CSNY/DÉJÀ VU
in the press:
Leitner's Mondo 2008 Sundance - Saturday
Digital Content Producer, 1/26/08
Csny Deja Vu (Documentary)
Variety, 1/27/08
Four Warhorses On Living With War
Hollywood Reporter, 1/27/08
Find The Cost Of Freedom (Of Speech)
Huffington Post, 1/30/08
Neil Young Admits Music Can't Change World
Spiegel Online, 2/08/08
Neil Young: Music Can't Change World
Associated Press, 2/08/08
Sorry, Neil Young, Music Never Could Change The World
Huffington Post, 2/09/08
Neil Young Says Music Has Lost Its Punch
Contra Costa Times, 2/09/08
Change The World? Well, Maybe Not
New York Times, 2/09/08
Music Can Actually Save The World, Sort Of
Rolling Stone, 2/11/08
Unearthing The Gems In The Berlinale Garden
Sydney Morning Herald, 2/12/08
Neil Young Doesn't "Give Up" Despite Not Changing the World
Exclaim, 2/12/08
First Look - CSNY/DÉJÀ VU
Uncut, 2/12/08
Neil Young Touts New Tour Documentary
San Jose Mercury News, 2/13/08
The More Things Change...
Roanoke Times, 2/19/08
'The time when music could change the world has passed'
Scotland On Sunday, 2/24/08
Neil Young: On the road again
The Telegraph, 2/29/08
There's No Protester Like An Old Protester
CNN, 3/21/08
MTV Once Played So Many Music Videos They Could Afford To Ban Some
from idolator.com, July 10 2007
MTV has a history of banning would-be popular videos, but it was 19 years ago this week that one of the network's most peculiar censorship decisions took place. Neil Young's "This Note's for You" was denied play on the network due to a fear of offending valuable advertisers. No nudity, no blood, no graphic drug use--just ad parodies. Did 1988 mark the end of our innocence?
Image from the video
CHROME DREAMS
by Jef Michael Piehler, sidestreetrecords.com
Perhaps it was the aborted tour with long-time band-mate Stephen Stills, or the scrapped CSNY recording sessions that preceded those ill-fated shows, or maybe it was the upcoming tour with CRAZY HORSE, but late summer 1976 found Neil holed up at the ranch, sorting out his career by choosing the final songs for his retrospective 3LP set, tentatively titled "Decade."
Scheduled for release in early November, Decade test pressings were sent to reviewers & covers (for in-store displays) were sent to record stores. As November, and then December came and went, Neil fans and retailers were left wonderin' if rumours of a drug overdose were true, and if so, would Reprise cancel the dicey 3LP set and release an easy-money greatest hits "memorial album"?
With no word one way or the other, "Decade"displays came down & Christmas displays went up. Neil would prove the rumors false 6 months later by finally releasing a new album -but to the shock of retailers, it would only be single LP titled "American stars 'n bars," instead of the highly anticipated "Best of" 3LP they were expecting.
Unlike the unreleased "Homegrown"LP, very little was known about any "Chrome Dreams" LP. First mentioned in the Sept.9, 1976 Rolling Stone in a blurb about a 10-date CRAZY HORSE tour that's ....."scheduled for November, just about when he'll release his next LP, planned as Chrome Dreams."
Johnny Rogan mentions the LP in his book as an early version of "American stars n bars" that "...had (been) altered considerably ...by the time it was released in June 1977." ...and that was it; "Chrome Dreams" was never mentioned in the press again & it was assumed to be just another pencil sketched song-list album.
Out of the blue, reports from Germany in July 1992 claimed that the acetate of the legendary album had surfaced. Initial "proof" came by way of xeroxed "test pressing data sheet" which provided more information about "Chrome Dreams" than anyone had ever imagined. Unfortunately, the data sheet had been created by the record dealer/Neil Young collector that "discovered" the acetate in 1992. The sheet's design was meant to be both easy to read/understand, and a ridiculing joke aimed at "detailed-information-fanatic" collectors --but nobody got the joke, and most collectors dismissed the acetate and any stories about this "unreleased Chrome Dreams album" as fake. Their loss; detailed information about the unreleased/previously unknown studio recordings was so impressive that even NYA archivist Joel Bernstein conceded to the accuracy of the information.
Photos of the labels proved that the acetate really did exist, and we all assumed that it was just a matter of time before a bootleg CD would appear so we could finally hear this thing.
