Neil Young And The Songs That Inspired Him
2023-03-15 01:01:28
After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests. So, he started a podcast to do just that. Deeper, unboundedly playful, and free from FCC regulations, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend is a weekly opportunity for Conan to hang out with the people he enjoys most and perhaps find some real friendship along the way.
I had a really terrific conversation with Neil Young recently that aired on SXM's Team Coco Radio, Channel 106.
We talked about music that inspired Neil when he was very young, and because it was on the radio. On Sirius XM, we were able to play the songs and then get Neil's in-the-moment reaction to hearing this material. Sometimes, for the first time in years, I loved the conversation so much that I wanted to share it with my podcast listeners, but here's the catch Unfortunately, we're not able to play the songs in the podcast itself. So here's what I would encourage you to do.
I would encourage you if you're listening right now and you want to hear these songs that Neil Young is responding to. If you're a Sirius XM subscriber, open up the SXM app and search Conan, and you'll be able to find the conversation with the songs. Or if you're not a Sirius XM subscriber. We're going to provide a list of the songs in the episode notes so that you can listen along to the songs with the music streaming service of your choice. I think it's just going to make the experience much cooler. So, without further ado, here's my conversation with Neil Young.
Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brand new shoes, walk in blues, climb the fence, books and pens. I can tell that we are going to be friends. Yes, I can tell that we are going to be friends. Hey, this is Conan O'Brien and what you're about to hear is a very special sit-down with Neil Young, incredibly special to me. He's one of my heroes and he has a new record out called World Record.
And this was an opportunity to use his new record as a jumping off point. But then move on to look at the entirety of Neil Young's, his work, but also his intentions as an artist. And have some fun along the way. And I'm joined by Jim Pitt, Jim, Hello Conan, very professional.
I like it. Jim is also my accountant and my parole officer. Jim, you know, booked all the music on my show for, you know, 95 of my late night career. And so he was responsible for a lot of the great stuff that we were able to accomplish musically with the late night show. But also he's a fellow Neil Young fanatic.
Correct? So then this is cool because Neil doesn't do a lot of stuff like this, so we were really honored that this came together. Yeah, yeah, we've talked about this before, but Neil has such a special place in the history of your show.
You know, the week that he did, when the Prairie Wind album came out, that was a big deal for us. Just a really special time. He was there every night of the week. And again, it's not something Neil Young really does right, right?
And yeah, he moved in with us for a week, yeah, and we felt really good about it. Until the following week. He did every episode of the Muppet TV show and that, I mean, I don't know, it ruined it for me.
I'm kidding, I have to ruin moments with my jokes, but no, that was very special. He came on at the end of the Tonight show, the Tonight Show.
And special performance. He did an amazing performance there and has always been a friend to us, so just great to get to sit down with him. And one of the fun things about this interview is. We asked Neil to give us some songs that inspired him when he was a young lad. Coming up in that northern climate up in Canada, and he gave us some incredible songs.
Some I didn't know, had never heard of before, and they were a great window into Neil Young, his early life, what inspired him. And it's incredible that he let us do this. It's just such a treat it was.
It was really touching to watch him listen to some of these songs. And yeah. And we talk about some of his TV appearances, some of those crazy TV appearances, including one on a crime detective show from the 60s with the Buffalo Springfield. So all in all, this is really fun.
You're about to hear me?
Sing Let's begin this special sit down with Neil Young.
I wanted to start out by thanking you from the bottom of my heart because you have famously been very nice to me throughout my career. And in ways that I can never repay. But then when Covid hit, we were forced to move into a studio, Largo studio, and because we couldn't do that, I said. I asked all my fans to send in life-size cutouts of themselves, and we would put them in the audience so that my cardboard fans would be represented. What shows up from you? A life-size cutout of you sitting?
And we were blown away. But you had this photo taken, turned into this life-size thing, sent it in. So you were in the audience, front and center every night during Covid that I went out and did my Covid show and told my jokes to no one. The eyes I was looking into were yours, Neil, you didn't crack a smile once.
I was recording you, I was there for you, very serious.
When I think about Covid, everyone has their memories of Covid and what we all went through. And mine is Neil Young staring at me, sitting in the audience, made of cardboard, while I'm trying to make something happen. So I want to thank you for being here and congrats on world record. I'm going to tell you I really enjoy the record. What I love the most about it is that there's some optimism.
You're obviously talking about serious shit in the environment and where are we and what are we doing to this planet? And this has been an important cause for you. But what I really love so much is on songs like Love Earth and This Old Planet. There is a feeling like there's a way forward and we can do this, and the songs are lovely. But to me, my experience has been, when I try to be optimistic with people in this current climate, they sometimes get angry with me.
And I really appreciate people that are saying there is a way forward here.
