Neil Young – “Music just takes you wherever you want to go”
ND: And the song was inspired by a phone message?
NY: Well, that’s what jarred it loose. Some of the words in there are from a phone message from a friend of mine. And some of the words are, you know, the other side of the phone message, another point of view. And I just put it together like that. But it really it’s, it all comes out to be more than just a phone message. It comes out to be, you know, a message.
ND: Some songs, like “It’s A Dream”, have this beautiful string section. And you’ve used strings in the ’60s with Jack Nitzsche, going all the way back to “Expecting To Fly”. The London Symphony Orchestra was on Harvest. But on Prairie Wind, they sound different. Did you have a certain sound in mind that you wanted to bring to the table?
NY: When I wrote “It’s A Dream” and came in the studio the next morning and recorded it, then I said to Ben Keith, “Ben, you know, this might be one for strings. What do you think?” And he said, “Yeah, I think it is.” And I said, “Let’s call Chuck.” And that’s what I love about Nashville. We call our friend, Chuck Cochran, who did the strings on Comes A Time. A couple of hours later, he walks in. We haven’t seen him for like 15 years.
“How you doing? Listen to this. What do you think?” “Well, give me a CD. I’ll take it home. When do you want to do it?” “Well, how about tomorrow morning?” “OK. Well, I’ll round up the musicians and I’ll get back to you and let you know if we can do it.” So an hour later, we got, you know, five Stradivariuses and seven other players. And they’re all coming in at 11 o’clock in the morning. And we’re going to do it.
ND: What about the way you use the horns on “Far From Home” and “Prairie Wind”? They’re subtler than, say, the horns on the album you did in 1988, the Bluenotes’ This Note’s For You. How did they come about?
NY: Well, this is Wayne Jackson, you know, of the Memphis Horns. He’s the soul of the arrangements. He made these things up. He’s the one who came up with the Sam & Dave horn parts and everything.
I played “Far From Home” and we finished it and we got a track we liked, and Ben Keith says to me, “You ought to have horns on this, Neil.” I’m going, “Horns?” He said, “Yeah, we’ve got horns. Let’s call Wayne Jackson.” I trust Ben, you know. So I said, “OK. Let’s call him and see what happens.” So Wayne comes in with Tom McGinley and they sit down and they start playing. And then they put it on again and again and make themselves, two guys, into this horn section.
ND: I can’t think of many songs of yours that are really autobiographical like this one about your younger days. I think about “Don’t Be Denied”, which is many, many years ago. So the scenarios in “Far From Home” of you making music with your family and walking with your ambition down the Trans-Canada highway, is that pretty much how it went down?
NY: Well, you know, I took some liberties and put a lot of things together that happened at different times. You know, it’s a song.
ND: Yeah. Even though you’ve spent so many years living at your ranch in Northern California, do you still dream of going back to Canada someday?
NY: Yeah, I do. I do.
ND: You sing of family a lot on Prairie Wind, about growing up in Canada and the spaces there. On the song “Here For You”, it sounds like it was written for one or all of your children. You’re an empty nester now, right?
NY: Yeah.
ND: What sparked “Here For You”?
NY: Just that feeling, you know. I just want my kids to know that I’m there. And I don’t want to be in the way, but I want them to always know they can get back to me, if they need to.
ND: Your boys Zeke and Ben have cerebral palsy and there’s the annual Bridge School benefits that you put on with your wife, Pegi. And you’ve raised an incredible amount of awareness and funding to help disabled and non-oral children. The Bridge School benefits also have their 20th anniversary this year. How does the work that Pegi and you do affect change for the children?
NY: Well, we have this great school that she came up with. And, you know, we’ve been doing these benefits. We got Bruce Springsteen to come to the first one and kick it off. And since then, it’s just been on a roll. And we make a lot of money. It costs a lot of money to run the school. And the school is a model school for other schools. It creates programs that other schools can use in teaching developmentally disabled, non-oral children how to communicate through the use of technology and other methods. So we’ve made a difference in making that happen.