Sure enough, a year later the bootleg CD was released in Germany; unlike same/similar-titled CDs to follow, this first bootleg CD is the original acetate, with a couple of (unlisted) "hidden" tracks at the end of the 12-song program.
Authenticity of the "album" remained a subject for debate until some months later when I acquired the actual acetate. It's a bit noisier than the CD, but it sure sounds better.
Most-importantly, whatever this "album" was supposed to be called, this acetate is positively legitimate, as described in this article and of immeasurable historical importance, period.
Made up mostly of songs recorded between September '75- November 1976 at Indigo Studios - Malibu Canyon, CA, the album starts off with an "alternate" version of "Pocahontas." This solo acoustic version is in fact the same take as on "Rust Never Sleeps" (July 1979) --minus the overdubs. "Will To Love"("American stars 'n bars"),"Star 0f Bethlehem"("Decade" October 1977) and "Like A Hurricane" ("stars 'n bars") sound much brighter, though they're all released takes.
Side 1 ends with a studio version of "Too Far Gone." At first it seems as if this is just a "warm-up" version before the tape rolled for the 1989 "Freedom" recording. In fact, the tempo is so similar that this take is only 10 seconds shorter than the released version! Unlike the released version, the sparse arrangement & hung-over performance that shuffles along under the lyrics with Neil reciting each line matter-of-factly, as if just-written.
Side two opens with an alternate version of "Hold Back The Tears," which was apparently recorded around the same date as"Too Far Gone." Unlike the "stars 'n bars" version, this take is considerably slower, and definitely more intense.
"Homegrown" follows, & even though this is the same take as the "stars 'n bars" LP, the mix is noticeably different. The guitars are pushed way up-front and have a "crisp distorted" sound. "Captain Kennedy" ("Hawks & Doves" 0ct. 1980) is next, with the well-known March 31, 1976 Hammersmith Odeon - London, U.K. version of "Stringman" right after. Often bootlegged, but just another famous unreleased song until 1993's "unplugged" album. This song was performed often during the 1976 U.K. tour, but never recorded in a studio (or performed again,until 1993).
An AMAZING example of TEXTBOOK "NEILYOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSE" follows with the STUDIO VERSION of "Sedan Delivery" that makes the "Rust" version sound like an "Old Ways" out-take! This plodding, ragged & LOUD performance would've fit just as well on "Times Square" or "Eldorado" as it does here.
It's a matter of personal opinion, but for me, the next track is the highlight of the album: the "Powderfinger" "studio demo." The stunningly-simple-but-brilliant acoustic performance defines "Neil the storyteller" at his very best. Additionally, this take isn't "better" than the "Rust" version; it simply stands apart as a completely different and, somehow, far-more-desperate & heart-breaking song, absolutely perfect from start to finish.
Even so, it'd be hard to find a better closing track to this set than"Look Out For My Love." Lost in the shuffle of the "Comes A Time" tapestry (October 1978), this haunting wordplay proves to be the perfect summary of the thunder & lightning that came before it.
Had it been released, "Chrome Dreams" might have stood today as one of Neil Young's best records ever. The bar-room characters amidst historical references & passionate love songs creates a magical atmosphere. But like most first drafts, the perception of what's important & what isn't must be left to the artist, and not to the record company bean counters or the whims of the artists' "biggest" fans. As near-perfect as "Chrome Dreams" might seem, it's release would've created un-fillable holes in other near-perfect albums like "American stars 'n bars," "Comes A Time" and "Rust Never Sleeps."
In any event, this "album" of rough sketches stands as a unique historical document, long-lost somewhere in the pages of Neil Young's amazingly-brilliant career; and at the top of the "ESSENTIAL Neil Young tapes" list.
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NEIL YOUNG ROCKS JAVAONE
from C-Net News
SAN FRANCISCO--At JavaOne here, Neil Young showed off his multimedia project that chronicles his music career and uses Java to do so.
Young said he tried to do the project on DVD, but users couldn't watch the high-resolution video and listen to the music at the same time. With Java and Blu-ray, the content can be updated and offer the best viewing and listening experience, as well as great navigation and design. "Storage is the only limit," Young said, and recommended the Sony's PlayStation 3 as the best way to view his project.
Users will be able to download any archival materials, which are automatically assigned to their place in a chronological time line, Young said.
In a meeting with a few press members following the JavaOne keynote, Young talked about the Archive project, which goes back to the late 1980s. The first stage, he said, was collecting the materials.