I don't really know what it is, but I do know there's a feeling. When people get together to do something good, it happens no matter what level you're on, if you're joining into something good. You can see it on street corners when you see, like the people cheering for on behalf of the women of Iran.
And they are possessed by this good feeling that they have as they're expressing themselves. But that's not the same as doing something good, like something good for the land. Like dedicating yourself to not doing some bad thing that you had been doing. Things that people can share everyday, people can do good things together.
And it gives you a feeling of power, and power is very important to the recovery of what we're trying to do because we're here. I'm not really making a good story for it, but there's a feeling when people do something good together, like trying to do something that, you know, is good.
And a lot of people are into it. I think in the end, that's all we're going to be able to do.
Well, I think so many people feel if you look at the whole picture, it's overwhelming. Because you think even if I do all the right things, technically, it doesn't stop, you know, if you really get technical, that doesn't stop. India, doesn't stop China, even if United States completely got its shit together, it doesn't stop the rest of the world. So what's the point?
And I think what you're tapping into, which I completely agree with, I think it's, you know. And it can be anything, it can be music, it can be comedy, it can be, you know. Anyone's sphere of life is, let's try and do something, let me try and do something positive with some other people.
And you get a charge from it, you get a, you get. You're empowered. Because I think when you look at the whole thing, it's overwhelming. And that's what I really. What I really liked about the new album is that it made.
Me unafraid to be optimistic and maybe a little inspired, as opposed to we're all screwed, which is, I think.
Yeah, and being as negative or putting somebody down or making some comment, there's. We have so much of that that we don't need it, so it's. It's abundant but. But finding a way forward where we're, and it's not just this country, and not worried about just this country. The same feelings are going to happen around the world as it becomes more apparent what's going on.
You can see it more every year, and when people you know you. First of all. It helps if you've been around for a long time because then you know the difference if you haven't been around for very long. This has been going on pretty quickly for the last 20 years, you know, so.
Yeah, you, you have the experience in your bone marrow of being alive in Canada in the Fifties, sixties. Experiencing, you know, long before we had gotten to this level of emissions in the environment. So um.
Seeing things grow, yeah, seeing seasons change, mm-hmm in an intense, huge way. Like so grand piles of leaves that are like four or five feet high.
Yeah.
That you're, you know, moving around and and uh, it's incredible when fall comes, and it really is fall, I mean, when it really happens. So these beautiful natural things like the changing of the colors of the leaves in the fall and uh, and uh, spring rains and things like that. When you, when you've been living with them in a cycle, as I have for 77 years, then it it becomes something you feel, mm-hmm.
And a good feeling about protecting that, you know, people feel good about trying to do things, uh, to make the the air cleaner and stuff like that, and that's, that's great. That's the whole thing, you know? But doing it together, doing it together by habit, by something that you've picked up on. Whether you might not be able to drive an electric car, mm-hmm, you can't afford it, but it doesn't matter.
Uh, electric cars aren't going to take over the world anyway.
That's not the answer, the electric car is not the answer because that energy is coming from somewhere. It's it's, uh, it's a step, yeah, but it's not the answer.
It's not the only answer, yeah, it's one little answer. You can do that and you take a chance with where the power comes from, but it's it's. It can be fixed, because now if the power source is good, it works, okay.
So that's, that's great, um, and the same thing with the cars is if we used bio fuels and we could still use the infrastructure. And it may sound strange to hear this now, but in a few years it's going to be very important.
Yeah.
That we have fuel to get around with, and it's also important that we get back to the ground. And that the that the the earth is like, uh, uh, the carbon comes back into the earth out of the sky.
Yeah.
These things have to happen, and they happen through farming and doing things correctly so that we can have all the food and all the fuel that we need. So while we're replacing the bad with good, natural things, we're actually helping the Earth at the same time to recover from what's happened. So, and there's a feeling to doing that when a few people get the vibe that they're doing something like that and there's a movement.
That's a powerful thing and it doesn't matter what country you're in, because it's going to happen everywhere people are, you know?
There was a There's a track on a world record, uh, that grabbed my attention because I was thinking a lot about this. Uh, you've explored so many, like you have, you know, there's classic themes in rock and roll. And I think with Chuck Berry at all, Chuck Berry is the one I think of who. He had an obsession with. The American car, and then there's so many songs, you know, Eddie Cochran? Um, I'm going to get that car.
This car is going to make all the difference. And you see it, this obsession with cars, and you've always loved, uh uh, these old cars, and you love them. And you wrote this song that really speaks to me, because it's it's called Chevrolet and you're talking about, you still have you say this car is talking to me? You see this car and it's got like the it's got the pearl gloss on on the old steering wheel.
And it's God, this car looks good and I love the line, it's really talking to me, this car. And then you start thinking, huh, that's going to burn a lot of fuel. And it's the first time that this old, really one of the age old obsessions in in rock and roll.
