IT
MIGHT be Neil Young's most famous line.
It's up there,
anyway, with "I've been a miner for a heart of gold" and
"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming" and "There is a town
in north Ontario" and "Only love can break your heart"
and "Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were",
the kind that cut through not just to one generation but to several,
an inspiration to just about anyone who has picked up a guitar these
past 40 years.
The line? "It's
better to burn out than it is to rust."
That's Neil.
Keep doing new stuff. Never let the gears seize up so the rust can
take hold. Because once it's in there . . .
As he says
in another line of that song: "Rust never sleeps."
Work ethic?
Not only is Young one of the few survivors of '60s rock 'n' roll still
making waves with his new work, he does it at a rate that leaves the
present generation of music-makers choking dust.
In this decade
alone there have been six albums of new material. Make that seven
when the freshly recorded Fork in the Road is released this year.
Not to mention the three live-album releases from the vaults in the
Performance series, the tours with long-time band Crazy Horse and
now with his current touring band, plus his old sparring partners
in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Plus the countless
hours of work on the Archives collection of rare studio material.
That project has assumed mythical status among fans who have been
waiting for its rumoured release for what seems like an eternity.
Hold on, says
Neil, it's coming.
Here's the
really Neil bit. But maybe not just yet.
Keeping
it fresh
Fresh from
making a video in Hawaii on the way to Australia for his first tour
here since 2003 – opening tomorrow at the Gold Coast Big Day
Out – Young says that 2009 might yet be the year of Archives
Vol 1.
"There
is a release date, but I played the new record for the record company
a few days ago and they like it and now they are trying to figure
out what to do," Young says.
"Trying
to figure out what to do" is something record companies have
been attempting with Young's intensely focused pursuit of his artistic
vision for 40 years, so this little glitch in the schedule will come
as no surprise to them or anyone else.
"I always
like to put the newest thing out," Young says. "That always
has precedence, so Archives may end up getting delayed because
of that. But it's not delayed because it's not ready, it's delayed
because there are new things. New is always better."
Young has been
called many things in his time, from stubborn to wilfully perverse,
usually when his career has taken another surprise detour instead
of regurgitating something that will simply sell, which he has never
done.
But the people
who tried to make a career out of recreating whatever gave them their
last hit are long gone. Left standing are the giants, such as Bob
Dylan and Young.
Music is just
part of the deal with Young. Among other things, he's a passionate
family man, filmmaker, model train buff and scientific enthusiast.
As Jimmy McDonough says in his peerless Young autobiography, Shakey,
Young has a personal relationship with electricity.
Car
affection
Then there
are the automobiles.
Among them,
the '53 Pontiac hearse he drove down from Canada to Los Angeles looking
for his first big break. And the '34 Bentley he mentions in the hilarious
between-song raps on his latest release, Sugar Mountain –
Live at Canterbury House 1968, a dazzling performance of soon-to-be
famous songs captured at a Toronto show ("There was probably
room for 50 or 60 people," he tells me).
His catalogue
features numerous songs with car references, notably his ode to a
favourite vehicle in Long May You Run. Now the love of cars and electricity
is coming together in Young's Linc Volt project, converting a monster
1959 Lincoln Continental from V8 gas guzzler to an environmentally
friendly vehicle.
"We've
converted it to an electric motor with a battery bank and a generator.
Long range, it gets about 65 miles to the gallon right now and our
target is a 100-plus and we hope to be there in February when we take
the car to Washington. We are trying to make an example, if you can
make a car like that be relatively green, then it's obvious smaller
cars could do a lot better.
"The Government
is bailing out the automobile companies. Essentially the Government
is going to own the companies for a number of years while they stabilise.
During that time the Government can tell the companies what to do,
so we have a window now to show what can be done with innovation."
Crosby,
Stills and Nash
Young was a
fierce critic of the American war in Iraq with his Living with
War album and on tour with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in
the US.
"A song
isn't going to make a huge difference but maybe a whole bunch of songs
can, or just an accumulation of events," Young says. "Everyone
has to do more than sing about it, you have to try to do things."
Could there
be another CSN&Y tour, even to Australia?
"Everybody's
still kicking, it's always a possibility. I'm very lucky and very
blessed to have so many great musicians I can play with. I could tour
like this for a year-and-a-half then I could go out with them and
it's like it isn't me, I'm part of them now.
"I feel
like I don't want to lose the calluses on my fingers, I want to keep
playing so they don't get soft."