"I am kind of a pack rat," he said, adding that over the years he's accumulated a lot of unreleased material. "I only give the record company what I want people to hear at the time. So I have a lot of unreleased material. Putting it all together tells a much different story than just what has been produced (for public consumption)."
Click here to read more and see a replay of the speech.
SPIDER NAMED IN HONOR OF NEIL YOUNG
from Science Centric, 5/9/08
An East Carolina University biologist has brought his admiration of Neil Young to a whole new class. Or species, to be exact. Jason Bond, an ECU professor of biology, has named a newly discovered trapdoor spider, Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi, after the legendary rock star.
"There are rather strict rules about how you name new species," Bond said. "As long as these rules are followed you can give a new species just about any name you please. With regards to Neil Young, I really enjoy his music and have had a great appreciation of him as an activist for peace and justice."
In 2007, Bond discovered the new spider species in Jefferson Co., Ala, and later co-wrote a paper with Norman I. Platnick, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, on the genus.
Bond received $750,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation in 2005 and 2006 to classify the trapdoor spider species and contribute to the foundation's Tree of Life project. He is both a spider systematist - someone who studies organisms and how they are classified - and taxonomist - someone who classifies new species.
Spiders in the trapdoor genus are distinguished on the basis of differences in genitalia, Bond said, from one species to the next. He confirmed through the spider's DNA that the Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi is an identifiable, separate species of spider within the trapdoor genus.
NEIL'S VENUE TUNING
1-800 GETLOUD
from the Rocky Mountain News
If Mark Knopfler's guitar tone sounds a little cleaner and a little sweeter when he plays Red Rocks in June, he (and his fans) will have Neil Young to thank.
When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played Red Rocks two years ago, Young demanded "to talk to somebody," said director of operations Tad Bowman, who ended up being that somebody.
"He explained that he thought we had some electromagnetic interference issues," Bowman said. "The (electrical) transformers for years had been right underneath the stage" and Young felt the magnetic field they created affected the tone of the instruments a few feet above them onstage.
So this year bigger, better transformers will power Red Rocks - and they've been relocated away from the stage area.
CRAZY HORSE "TOAST"
NY Times
In 2000, Crazy Horse was in San Francisco, south of Market street, at an old studio called "Toast." Coltrane had recorded there, among many other jazz greats, known and unknown. The Dot Com boom was happening and buildings were being bought and turned into lofts or torn down completely and rebuilt. New money was everywhere. Toast was a target. The place was a little run down and sort of on its last legs.
To a man, if you asked Crazy Horse about these sessions, you would learn that it was a depressing atmosphere and things were not going well. The band recorded there for months and came up with very little. Nothing, other than one song, "Goin' Home" was ever finished. But a lot was started. Several of the songs written at Toast showed up on the "Are You Passionate" album with Booker T. and the MGs. But that album met with mixed reaction.
Now, years later, John Hanlon, the original co-producer with Neil, is at work mixing all of the Toast material. Many songs share a bluesy, jazz-tinged vibe as a common thread. Three solid rockers are interspersed in the mix. Other songs are long with extensive explorations between verses, a Crazy Horse trademark, kind of like a down-played Tonight's the Night, except these songs deal directly with love and loss, not drugs. The ambient atmosphere, foggy, blue and desolate, pervades many of the tracks, if not all, with Tommy Brea's muted trumpet and dusky male and female counter-part BGs occasionally surfacing from Poncho and Ralph on one side, Nancy Hall and Pegi Young on the other. A cool and sleepy lounge piano rises in the fog occasionally.
The result of this is perhaps one of the most under-estimated and deceptive Crazy Horse records of all time, with many songs originally discarded, and then re-recorded with Booker T. and the MGs. The original performances now surface again through a foggy past. Like an abstract painting, lyrical images of a love lost and maybe even destroyed forever just refuse to die, creating a landscape littered with half-broken dreams and promises.
"Toast" is coming, a dark Crazy Horse classic for the ages. This first NYA "Special Edition" is the beginning of a new series of unreleased albums.
GREENDALE HITS STAGE IN DALLAS!
"Greendale Will Have You Revved Up To Save The Planet" -- Dallas Morning News (read review)
"Dallas Troupe Takes A Crack At Rock Opera" -- Fort Worth Star-Telegram (read review)
GREENDALE ON TO NEW YORK!
NY Times
Undermain Theatre, through special arrangement with Wixen Music Publishing, is pleased to announce the transfer of its production of Neil Young's Greendale to this summers Ice Factory Festival presented by Soho Think Tank at the Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster St. in New York City.