And Chevrolet is a rock and crunchy song. You plugged in, but you're talking about this dilemma now, and you're not being negative. You're just saying, huh, well, this is interesting. What do I do about this?
I've converted my Buick, I have a Buick straight eight, and it's being converted right now to run on E 100 ethanol. So I can run the same car and the conversion is not ridiculously expensive. I can have a car like that and a clean conscience about what I'm burning.
So the ethanol, uh, it's, it's natural, yeah, and uh, does it have a. There've been times where people have told me you can drive a car, and you know, I once heard that. I don't know if it's true, but the Willie Nelson had a tour bus or something that ran on, you know, uh, biofuel, biodiesel, some kind of biodiesel, but that if you were behind it, uh, along with the other fumes that follow Willie's bus, you would smell. You could smell like freshly cooked popcorn, because that was the scent that was in the air. And I thought, that's kind of nice.
Yeah, that's where they got it, but it's a good, it's a good thing. But the real good thing is, unlike electricity, there's an infrastructure in place everywhere that can distribute this. And the cars are there, and some of the old cars.
Are coming this? So it's not like, uh, uh, something that can't happen, it's something that can happen.
And will happen more frequently, I think.
Yeah, I think so. People doing it together, though, as soon as other people realize that this is a good thing and it's not just a good thing. Oh, look at me, I'm good, No, it's like, look, what we're up against?
Yep.
We are up against it, you know, and, uh, we don't. We don't get that feeling yet because our leaders have not all gotten on the same station at the same time and stood together and told us.
Yeah, they may never actually.
They may never.
That may not be part of the modern, that may not be the job description.
No, that's not what's happening so far. Yeah, I don't count anybody out. I think I think there are possibility of great leaders.
Yeah, I do, too. They tend to come along when we need them most.
I hope so.
Um, and, uh, I'm just thinking through history and wait a minute. No, they don't, uh, forget what I said. That was screwy. Um, you know, I've been thinking a lot. And it's not just not just me, but my my good friend and associate, Jim Pitt, who's been working with me since the beginning.
We started with me in 93, working on, um, what kind of music we wanted to explore and what we wanted. The philosophy, our philosophy to be, uh, of, of putting new stuff out there and taking chances. And we were talking a lot about your work. And one of the things that was coming to mind so much is. There's a lot of yearning, a lot of looking back in your work from the very beginning. And it's been a theme of getting back to some place, getting to something that evokes strong feelings for you, whether it's a place that you you know in in Helpless, whether it's, uh, whether it's a time in your life, it feels like it's a theme you've been working through. So we had the notion that maybe would ask you if you go back to your youth. Are there a couple of songs that spoke to you that were evocative of something?
And you gave us a couple.
Yeah, I gave you a few there.
If you're cool with it, I'd love to play them right now. We'll take you down memory lane. The first one is Four Strong Winds by Ian and Sylvia. Do you remember where you were when you heard this song for the first time?
No, but I loved it so much that I would, you know, put nickels and dimes in the jukebox to play it over and over and over again. Until I didn't have any change, I would just stand there in front of it and listen to it. It was a beautiful song, for some reason, it really, really got to me.
The magic of the music.
Let's take you back, you're a kid at this point when you're hearing this song.
I guess I'm probably 11 12.
Okay, there's an 11-year-old.
Something like that, maybe a little older, I'm not sure.
Let's say you're 12.
I'm just going to throw that out there because we're going to pick a date and you're 12 years old and where are you living?
In Winnipeg.
You're living in Winnipeg.
And I heard the song before. But I was at Falcon Lake, a place that's near Winnipeg. It's kind of just a lake with you can pitch tents around it. So we had our tent. My friend Jack and I, who played drums in The Squires, my first band, and we were out there. And I found this thing on the jukebox in the restaurant.
Let's give it a listen.
Just play it.
That's a beautiful song.
That's quite a song. Yeah, that's not the original version that I heard them do, though, because it's stereo, right?
Okay.
That was mono when I was listening to it.
Right, listening to it in a jukebox?
A different mix in a jukebox, yeah, so it's more jangly guitars.
What do you think when you hear it now? does it take you right back there?
Eventually, at first, it disturbed me a little because it was stereo. And it wasn't where I had gone in my head when I was talking about it. Because I have a memory of it that's so strong. But the music is there and it got there and I can hear her singing and him singing and the whole thing.
I'm still, it seems a little. I don't know if this is the version. They may have even re-recorded it for stereo.
And sang it all on one mic and done everything together in mono the first time.
So when that song came out and you heard and it's a popular song and it's a hit, that's a great song. And he's saying, I'm going to Alberta. Was there some part of you that was like, This resonates, he's talking about where I'm from.
And this is a hit on the radio that must have been powerful.
It was great, it's nice to hear. One of the other provinces could easily have been Manitoba or Saskatchewan.
Nothing rhymes with Manitoba or Saskatchewan.