Burn out? Rust?
No chance of either in Neil Young's world any time soon.
Neil Young answers
readers' questions
The Courier
Mail asked readers to send in questions for Neil Young. Here's what
he had to say.
Why is
it that rock seemed to have a very creatve period in the '60s and
'70s, and from then seems to have descended into predictable mediocrity?
"I'd like to see what that person looks like! That doesn't sound
like a young person. It depends on when you grew up what you think
is the best music is. When you are growing up you are feeling music
to the max, all your senses are totally out there. All your emotions
are growing so you get wrapped up in the music. I think music is generational.
I might be wrong but I think whoever asked that is around my age and
had a lot of fun in the '60s."
What do
you believe was the most contributing factor to artists like yourself
producing the quality of work you did back in the day?
"I think it was new. That was the first time that young people
started feeling the music was really theirs. They had ownership of
it, shared with the creators of the music. With the audience and the
musicians, there was a one-on-one thing. There was no TV connection,
no digital download connection, no computer, no YouTube, no connection
like that. So people had to actually go and the band had to actually
play. And you had to be good because the people were there.
"It was the people's music, that's what they felt, it was theirs
and there was a bond between the band, the singer, songwriters, whatever,
and the audience and everyone felt that was special.
"I think that every generation could say that but probably it
got bigger during that period, more people and more of a movement
so we started feeling the power of the music and the generation. Youth
started to flex it' muscle.
"Then the corporate world recognised the power of it too and
started using it as commercials, using electric guitars for cars,
advertising trucks. With a band that sounds like AC/DC and a Chevy
truck then whatta ya got, you got commercial rock'n'roll that's being
used to sell trucks. In the first place it didn'lt come that way but
it ended up that way."
I'm 19 and will see you at the Big Day Out. How do you compose
a setlist for an audience that will range from 18 to 60?
"First of all I'm composing it for myself. What I feel like playing,
what's going to make me feel the best, what's going to lead from one
thing to another so that the band can play the songs the best they
can based on what they just did and what they are going to do next."
Would you do any more collaborations such as your Mirror
Ball album with Pearl Jam?
"I don't have anything planned right now but there's definitely
a chance. It was just the way I like to do it. It had to be fast because
no one had much time, so we didn't waste time trying to perfect them
or mix them or do a bunch of crazy stuff to 'em that doesn't matter.
We played 'em and put 'em out there ... Pearl Jam's a great band,
I loved playing with them."
One of
my favourite albums was Landing on Water, a much under-appreciated
album. What are your thoughts on the album now?
I haven't played any of those songs lately but it's an interesting
record. One record company president in Europe told me it was the
most claustrophobic record he had ever heard and I thought that was
pretty cool. He put it on in his Porsche and would turn it up real
loud. He just felt like it was all over him. That's where I met (producer)
Niko Bolas. We call ourselves the volume dealers when we work together
now, we did the last three, Living With War, Chrome Dreams
II and Fork In the Road.
I love your last album, Chrome Dreams II, and hearing your
great song "Ordinary People" officially released at last after you
performed it in the late '80s. When was the Chrome Dreams
version of the song recorded?
"Chrome
Dreams is a collection of songs that cover a lot of different
times, written at different times and some of them recorded at different
times. Ordinary People was recorded ... I think it was the
late '90s and recorded along with five or six other things that didn't
come out.
"One of them is like a sister song to it, another 15-minute song
or something, the same band as on "Ordinary People". A lot of verses,
same kind of thing, I was into that at the time. We knew they were
good songs but we moved on and they got thrown away for a while, so
we brought it back out. I remembered it as being really good and when
we heard it we decided it would fit on Chrome Dreams. It's
kind of harmonic with the other songs that are on it."
Have you
heard of Australia's biggest band, Powderfinger, named from one of
your songs?
I have heard of them but not heard them. I'm not much of a listener.
There's another band out there that's pretty interesting too, The
Flight of the Conchords.
What's the function of the little switch between the volume knobs
on (Neil's Les Paul Gibson guitar) Old Black?
"It's a phase reversing switch. Actually, it used to be a phase
switch and now what it does is take the knobs out of the equation.
It bypasses all the controls so you don't lose anything. You just
have it full on, everything turned up all the way. If everything is
up all the way you don't need the knobs."
Did you
ever live with a Cinnamon Girl?
(Interview is interrupted by barking from Noel Mengel's Maltese).
"No, but
I like your dog!"
