Extract: Neil Young 1963 to 1970: Every Album, Every Song (On Track…) Paperback
But the Squires only lasted two years – 1963-1965 – and soon split up. Its other members were not as committed as Neil and life and careers soon got in the way. The band eventually ended up skint and destitute in Fort Worth. Mort dropped its transmission on the road and Neil just split for Toronto, leaving everyone in his wake.
This was the mid-sixties and the 20-year-old Neil was, like most others, totally smitten with Dylan and his poetic innovations in songwriting. Unlike most, Neil was as greatly impressed by Dylan’s contemporary Phil Ochs, who he rated just as highly.
Instead of seeking to form another band, Neil decided to go solo, develop his songwriting and perform in the folk clubs. It was here that he developed his lyrical style and also met Joni Mitchell, who had a big impact on him and his writing. That encounter also led to the involvement of another character, who was destined to have a huge bearing on his music and career – his later manager Elliot Roberts.
That songwriting of Neil’s was beginning to take off. The Guess Who, featuring a friend from the early days, Randy Bachman (a local muso who created a unique echo effect, much coveted by Neil, by passing sound through a tape recorder and went on to form Bachman Turner Overdrive), had a Top 40 hit with one of Neil’s songs, ‘Flying On The Ground Is Wrong’, which gave him some encouragement.
In the course of this solo period, Neil went to New York and met up with Richie Furay, who was playing folk in the clubs. Richie was smitten with Neil’s ‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing’ and Neil taught him the song, which became a part of Richie’s solo act. Richie would later share the song with Stephen Stills. This would turn out to be another vital cog in the machine that became Buffalo Springfield.
In 1966, while languishing in the clubs with poor reviews for his solo act, he was invited to join the Mynah Birds, an R&B band featuring Rick James. Shortly after Neil joined the band, they signed a deal with Motown. Things were looking up; they were recording their first album – Neil was finally making it. But Ricky, who was on the lam from the navy, was arrested and dragged off. The band fell apart, Motown dropped them and the album never got finished. Neil was at the crossroads again – more blood was required.
Neil Young is the vagabond chameleon, easily bored and always searching for something new. His wild, maverick spirit and surging creative energies have always been given free rein, his commitment always total. For Neil, ever since his childhood, when he found himself moving house so many times, change has been the norm. But whatever it is he’s doing, it’s always 100%.
Neil is the rock ‘n’ roll gypsy, always on the move, never parking his caravan long in any one spot. As Neil said in his autobiography Waging Heavy Peace: ‘I have a thing for transportation, cars, boats, trains. Travelling. I like moving’.
Fame and fortune were rarely his motivation, as he worshipped his art, the music always came first. There was never any compromise. Friendships, lovers and relationships were sacrificed on the altar of his obsessive music.
Whereas most rock musicians went into music to pull the chicks (Jimmy McDonough quotes Graham Nash in his biography Shakey: ‘anyone who tells you that they didn’t get into rock ‘n’ roll to get laid is lying’), that was not the case with Neil, he was the exception – Neil went into it for the music. Indeed, in the early days, there was no time for girls. Jimmy quotes Neil’s mother Rassy: ‘Neil didn’t have any girlfriends. He was too busy playing music’.
That love of the seminal excitement of rock music never diminished. In later years, following the advent of digital sounds and the MP3, he set off on a musical crusade to take digital music back to the quality of the analogue sounds that first gave him that transcendental spiritual experience he had felt as a youth. He wants future generations to experience the delight and rapture that so moved him when he was young. He thinks they are being short-changed.
Like his lurching, rhythmic movements when straining notes out of his guitar during a performance (maybe a nod to that polio he suffered as a child?), his career has constantly lurched from one thing to another. He’s burnt his way through various styles and genres with wildly different moods, as his muse latched on to a variety of obsessive interests – never predictable or safe, never with a thought for commercial impact, always giving everything, striving to connect with the muse that had infected him as a boy. If something caught his attention, he went into it full pelt. Nothing held back.
It was that constant striving that drove him to become one of the greatest songwriters and performers of the rock ‘n’ roll era, and certainly one of the most prolific.
He’s rampaged through styles, bands and musicians like a raging comet, always looking for the next project, something he could lose himself in and become fixated on. It’s a thirst that has never ceased.