I know Alberta wins again.
No, wait, Saskatchewan moving on, we got that, yeah.
So there's another song you gave us, which is by someone I wasn't familiar with, Goge Grant.
Oh yeah.
I just wasn't, I didn't know of her.
This is a song I used to hear when I was going to school. I think I was in Grade 3 or Grade 4, it couldn't be more than Grade 4, I think it was Grade 4. And so I heard this song. For some reason, I associate it with the school and the highway and the railroad tracks going behind the school.
Yeah.
And the whole thing again, it's something I heard on the radio when I never had a record of it or anything.
Right, so you just had to wait.
Yeah, you just wait for it to come around and then it would play and you'd hear it.
I remember those days well, I remember hoping a song I liked would come on the radio and sometimes catching it halfway through. Yeah, right, and very hard to explain that to my son and my daughter now.
Right, they don't understand.
You used to have to hope that you would catch something, rather than I can have it instantly.
Have it instantly. But it's not the same as the one that you had to wait for, right? Because it was all there, yes, and the way it was coming through the air and the radio was all there.
Everything was there, sonically, much different from today.
The song The Wayward Wind. You covered this.
Yeah, I think I did, I don't know if I covered that.
I love that you said. I think I did.
No, because I know I did four strong winds.
I don't think I did the wayward wind, but I almost did it on old ways.
Okay.
But I don't think I did it, I'd have to go back and check.
Well, if you'd like to do it, I'll split the publishing with you.
We can do that for sure. That'll be great. I can't wait to hear that.
Can I say something? That's an oral contract and that's going to hold up in court?
It will definitely.
I love you just laughing through this. Oh yeah, bring it on Irish, you try that, alright, let's check it out. The Wayward Wind by Goge Grant.
That's a beautiful song, she's got an amazing voice.
She's something else.
Yeah, was she from Philadelphia?
Philadelphia.
There you go, something good came out of Philadelphia.
Yeah, that was good.
That and the Constitution.
Yeah.
That's right.
You know, it's funny because you talk about. I was thinking about your in the time that I've known you. it was such a big deal to me when you.
Came on my program, you did a residency there for a week and it just meant the world to all of us and was very important. And one of the things that was so cool is that you weren't someone who did a lot of things like that. So it had a lot of meaning. You weren't someone who was always out there on television. So it really had a great weight for me and for you, Jim, and for everybody at the show, and it was a big deal.
And then I find out that you had done some television back in the 60's, and some of it maybe against your will. Because you're with Buffalo. Springfield was pretty wild. You're in an episode of Mannix.
That's right.
It is one of the craziest things. Mannix a detective show with Mike Connors, and he comes into a bar to check out the scene. And in the background is Buffalo Springfield. You guys are playing, but the camera doesn't even focus on you guys. And this, pardon, I'm sorry if I'm going to anger any Mannix fans out there. But this kind of run of the mill 60's show is going on that no one watches anymore, and the real story is in the background. Do you remember that at all?
I remember being there, there were a couple of those we did, I remember that one.
Whose idea was Let's get Buffalo Springfield on Mannix?
I don't know, but I know that our managers thought this was a great opportunity to move into television.
Did you ever notice that? We're kind of far back? All the action is happening up front, We are 50 feet away from the cameras.
I don't think we even looked at it.
I thought we were going, I didn't watch Mannix, I was not a Mannix.
Fan, but I do know what.
Mannix looked like I can picture the show, I've seen it.
He was always jumping out of his car just before it crashed. I think that was his move. He was, I think, in a Mustang, and it was always, he would, always. He was about to go off the cliff because they had fixed his brakes. I don't know how he got reinsured after the 35th crash, but I was watching. And it's funny because the 60s, in particular, is a time I'm fascinated by it because there's such a culture.
Clash TV's been pretty much more or less the same for a long time.
Same old guys writing it, cranking it out, and then suddenly the world changes. 63, 64, 65. Everything's changing and I love watching. There was a show that you did, was it the The Hollywood Palace, The Hollywood Palace, and.
You guys are great. I can't remember what they played on the Hollywood Palace.
We did, Mr. Soul.
That's right, it started with, for what it's worth.
And then you switched in.
And it's cool.
They taped this whole thing, it was the record.
So you were playing along to the record, but was there any live aspect to it?
There might have been some live singing, I feel like your vocals.
And your solo were live, I watched it, and your solo feels live, and your bass player was.
Looking the other way, that's because he wasn't there, so he had to use our road manager looking the other way.
So there's a guy who's the Emcee and this is the part I love, and he comes out. It's very kind of Borscht Belt old school show business. I'm not sure who it is, but he comes out and he goes next. We got Buffalo, Springfield, these guys, these guys have had so many hits in the last year and made so much money.
They could buy Buffalo and Springfield, and you're like, what?