Undermain Theatre Presents Theatrical Premiere of Neil Young's Greendale
The Undermain Theatre through special arrangement with Wixen music publishing is pleased to announce the theatrical premiere of Neil Young's Greendale. The rock opera by the legendary singer - songwriter will be adapted for the stage by the Undermain Theatre in the spring of 2008. This song cycle has been compared to Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Sherwood Anderson's Winesberg Ohio as a portrait of the changing face of small town America. Performed with a live band and sung by an ensemble cast, Greendale explores the lives of three generations of the Green family through themes ranging from corruption to mass media consolidation to environmentalism. Described by Neil Young as a "musical novel," Greendale was released in 2003 as an album, a film, and a rock tour. It is soon to be published as a graphic novel and this spring it will be produced as a play premiering at Undermain.
"The listener is left practically breathless with the beauty, hope, pathos and power of the music and the story." - Neil Strauss, New York Times
Voted one of the best albums of 2003 by Rolling Stone magazine music critics.
March 29 - May 3, 2008
Previews March 26, 27, 28
Undermain Theatre
3200 Main Street
Dallas, Texas 75226
http://www.undermain.org./
Box Office: 214-747-5515
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LOCAL BUSINESSMAN, ROCK LEGEND JOIN FORCES FOR X PRIZE
By Joe Rodriguez, The Wichita Eagle
Wichitan Johnathan Goodwin, who has gained a reputation nationally for modifying gas guzzlers into fuel-efficient vehicles, will participate in a $10 million race to find the best "green" vehicle.
Goodwin, 37, said that he and his vehicle modification team will compete in the Progressive Automotive X Prize, a race to develop a production-ready vehicle that can get 100 miles to the gallon.
His team -- Goodwin Young -- will race its "Linc Volt," a 2 1/2-ton, 19 1/2-foot 1959 Lincoln Continental owned by rock legend Neil Young." What I'm interested in is being able to push the technology," said Goodwin, whose H-Line Conversions business is located on East Douglas near Hillside.
"It's great to find the individuals out there that are willing to hand me what I call my canvas."
The race was announced this month at the New York International Auto Show, and more than 60 teams from 10 countries will compete.
Vehicles that qualify will race cross-country in 2009 and 2010 in an attempt to find the vehicles that exceed 100 miles per gallon or equivalent fuel economy, meet strict emissions standards and are something that people would want to buy.
"We're not talking about concept cars," said X Prize Foundation chairman and chief executive Peter Diamandis. "We're talking about real cars that can be brought to market in the near term that consumers will want to buy."
The prize -- $10 million -- will be split by winners in two race categories.
In the "Linc Volt," the Goodwin Young team will replace the standard gas engine with an electric biodiesel hybrid that is powered by a set of rechargeable lithium iron phosphate batteries.
"Basically, what we're doing is replacing the old technology with new technology," Goodwin said. "That's where we gain the efficiency."
He estimates the project will cost about $250,000.
Goodwin said he expects the team will have its vehicle ready to run soon. He and Young plan to take it out for a test drive next month in Wichita.
Goodwin has also worked on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1987 Jeep Wagoneer and this week was modifying a Hummer owned by TV and movie star Tim Allen.
Neal Anderson, senior director of the Automotive X Prize, said he's well aware of Goodwin's work.
"With his strong automotive background, his ability to think outside the box and his connection to resources," Anderson said, "he has all the great things that he'll need to be able to compete with a lot of other people in this competition."
Goodwin said he's confident the concept he and the team have come up with can meet that expectation.
He said he expects to see some vehicles that will be "things like carbon fiber bicycles with solar-powered" panels, and "crazy stuff like that."
"They're going to be super fuel-efficient," he said.
But the race, he said, "is really targeted towards being able to not only create a very efficient vehicle, but actually being able to manufacture it. And that's where you're going to lose a lot of those people."
The concept that his team is developing will work, he said.
"If you take that same technology," he said, "and you stream it down into something that's more modern, or a large SUV, the capabilities are a guarantee there."
Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. is funding the prize.
LINC VOLT ENTERS
X PRIZE RACE
The Automotive X Prize, a competition for 100 MPG vehicles has been announced and the Goodwin Young "Linc Volt" team has had its "letter of intent" to participate accepted. A qualifying race will be in held 2009 and the final race from California to Washington D.C. will take place in 2010.
Linc Volt is a 2.5 ton Lincoln Continental Mk IV convertible manufactured by Ford motors in 1959. At 19.5 feet long, it was the longest car of its era. A new series-hybrid system for powering the car is in the final stages of tuning and development. Testing is scheduled for March and April.