Fortunately for him, his early fame and success gave him the leeway and platform to indulge. He could give free rein to his creative juices, experiment and change with little regard to pressures from labels or financial concerns, his bands, or even his fans. He had a licence to free his imagination and that’s what he did. He went with that wayward wind wherever it took him.
Neil is the ultimate innovator whether in the field of folk, blues, country, grunge, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, punk or electronic; he’s not only tried it but made it his own in the process. That’s the difference between an innovator and an imitator.
Part of his unique personality can be traced back to his roots. He’s Canadian, not American, and I think that shows. He was born in Toronto in 1945, but brought up in a sleepy town in Ontario called Omemee, before relocating to Winnipeg and then back to Toronto. Following the break-up of his parents, life was unsettled. That Canadian upbringing, the loss of a father in the house, coupled with the presence of a strong, sometimes overpowering mother, helped shape him and made him what he is. The friendships, attitudes and ethos, entailed in growing up north of the border mould a different type of person and his father leaving made him more introspective, but also had the effect of giving him more freedom than he would have had if he’d stayed. His mother Rassy, though alcoholic and domineering, gave him the almost unlimited freedom and support that helped him develop.
Like many kids, myself included, Neil was ensnared by music from a very young age. Glued to the radio, whether the small transistor under his pillow or the radio in the living room that he used to dance to, he lapped up anything good he could find, from early rock ‘n’ roll and R&B to country and western and pop. Being in Canada put a different twist on that early exposure. Neil was knocked out by Elvis but was also enthused by all the shades of lively popular music that spilt out of the airwaves. The flat countryside that stretched right down from Canada to the Southern States meant he could receive radio stations right down a thousand miles to the Mexican border. On a good night, he could even tune in to Wolfman Jack with his wild rockin’ shows. But there were also blues, country and cajun. He had access to a wide variety. Being Canadian also gave him a more British slant to what he was listening to, which included early Cliff Richard and, particularly, The Shadows with Hank Marvin’s guitar playing. Neil loved the sounds Hank created with his whammy bar and echoplex. Neil’s first recordings with the Squires were instrumentals in which Hank’s guitar style was evident.
His father was a writer, his mother a strong personality and TV panellist and his brother Bob, a champion golfer. The whole family were strong characters. Neil’s early life in Omemee was idyllic; spent out in the countryside catching pet turtles, raising chickens to sell the eggs, running wild and listening to music. That changed when his Dad left; they began moving around.
Nothing about Neil was normal. Maybe his early childhood brush with polio had subtly altered his brain. Maybe he was just more focused and driven than most. Maybe he had no safety net. From an early age, it was music or nothing. School was not where his focus was. He burned all his bridges, boats and roads.
Although he was mad about guitarists like Hank Marvin, he learnt to play on a plastic ukulele, progressing through to a proper banjo uke but not the guitar until a lot later.
That polio had a big effect on him. He plays guitar right-handed but was born left-handed. Polio weakened his left-hand side, forcing him to develop his right-hand side more to compensate and become ambidextrous. That had a big impact on the way he plays and, consequently, the sounds he creates.
Riding on the overwhelming excitement of rock music, he formed a high school band called The Jades, then a whole load more – The Esquires, Stardusters, Twilighters and Classics. Right from the beginning, he sold his soul to the spirit of rock music. There were probably crossroads and contracts written in blood. School had no chance. Neil was never a scholar; his heart was elsewhere, and his school career came to an inevitable conclusion with tales (probably exaggerated) of him being thrown out for riding a motorcycle through the halls.
His first venture into the commercial world of music came with the semi-professional band he’d formed towards the end of High School called The Squires.
His mother Rassy, a tough, overbearing character, was always Neil’s biggest supporter. She believed in him and provided the support and encouragement he needed. In Waging Heavy Peace Neil speaks fondly: ‘Rassy was the biggest supporter of my musical endeavours and believed in me from the beginning. She supplied her little car for all the Squires gigs, allowed us to practice in the living room and even lent me money to buy my instruments’.
Neil later bought a hearse that he called Mortimer Hearsebug, Mort for short. It was big enough to get the band in and transport all their equipment – the rolling tray made it easier to get heavy equipment in and out. More importantly, it helped them stand out from the other bands; not many bands drove around in a hearse – though I’m reminded of the British band Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. That hearse – Mort, or its successor Mort 2 – would later play a prominent part.