You guys have to just alright, and you can just think there's like, some 55 year old writers in the back. Give us a joke for Buffalo Springfield. What the fuck is that?
That's right, they had to have it, but, you know, we didn't again. CONAN We didn't even notice. We didn't that stuff, never, even had, never even got on our screen because we were just we did a TV show. It's like we went to Mars and then we left Mars.
That's what it looks like, and I think it's it looks like, okay, we've entered this world.
That.
Trust as yourself.
Yeah, we're gonna show up and we're gonna do this, but we're entering a world that's, I mean, I remember watching you guys on the Buffalo Springfield, on the Smothers Brothers, and again, it was great. It was an amazing performance you guys gave. But they kept doing cutaways to Tommy Smothers. Doing bits while you're doing for what it's worth. And I thought, Eh, huh, I don't know about that.
That's television.
Yeah, that's a pretty heavy song.
I don't think it should be, I don't want people to think about that, I don't know.
But he says, like, when Stephen sings, like, there's a man with a gun over there, they cut to Tommy Smothers, holding a gun. And the audience laughs. And I'm thinking, Eh, I don't know, I don't know if this is.
It wasn't genius, Conan, It wasn't genius.
Really, I thought all television comedy was genius, you know, you did.
You know, one of the things I you did, the Johnny Cash show and.
That was cool.
And I would imagine that. I mean, there's a guy that's a very different situation where you're being invited on this massive American Stars TV show. But also he's someone who you would really respect.
Yeah, I really liked Johnny Cash.
Was he nice to you?
Hardly even got to speak to him.
Really.
But that's okay. He was busy. It was the Johnny Cash Show. You gotta realize in our eyes, doing this, I'm what 23 years old, I'm going on a television show. I was petrified.
So I was thinking about the song I was going to sing, was I going to screw it up or not? And that's all I thought about. So I really don't remember much else about it.
Right, well, it's funny, because one of the songs that you picked is a Johnny Cash song.
Oh yeah.
And again, this is a ballad of a teenage queen. What did this song mean to you? When does this enter your radar?
Oh, right, in the 50's, there. About the same time as I was talking about the Wayward Wind. And the other song, Four Strong Winds, Four Strong Winds was after The Wayward Wind was sooner, and this song was sooner than the Wayward Wind. These are back farther in my life, I've been in maybe grade 2, grade 3.
And this is what I was thinking about is that you are a.
I think better than just about anybody. You tell a great story when you're in your songs, and this is the classic story song. This is Johnny Cash telling us the tale of the teenage beauty Queen, so let's give it a listen. See Where It Takes You Ballad of a Teenage Queen by the Great Johnny Cash.
What do you think? That's it? Hold up for you? Oh yeah, definitely, man, I gotta. I mean, there's a couple things I need to say about that song. I love that song, it's so great.
When has that happened that a woman's left town made it big in Hollywood? And then said, I'm gonna give up all my money and go back to the boy who works at the candy store.
3-1, 3-1.
Show me one example of that happening in history, and I'll back off. Yeah, I just. I had heard that song before, but when you mentioned it, I went back and was listening to it. I don't know, we don't know who's doing the backup vocals, I don't know if it sounds like it. Could it be? The Jordan Airs?
I think it's the, I think it's the. Well, I always thought it was the Tennessee 2.
Yeah, they sound good.
Yeah, they do sound good, but there might have been someone else singing with them, too. He's had the girl singing in a high voice going through the whole thing.
Yeah.
That's but that's such a, I mean.
That sounded like the record that I was remembering when I wrote it down.
Right?
That's what the sound is, and the other two songs sounded kind of like that, that one was an original.
Close anyway, same vibe.
I feel like it would be a blessing and a curse to have your ear. Because I don't pick that stuff apart necessarily. But you hear it, and if it's in stereo or it's been remixed, you're like, I'm out.
Well, I'm different, I'm going. When they did that, what else did they do? Things are different, they have more room for the bass, more room to spread.
For me, it's the feeling of the mix, the feeling of the song. The more immediate it was, the closer to the original one. And then you feel the song and the essence of it, and then as things get modified and changed, you get farther away from that. So that's all I'm missing. It's not so much the mix or one thing or another, but it's the essence of the song that comes from the original.
It's funny when I hear.
A period of my life that are evocative to me, and actually some of them yours. It's like I go right to usually hearing it through.
Our Pontiac Station wagon.
System analog radio. That's how I heard 99 of our music. We weren't allowed to mess with my dad's record player because he had a nice record player. I mean, we could some, but mostly I'm hearing stuff on the radio and that was how I experienced everything. And so I associate a lot of these songs now with being in a car and moving, and it's interesting how that affects how you then later on hear the song.
Yeah, because when it's way back there in your life and you have this memory, it's vivid and who knows what you'd do with it. In all those years, you may have enhanced it.
