as members of the hallowed Rock Hall.

Then the worst thing happened.

The founders decided to make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony a TV show! VH1! What could be LESS rock and roll than VH1? Now a place that was beyond classification had been relegated to a VH1 show. Gone were the long speeches. Three minutes on TV was the new speech. Good-bye, long rambling diatribes. Teleprompters were now available. I made a lot of obscene comments in my speech and swore a lot about everyone involved, but in the end, I don’t care to mention them here. They may know who they are, and they may not. People make mistakes. They probably don’t know the difference.

It reminded me of the Lifetime Achievement Award the Grammys gave Frank Sinatra in New York one year. A recently successful artist came out and introduced Sinatra in a very long-winded oratory, and then Frank came out. He had just started talking when he was out of time. The band began to play and the introducing artist came back out and walked him off. Sinatra was definitely not finished speaking. I would have loved to hear him, but there was no time left. Frank looked confused and disappointed when he was escorted off. He was just getting started and couldn’t believe he was cut short. That’s TV. A rambling intro that was much longer than Frank’s cut-short speech meant that time was up for one of the greatest legends ever in the history of music. That’s life. It pissed me off. But sometimes it’s better not to blow up at someone. I can save that anger and emotion for my guitar playing. A Crazy Horse tour is just around the corner. I’ll use it for fuel. I don’t want to write some damning thing here about somebody and have to live with that for the rest of time. I don’t think that would be a very good idea.

A lot of times things happen and you can’t believe it. You walk around cursing under your breath and it really doesn’t help. Life is too short. Things shake out. They really do. Take the dickhead record executive who came out to hear me once and went back to his Hollywood record company telling them the material wasn’t ready to record. He really pissed me off. Who asked him? I never worked like that before, and I never will in the future. It’s my music. But now I’m letting go of that. I might buy him a beer and tell him to drink it sometime, but that’s about the extent of it now.

I don’t drink anymore myself, I’m moving on. And that’s not to say I won’t drink again. I’m not making any promises, but I don’t think I was a great drinker. Some folks are great drinkers; they drink and tell jokes and laugh their asses off, and they are funny as hell. We buried one of those last week. Life is just a big test, and if you try hard, you fail. If you don’t try too hard and fail a little but have a good time, maybe that is success.

I’ve seen some really happy and content people in this life, and I am not one of them all the time, just some of the time, but I am thankful as hell for them and lonely for the old times and old friends. Not all the time, though. I’m really happy doing what I do, and what I’m doing now is trying like hell to rescue recorded sound so people can feel music again. That makes me happy because it’s real, and if I succeed, I will have helped a lot of artists and music lovers achieve nirvana. Who knows where the feeling of sound went? It went so slowly and gradually that no one noticed but me and a few other narky old buzzards, as my daughter Amber lovingly calls me occasionally. But she was the one who heard Pono in my car after listening to MP3s her whole life and looked at me and asked, “What happened? How did that happen?” She knows why I am doing what I am doing. She is
them
, all of those young people who haven’t felt the real sound of recorded music.

I am doing this for them, and me. Let’s not forget me. I want to feel the sounds again like I did in the beginning, or even better now, because technology is supposed to improve life. Of course, you can’t go back, but when I see a young person react to hearing Pono for the first time, well, that is good enough for me. Yes it is.