In the Van With Neil Young: An Exclusive Interview

Are you thinking of something like Bob Dylan's Bootleg series one day?
That's kind of like what the archives are like, really. It's that kind of a thing. It will be similar to Bob's thing. It's going to be a series of live records -- there are live records over a period of about four years. That's a numbered set that will come out periodically. Some of them will be free; they will be on compilation records where there are new things in them. They're all new things, but some of them are things that have never been on record.

How about the unreleased albums?
Those are all in the archives, and as you chronologically get to that period, if there was a finished album, it will be there, and it will also be possible to listen to the songs in the order they were recorded, so everything in the order it was recorded, that's the way the archive works. You can get to a certain period in time and you see, "Oh, four of these songs were in Homegrown, and that was released a year and a half later," and with the DVD and computers and everything, you can jump around and see how things are connected. It's good, the technology makes it real possible to develop all that. It's almost like a video game of music or something, where you can choose tracks, where they come from in chronology and what albums they were in, even though they're all spread out chronologically. Stuff like that. It's interesting for collectors.

I'm fascinated by your Hank Williams guitar. Can you tell me how you got that?
I bought it from a friend in Nashville. A friend turned me on to this old dude who had it, and I went right down there and I didn't know which one it was, and I tried it all, and I chose that one, and I said, "This is the one I like, I don't know if this is the one." And it was the one so he had it there, and he had several D-28's. But he didn't want anybody to take it if they didn't know what it was. And then I had to buy it. It was a good guitar. It plays really well. I've been using it. I know some people think I shouldn't, because it's Hank Williams' guitar, but I think it's made to play. I get a lot out of it.

Have you given any thought to where it's going next? You sang in the song that "It's just yours for a while.'
I don't know, I don't know where it's going. I hope it's not going too far.

I've heard you say that you were hesitant about working again with Crazy Horse because of the noise onstage and everything. Is that still a concern?
It's one of the concerns, but I don't think that would stop me from working with them. I think it's just that we have to plan on it. There's a lot of physical abuse that happens during those shows, and it's just a matter of how long you can do that. I still love doing it. I'm not going to stop doing it. I love playing with Crazy Horse, they're great. They don't sing like these guys, but they play like -- it brings out a whole other part of me.

Plus: Check out an a review of the St. Paul show and listen to audio interviews with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash (RealPlayer required).