The way it was, it just may be different in some way. Because when you have a thought for so long and you remember a memory, it becomes more than just that over time. So that's why when you go back, sometimes it's not like you thought it was going to be.
Did I scare you with my glasses?
No, that's good.
It's a bold statement, my glasses.
It is.
Can you see through those? I didn't think so, you're a smear, I see a smear and a floating hat.
Radio has saved us again.
There's a big business for radio in the future.
Trust me, it's not lost on me that people are very happy that I got off TV and into radio. Radio is happening, I know it is happening. But also there's an implied insult there, which is, it's so nice to hear you and not see your god damn face.
It's the future, radio is the future, that's where we're going to hear what music is. Because you can broadcast what people love about vinyl over the radio. And the transmitters are still in the top of all the old buildings around different towns. So a new radio station can come along and broadcast in analog, so everybody got vinyl quality. All you need is the right radio to pick it up with.
Which is.
A fortune making thing that any investment would get right into.
It'd be great if you busted out your product right now and started hawking it.
Yeah, the analog radio.
You know, it's so funny because thinking about your work and all of it.
With world record, and I know that now it's the harvest, 50th and just everything going back to the beginning. There's that great Walt Whitman line where he says, I contain multitudes. And that comes to mind when I think about your music, because you do soft acoustic so well that when I'm listening to that, I forget about your other side. It pulls me in so much. I think, you know, this is Neil Young. But then you go over to, Hey, hey, my my rockin in the free world, like a hurricane, you. Just this stuff that makes me forget about the other genre, and to be able to do both with that kind of intensity blows my mind. It really does, and I was thinking when I was listening to your other selections.
I was thinking, Okay, I can see the softer Neil here. And then you gave us, baby, what you want me to do. And I thought, here we're seeing the other side of you a little bit. When did you first? This is Jimmy Reed, and when are you hearing this song?
Boy, this had to be.
Right around when he wrote it put the 50s, early 60s.
And it's very, it is so simple. Blues.
Great.
What's so great about it? Simple and real.
And it's honest, and it is what it is. He's not trying to impress anybody that's not there.
That's cool, and it's been covered by.
Everybody, everybody.
It's a rite of passage.
Great song.
Let's explore the burbling to this other side of Neil Baby What You Want Me To Do by Jimmy Reed.
Holding up for you. Yeah, classic. It's so funny because I was thinking.
He's doing, yeah, yeah, yeah, and this is a song that was huge for any British invasion band. Rolling Stones cover it. And you know, everybody knows it. But I know when the Beatles show up in 64 and they're saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone's saying, What the hell is that it's Jimmy Reed? I think unless it's someone else that I'm not thinking of, I don't know. But it's just when he goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if that's happened before. Maybe it has a smarter person than I will figure it out well, if such a person exists, there's no proof.
They sent out some people looking, but they never came back.
Yeah, I don't know what happened to them. You know, this is one of the you did a concert for the BBC in. I think it was 71.
And.
It's great.
It's tough, it's terrific, you can see it, and I think it's part of the harvest 50th.
Catalog.
But it's just you just say it off. But it struck me because it's very you. You're playing these songs that are all going to become classics, but this audience hasn't heard them before. And you're in London and you're playing and they're a nice crowd. But at one point you say, how y'all doing and they don't go. They go like, Yeah, good, they're polite English people. Listening to new songs from this man. And you went, Yeah, I can tell that you're sensing that they're fine, but they're not, and you go, Yeah, well, must be that they're new songs.
And then you say, but that's what's happening, and I love that because that really, and you're not trying to be funny. You just say, Yeah, but that's what's happening. And then you proceed to play a song that will become a classic. But they don't know it yet. And what struck me about that is that, to me, that's the philosophy you have to have, whether it's in music or comedy. Which is. Your job is not to try and figure out what they want and make them happy. You've got to do what you're going to do.
And this is what's happening. And then?
On the new record, on world record. There's a clip of you and someone is talking to you. I don't know if it's Rick Rubin or someone's talking to you and says, Man, this one, you've got a lyric here. I take every breath and I feel like I'm doing a dance, a dance with death. It's about Covid. And he says, Man, that's really dark and you go, fuck em. They don't have to buy it. Laughter And I was like.
That has to be the way it is, you know what I mean, that has to be. You're echoing what you're saying in 71 in London, now with world record, you're saying, I think that song is break the chain.
You're saying?
I'm driving this bus. You might not like where we're going, you're welcome to get off if you don't like where we're going. And I believe in that philosophy, I think that's the way it has to be. If you're trying to be, it sounds highfalutin, but if you're trying to be an artist, that's what you have to do.
Yeah, it's easy, as long as you do that, and then you feel good about it too. No matter what you're doing, you feel good about it because you're doing it the way you want to do it.
Right?
And that's a good thing.
And it feels like you've had times, too, where?
