Neil Young: The Last American Hero

— Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

Members of Devo were flown in from their base in Akron, Ohio, to shoot the nightmare sequence in front of an audience at the San Francisco punk club Mabuhay Gardens. Devo introduced Young as "Grandpa Granola," and played the song live and in a local studio before flying back to Akron. Later, listening closely to the tape, Young heard two of the members chanting the phrase, "Rust never sleeps."

He called them in Akron. "What is 'Rust never sleeps'?"

Two of the members of Devo, it turns out, used to be in advertising. They had devised the phrase during a campaign for the rust-remover Rustoleum and decided it fit the song. To Young, it fit his very career, and his battle against the dreaded, creeping disease of trying to make a good thing last. Suddenly, Young once again felt the pull of the road, felt the pull of rock & roll. He booked a six-week tour with Crazy Horse, plotted a fully scripted show with filmmakers/directors L.A. Johnson and Jeanne Field, and took off on Rust Never Sleeps.

"I knew I had to get out there and rock," he says. "But I also knew that I couldn't see myself out there doing it the way it had always been. Standing out there with a microphone. It's got to continue to be as new as when it started.

"The music business is so big these days, I feel dwarfed by it. I mean, I put out a record and, you know, it does okay. Somebody like Foreigner or Boston, they come out with a record and sell ten times as many as I do. I think that's great. But I still feel like this... little guy."

A set was designed in which huge amps and a huge microphone were constructed before the audience's eyes by Young's roadies. Now they were Road-Eyes, dressed in blackface and hoods not unlike Star Wars Jawas. (When Young explained the concept to his puzzled crew, he instructed them to "wave yourself goodbye for a few hours then move with fervor and purpose." Young himself would play a child dreaming about rock & roll.) Beginning the shows with "Sugar Mountain," he moved through a cross section of old and new songs, ending with a phenomenally loud set with Crazy Horse. "I wanted people to leave saying that Neil Young's show was the loudest fucking thing they'd ever heard." It was a heavy-metal tour de force, and somewhere in the middle of the tour, Comes a Time, Young's most subdued album since Harvest, was finally released.

"You know," says Young, confidently, "I do the same thing over and over and over again. It has a slightly different look to it every time. This tour seemed to wrap something up. It's a retrospective, but it's looking back on right now. I think I broke through to another arena; now, people won't be surprised if I enhance the program with actors and diverge totally away from music, then come back out of it into music again. It's making rock & roll more visible to me."

He is struck with an idea. "I'm lucky," says Young. "Somehow, by doing what I wanted to do, I manage to give people what they don't want to hear and they still come back. I haven't been able to figure that out yet."

I first met Neil Young in 1973, on a bus to San Luis Obispo. He had come along to play guitar with the Eagles at a small benefit for the Indian community there. Young sat playing banjo, a grinning cipher in reflector shades. I was instructed not to talk to him, that he had nothing to say.

After the show — which climaxed with a fiery "Down By The River" that Young and the Eagles still talk about — Young plopped down in the seat next to mine. His shades were off, and his eyes were dark, sunken shadows below an Indian-like forehead. But they were mischievous, adolescent eyes. Dennis the Menace eyes.

"Hey," he said, "Bernard Shakey." We shook hands, and he began to tell me that he was an amateur filmmaker, that he was working on his first film (he was finishing Journey Through the Past at the time) and was a little nervous about it. He talked excitedly, punctuating his words with a smirk. "Tough business. I'd hate to go back to shooting Hyatt House commercials."

I turned to look out the window, remembering my impression of Neil Young as a depressed loner. Now here he was — a joker. I turned back around. He was gone, of course, and I was right back where I started.

Young must have remembered the conversation or enjoyed my gullibility. Two years later, when he was releasing his most antipop album, Tonight's the Night, I received a phone call saying that he was ready to do an interview.

There was a listening party in Los Angeles, his first-ever such media function, and we made plans over beers to meet at manager Elliot Roberts' office. I arrived the next morning to find Young, cheerfully cordial, discussing the album with three hungover disc jockeys. "I just wanted to obliterate everything that I was, you know," he was saying, "and wipe the slate clean."

After the conference, Young remained on a sofa drinking orange juice and playing with his dog, Art ("Art is just a dog on my porch"). He sized me up and smiled.

"You need some sun," he said. "You look like people expect me to look. Let's go for a ride."

We walked across Sunset Strip and Young rented a red Mercedes convertible for the occasion of his first extensive interview in five years. A sweltering afternoon, we took a ride out Pacific Coast Highway. After a few attempts at small talk, Young turned and announced: "My uncle played ukulele. Outside of that, I don't really come from a musical family."

There was a lengthy silence. A car full of surfers made a dangerous swerve through traffic to pull alongside for a look. "Hippies," he cracked.