The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [50]
True. Bruce Palmer and I were tooling around L.A. in my hearse. I loved the hearse. Six people could be getting high in the front and back, and nobody would be able to see in because of the curtains. The heater was great. And the tray . . . the tray was dynamite. You open the side door, and the tray whips right out onto the sidewalk. What could be cooler than that? What a way to make your entrance. Pull up to a gig and just wheel out all your stuff on the tray. Anyway, Bruce Palmer and I were taking in California. The Promised Land. We were heading up to San Francisco. Stephen and Richie Furay, who were in town putting together a band, just happened to be driving around, too. Stephen Stills had met me before and remembered I had a hearse. As soon as he saw the Ontario plates, he knew it was me. So they stopped us. I was happy to see fucking anybody I knew. And it seemed very logical to us that we form a band. We picked up Dewey Martin for the drums, which was my idea, four or five days later. Stephen was really pulling for Billy Munday at the time. He’s say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dewey’s good, but Jesus . . . he talks too fucking much.” I was right, though. Dewey was fucking good.
Why did you leave the band?
I just couldn’t handle it toward the end. My nerves couldn’t handle the trip. It wasn’t me scheming on a solo career, it wasn’t anything but my nerves. Everything started to go too fucking fast, I can tell that now. I was going crazy, you know, joining and quitting, and joining again. I began to feel like I didn’t have to answer or obey anyone. I needed more space. That was a big problem in my head. So I’d quit, then I’d come back ’cause it sounded so good. It was a constant problem. I just wasn’t mature enough to deal with it. I was very young.
What was your life like after the Springfield?
It was all right. I needed to get out to the sticks for a while and just relax. I headed for Topanga Canyon and got myself together. I bought a big house that overlooked the whole canyon. I eventually got out of that house because I couldn’t handle all the people who kept coming up all the time. Sure was a comfortable fucking place . . . that was ’69, about when I started living with my first wife, Susan. Beautiful woman.
Was your first solo album a love song for her?
No. Very few of my albums are love songs to anyone. Music is so big, man, it just takes up a lot of room. I’ve dedicated my life to my music so far. And every time I’ve let it slip and gotten somewhere else, it’s showed. Music lasts . . . a lot longer than relationships do. My first album was very much a first album. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. And I did, thanks to the wonder of modern machinery. That first album was overdub city. It’s still one of my favorites, though. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is probably my best. Everything I’ve ever done with Crazy Horse has been incredible. Just for the feeling, if nothing else.
Why did you join CSNY, then? You were already working steadily with Crazy Horse.
Stephen. I love playing with the other guys, but playing with Stephen is special. David is an excellent rhythm guitarist, and Graham sings so great . . . shit, I don’t have to tell anybody those guys are phenomenal. I knew it would be fun. I didn’t have to be out front. I could lay back. It didn’t have to be me all the time. They were a big group, and it was easy for me. I could still work double time with Crazy Horse. With CSNY, I was basically just an instrumentalist that sang a couple of songs with them. It was easy. And the music was great. CSNY, I think, has always been a lot bigger thing to everybody else than it is to us. People always refer to me as Neil Young of CSNY, right? It’s not my main trip. It’s something that I do every once in a while. I’ve constantly been working on my own trip all along. And now that Crazy Horse is back in shape, I’m even more self-involved.
How much of your own solo success, though, was due to CSNY?
For sure CSNY put my name out there. They gave me a lot of publicity. But,