You've had this enormous success and people really love the music. And then there's part of you that's like, How do I? How do I crank the wheel here and get them off my trail? How do I? Alright, you followed me this far.
I'm going to take this thing, this old jalopy, up the side of this muddy hill and challenge them a little bit.
Yeah, well, every once in a while they all go the other way, and that's a good thing.
You like that?
It's fine.
It's just that I went somewhere. I'll come back probably. It doesn't matter, the thing is, did we do what we wanted to do? because that's what we're supposed to be doing?
We don't want to do what they want us to do, that's not what they're looking for, really.
Right, no, they don't know what they want, that's the other thing. So I think that's kind of the magic of it. There's this last song which we have to get to, because I don't know if you Rockabilly is.
I don't know why, because I'm a suburban Irish Catholic kid from Boston.
But rockabilly is in my DNA. Jim, you've seen it? All I wanted to ever do was grow my hair up. It's where the pompadour came from, grow my sideburns out and play train kept a rollin or any rockabilly song. If I could do that for a living, you'd never see me in comedy again.
That's a promise to people out there. If I could make one dime doing that, I would do it. I thought I knew every rockabilly great classic, and then you come up with this rockabilly song I've never heard of before by a guy I had heard of. I had heard of Ronnie self because he's kind of a legend in England, not from England, but they care.
The British care more about our really good roots music, I think often, or for a period anyway, more than we did.
They value it.
And.
Rockabilly. So I didn't know about Ronnie self. It never came together for him and he died, I think at like 40 or 41, so it never quite happened. But this song blows my mind.
I used to hear it when I was 11 years old.
In my bedroom at night from WLS in Chicago, on the transmitter from Chicago to Winnipeg, No. To Toronto, that's right, close to Toronto, a place called Pickering. I was living there in this house. And it was the same place where all the other songs that I've told you about came from, except for The Wayward Wind or the.
That came from later in life, but all these four songs came from that one area.
And this one, I couldn't believe it, I could pick it up. They seemed to play at the same time almost every night. So I would be in bed and I'd have my little transistor radio tuned into this, and I'd hear this thing and I'd go, God, that is insane.
Also, I can't imagine hearing this song and then trying to go to sleep. I know it's great.
Especially the last verse of this. It's insanely great, you can tell he's totally got it.
He's possessed and he's amazing and this track blows my mind and I'm so happy that you brought this to my attention. I played this earlier today. I came in and I said to Eduardo, give me Bapelina loud. And we were in this room and he turned it up all the way. And I stood there and I was shaking like a leaf on a tree. As they say, I was doing the Saint Vitus dance, I couldn't believe it. So let's listen to, you gotta turn up the volume on this one.
Please.
Bapelina Ronnie Self.
Man, god, god, damn it. If they asked for a take after that, I'd have killed everybody. Can you imagine? That was pretty good, Ronnie? Let's have one more.
Let's have one more. First of all, I think that comes out in 56. Is that before Little Richard? It's totally right, around the same time, totally channeling that energy and it is.
It's absolute abandon and madness, and also impossible to fake. You can't fake that.
You gotta be there for that, he's so there, and in the end of that, he's totally just goes.
He is taken over by the devil. In the end. One of my favorites of all time is Ronnie Hawkins version of 40 Days and I Just Love always grabbed me. I used to play that a lot with my guys because it's so fast. And then I ran into Robbie Robertson somewhere and I'm like, you know, I play 40 days.
It's so it's, man, it's so fast, and he's like, Yeah, we were all on a lot of pills.
Laughing.
Oh, okay, well, at least I know what the prescription is if I want to replicate that. Yeah, I don't know what was in this guy, Ronnie's self, but God bless him, that was amazing.
And the background vocalists, they were crazy.
So when you hear this music, we've listened to these tunes now, I think one of the things that.
Inspires me most about you is that you keep.
You keep, I don't want to say reinventing yourself, but you keep coming back with like new growth on the tree, you keep coming back with something else to offer. And that's very inspiring to me, and I'm wondering if, like, hearing these old songs, does that inspire you in any way? Like?
Well, these songs got to me when I first heard them, when I was just a kid, and I never forgot. I never forgot that I was just going. Okay, that's out there that exists, and you can go there anytime that you're ready to. And you got to be with the right people and got to be everything's got to be right, then you can get there. And I just love that kind of music, but it's so radically different from my other music that I'm.
Sometimes people can't go, they can't go both places.
Right, well, you've done. We talked about this once before, but it bears repeating. I was in studio 8h when you did. Keep on Rockin in the free world, as was Jim. I tell anybody, tell me anybody. Because Lorne Michaels is saying television is the worst way to experience music, and I think he's usually right, except.
You and the guys did something happen that night.
Something was good, yeah.
Not just Good was transcendent and punched through the television. And I thought, Well, okay, I'm on the floor at 8h. I'm a kid, I'm in my 20s. I'm watching you do that. And the place you just melted it. I think there was structural damage to 30 rock and it's.