"Linc Volt" a film by Neil Young, is in production at Shakey Pictures, under the direction of Bernard Shakey, produced by L.A. Johnson. Filming has been ongoing over the past 6 months. No release date for the film has been announced.
Greendale At Comic Giant DC
by Eric Millikin, talkaboutcomics.com
Outspoken musician and political activist Neil Young is putting his anti-war and environmental convictions into a graphic novel... The legendary artist, renowned for his strong anti-George W. Bush sentiments, has made it clear that the project will be just as biting politically as the rest of his artistic catalogue, said writer and collaborator Joshua Dysart...
Dysart, who describes his own political leanings as "left of Lenin," says the graphic novel's theme is decidedly anti-war and pro-planet. The story is set in the fictional town of Greendale on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003. "It's just sort of a smorgasbord of the political reality of that moment of 2003 when we went into Iraq," Dysart said Thursday in a telephone interview from his home Los Angeles.
The novel has been two years in the making and will be published by the DC Comics subsidiary Vertigo.
Joshua Dysart On Neil Young's Greendale At Vertigo
by Steve Ekstrom, newsarama.com
After discussing Josh Dysart's upcoming Unknown Soldier project at Vertigo, Newsarama got the lowdown on his collaborative effort with music legend Neil Young and his critically acclaimed album from 2003, Greendale, which also spawned a critically acclaimed film of the same name.
In this part of the interview with Newsarama, Dysart discusses collaborating with Neil Young on a graphic novel also titled Greendale and the distinction of his project amidst two critically successful projects from other areas of the entertainment industry involving a little fictional town set in northern California.
Newsarama: Changing gears - tell us about your graphic novel project involving Neil Young's Greendale album from 2003 - your project actually takes place in this fictional town created by Young, correct?
JD: Yes. It takes place on the eve of the invasion of Iraq and it's the story of a young high school girl on the road to finding her inner-activist in a small fictional town set in northern California. Two truly incredible things are about to take place in this town: one is that a visitor of supernatural proportions is arriving to shake things down to their very foundations. The other is that our protagonist is about to discover something miraculous about herself and all the women in her family.
Unlike the Unknown Soldier, there will be nothing ambiguous about the politics of this book at all. Everyone knows Neil Young is left of Lennon and I'm looking forward to being unapologetically leftist right along with him. The book will be anti-war and pro-planet. It will be humanist and righteous and fun and sad and hopeful-assuming I don't screw it up.
NRAMA: Is Neil Young directly or indirectly involved with this project? Do you have his endorsement?
JD: Absolutely. He is directly involved. I pitched him my take. We got notes back from him. I even met his whole family-his son and daughter, his wife, and of course, the man himself. (Crosby, Stills and Nash were also there, but now I'm just namedropping... heh). He's a wonderful, wonderful person-when I met him it felt like he'd been in my life forever; which, through his music, I guess he has.
NRAMA: Will there be characters from Young's album/ film involved in your project?
JD: Yup, characters and situations but there's a story-telling element in the Greendale art book that didn't really make it into the film or the album. So, that's what I've focused on for the graphic novel. We're not just stringing the stories from the album together. It will be very different from the previous incarnations of the material. A little bit traditional Vertigo, a little bit Dysart, a whole lot Greendale.
NRAMA: Which songs from Greendale resonated with you the most?
JD: The album is, to a large degree, a story; so, it's hard to pick out favorites and separate them from their role in whole piece. The sort of meta-sensibility of the first song, "Falling From Above", is very engaging. "Devil's Sidewalk" personifies the crunchy, clumsy, marching, majestic attitude and sound of the whole album. "Leave the Driving" is probably the best example of storytelling, especially when it juxtaposes the actions of Jed-actions that will destroy his whole life-with the larger observation of global paranoia in the second half of the song. I dig that humming punk rock rattle of an E in the otherwise slow ballad "Bandit"; which, out of context is probably my favorite song on the album. "Grandpa's Interview" has my favorite scene in the whole story. Grandpa's rage at the television crews sort of becomes a huge tirade against this sense of misplaced obligation we feel towards the media machine. "Sun Green" is an epic piece of music, and a success if only for this one line, "Hey Mister Clean, you're dirty now too!" You can bet that will find its way into the book. That's almost the whole album, huh? I should stop.
continued... Please see http://www.newsarama.com/Comic-Con_07/DC/Greendale.html for the rest of this story
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