Kubernik Harvey - Neil Young heart of gold

Copyright 2015 Omnibus Press

This edition 2016 Omnibus Press

(A Division of Music Sales Limited, 14-15 Berners Street, London W1T 3LJ)

Source ISBN: 978-1-78305-790-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78323-579-7

Version: 29-08-2016

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Text 2015 Harvey Kubernik

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Page 1: Wiener Stadthalle, Vienna, July 23, 2014.

Pages 23: Tuning up before CSNYs concert at Balboa Stadium, San Diego, December 21, 1969.

CONTENTS

There really wasnt anything more important in my life than playing music. And you had to really want to do it and you had to make music first in your life.

NY, 1992

I never did interviews because they always got me into trouble. Always. I said more by not saying anything.

NY, 1975

I deliberately missed Neil Youngs October 2012 Alchemy show at the Hollywood Bowl, having decided that the $500 for a pair of tickets, dinner and drinks, stacked or preferred valet parking, or a shuttle bus, was too high a price even for the privilege of seeing Neil and Crazy Horse under our formerly smoggy skies (binoculars required).

I had already seen Neil play the Hollywood Bowl with his other two main bands, Buffalo Springfield in 1967 and CSNY in 2006, so it was a tough choice to miss out on the trifecta.

The afternoon of Neils scheduled 2012 Hollywood Bowl booking, I comically lamented to photographer Harold Sherrick, Well, I guess Im not seeing Neil Young tonight. It was before an interview and photo job we were doing that day when Harold and I drove over to an organic market in the San Fernando Valley.

Outside in the parking lot, I ran into my friend Burton Cummings, of Guess Who fame. He sang the bands 1967 version of Flying on the Ground Is Wrong, the first recorded cover of a Neil Young song. Burton was leaving the store but touted the delicious Marys Gone Black Pepper Crackers available inside.

Go in and get some, was his directive. Always listen to a Canadian. Ive been listening to Burton since 1969; why stop now?

I then saw a big tour bus in the same parking area. I thought, What kinda band can afford this place? As we were about to walk through the front door, standing outside, against the brick wall, was Neil Young. He was wearing a hat, carefully avoiding the UV rays and the phosphorescent bright lights that loomed inside. I looked at Harold and said, Theres Neil. I guess I saw him today after all.

In spring 2014, I did make it to the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue to see Neil Young in a solo acoustic setting. Second-row balcony seats. Free parking.

Before the show, there was a mandatory stop at the Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. F. Scott Fitzgerald used to proofread his novels in a booth there. William Faulkner liked the Mississippi Mint Juleps. Gore Vidal once said, Coming into Mussos is like stepping into a warm bath. Ive encountered all kinds of people there, from GNP Crescendo Records owner Gene Norman and jazz great Barney Kessel, to film director Curtis Hanson and even John Wayne. Jack Nitzsche loved Mussos, had a regular booth, and Keith Richards hosted a party there in 1997. I closed my first two book deals using an old pay phone in the back of the joint...

Directly across the street from the Dolby is the former HQ of Mercury Records. One afternoon in 1970, their West Coast radio station promo man, Rodney Bingenheimer, an early Neil Young supporter, picked up David Bowie at LAX in a convertible, took him to Hollywood for the first time, and then over to Lewin Record Paradise, a British-owned specialty record shop.

In my mind are these indelible images on the Lewins wall, next to the front counter, of Bowies UK import LP jacket of The Man Who Sold the World right next to a cover LP slick jacket of the lost second Buffalo Springfield album, Stampede.

I would have never imagined way back then that Bowie would ask Rodney, now a DJ on KROQ-FM, to introduce him on stage at his 2004 Wiltern Theatre show in Los Angeles, and that during that tour Bowie would perform Neils prophetic Ive Been Waiting for You.

On the Dolby stage that evening in 2014, it wasnt just a case of Neil reworking and restaging his catalogue or digging up new ground on that sacred corner of my youth. He joked about being a rich hippie, boasting about purchasing a guitar in Tennessee that Hank Williams formerly owned.

And then, a revealing psychic moment, an instance of geopiety at the very spot where Neils Hollywood dreams and schemes began in 1966. He introduced Flying on the Ground Is Wrong as he sat at the piano. Yeah, where the wall begins and this building begins there was a street called Orchid Avenue. And the building was called the Commodore Gardens and I used to live there. And I wrote a song there.

And he looked at the audience and he turned around and stated, I wrote the song right here. Everyone laughed. Neil stared at the floor like it was an epiphany, not showbiz shtick.

He was acknowledging his first archeological dig in Hollywood while exposing deep-seeded songwriting roots. When he proudly told us this anecdote, and performed the tune, it honestly felt like he was finally reclaiming his own song.

Like a miner who just might have a Heart of Gold.

Harvey Kubernik, Los Angeles, California

There really wasnt anything more important in my life than playing music. And you had to really want to do it and you had to make music first in your life.

NY, 1992

To me, Canada is my family, where I grew up, memories of being young and being open to ideas. And then tryin to get outta Canada because it was limiting... So Im proud to be Canadian but I dont let it hold me backpart of the planet, not part of the nation.

NY, 1992

T iming, as they say, is everything. And Neil Percival Young, son of Scott and Edna Rassy Ragland Young, arrived at the portal to a post-war era bursting with possibilities unimagined by any previous generation.

Born in Toronto, Canada, on November 12, 1945, Young was a fully paid-up baby boomer. His life trajectory has propelled him through the protean changes that transformed society throughout the momentous 1960s and beyond. It would take a mountain mans strength and guile to survive and Young was uniquely equipped to keep his footing.

Life in the Young household was never settled. Neil and his elder brother, Bob, were buffeted by the unhappy marriage of their parents. As a novice journalist, Scott Young was often on the road, his family trailing dutifully behind, and pitching camp like army postings. In 1949, they moved east, to Omemee, Ontario, which Neil later immortalized in his song Helpless.