And I was blown away by that performance. And then go online and find out that people who weren't there, who just saw it on TV, feel the same way. It did punch through, it did punch through.
I remembered that you can't tell when that's going to happen. But it was very focused. The band was very good and everyone was establishing themselves in a relationship with each other. Four guys who never played together. I played with Poncho and Crazy Horse, but Steve and Charlie had never played. They played with each other, but they never played with us, and it was just so good.
And then we got in the studio, we played a couple of times somehow when we got to Broadway Video and we had our own dressing room. Then they completely dismantled the dressing room between Poncho and Steve and Charlie, it completely. And then the staff came in and they looked at it and I was like, What the hell is going on? I mean, they couldn't believe it, but to these, it was like a rock and roll myth.
You know, you trash your dressing room, so these guys trashed this dressing room and I'm going, okay. Well, that's a rock and roll, that's a moment. But it seemed to be establishing itself, and no matter where we went, those kind of things kept happening. Like, we were supposed to run down rocking in the free world for the run through. And we did fucking up instead and didn't tell anybody, we just did that.
Because you didn't want to spend that coin on the rehearsal.
I think that is really good, too. That was a good one. I think we have that.
But I mean, I don't think you, that's interesting, because I don't think you.
To do it, to do, keep on. Rockin at the dress rehearsal.
You might not have been able to get there for air.
There is no rehearsal, you know? So we threw a song away that wasn't going to be in the studio and didn't tell them what it was going to be. So we didn't sacrifice it.
Yeah, you didn't think NBC would be OK with Fucking up?
You sort of knew they wouldn't.
We figured it wasn't going to be something.
It's a good thing you had that in your back pocket.
Yeah, that's a good one for that.
I always think whenever, if someone ever puts a video camera in my face. If I'm on the street and starts to ask me a question I don't want to answer, I'll just start singing an unclearable song.
Oh yeah.
And be like, Look, if you guys can clear that, you can go ahead and hear my comments. But I might do that if I'm ever forced to testify in front of the Senate. There is so much goodness, you've brought so much more goodness into the world. World Record is the new album and I do love it and I do love how optimistic it is. Who is this on the cover?
That's my dad.
Is that your dad?
Yeah.
That's a good looking, serious man.
A serious, good looking dad who was a writer and was writing for the Toronto Globe and Mail at that time.
Did he approve of your musical aspirations?
Not quite as much as my mom did. My mom was totally supportive and got me everything. I would go to the wall to get anything that I needed.
So I was able to make enough money playing and getting help from her to get amplifiers and stuff like that.
Right?
I remember the big thing between my mom and dad about who's going to pay for this amp? he's got to have the amp.
Your mom said, Wow.
You cannot not have.
So I was looking at this Echo twin.
Fender, Tremolox or something. Ultimately, we got the amps.
I feel like you would have gotten them one way or the other.
I knew where they were.
You would case the Joint Harvest 50th anniversary edition if you don't have this.
It is brilliantly done, beautiful job.
Thank you.
It's a moment in time. We just happen to have footage of all of it and recordings of the outtakes. We put it all in there.
Before we wrap up, I'm excited that Barn the film has been nominated for a Grammy.
Isn't that interesting? That happened now? And this thing comes out and we're playing in a barn and it's 50 years ago. There's almost the same shots you can see, the camera comes in through the barn door and the band is playing. There's so many similarities and then scenery shots of outside both places, and it's a 50 year difference.
It's kind of interesting.
It's funny. I was watching Barn and I was thinking, it's beautifully done and I'm glad that it's been recognized. One of the things to me seems counter intuitive. You can see daylight coming through the slats in the barn. And I'm thinking, is this a good place to record?
It looks cool.
It had great air.
The air was coming through.
Well.
You know what you should do if we can entice you to come back sometime for the next project. You'll see that this room will be made of old cedar and there will be a lot of wind blowing through, a lot of manure on the floor. We're going to go the Neil Young route and it's just going to be a horrible Eduardo, get on this.
Get those fans out there, I'm on it, blowing the air through here.
Neil It is one of the great privileges of my life and I've had a lucky life, so that is really saying something. But to get to hang with you anytime is magical for me and I appreciate your positive.
Cool, courageous spirit. Thank you so much for doing this. It really means a lot.
Thank you, man. I'm glad that you got this record and I hope people get to hear it. It's just so much. I put out too much stuff, I put out harvest at almost the same time as I put this out.
Do the record people ever say no, no, no, hold on this, and then let's wait six months and then that?
To quote you in 1971, this is what's happening.
That's right.
God bless.
Thanks man, thank everybody, thank you so much.
Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Brit Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message. It, too, could be featured on a future episode.
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This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf. this has been a Team Coco production.
This has been a team Coco production.
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