Neil Young spins ``Silver & Gold'' from acoustic songs
Tuesday May 16 2:39 PM ET
dailynews.yahoo.com
By Gary Graff
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Veteran rocker Neil Young says he had to give away ``the cream of the crop'' from his new album,
''Silver & Gold,'' before he had a record he felt ready to release.
Talking about the album in the hallway of the historic Driskill Hotel here (after accidentally locking himself out of his room), Young
explains that in trying out numerous song lineups for ``Silver & Gold,'' he felt he ``could never get the sequence right; it always
seemed too heavy to me.''
That changed in early 1999, after Young rejoined his on-again, off-again cohorts David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash for
the ``Looking Forward'' album. Young offered up his ``Silver & Gold'' tracks, telling his colleagues to ``take whatever they wanted''
for that project.
They helped themselves to several selections, including the CSNY album's title track. Then Young went off to
reconfigure ''Silver & Gold'' and found, to his surprise and delight, that his generosity had paid off in more
ways than one.
``I thought, like everybody else, (the 'Looking Forward' tracks) were probably the cream of the crop,'' says
Young, who recorded two more songs for the final product. ``On the other hand, they're really not because the
other ones (on ``Silver & Gold'') just rose up. With those three or four songs missing from 'Silver and Gold,'
'Silver and Gold' reached a whole new level.
``It was a revelation to me, after trying for a year to sequence this thing in a way that would work right for me and never feeling
right about it, that I really received the perfect combination,'' he says.
An album he started working on in late 1997, ``Silver & Gold'' finds the eclectic Young in the quieter, acoustic-oriented space of
such previous works as ``After the Goldrush,'' ``Harvest'' and ``Harvest Moon'' -- which also happen to be among his biggest sellers.
``Silver & Gold,'' meanwhile, debuted at No. 22 on the Billboard charts, selling 55,000 copies during its first week of release.
The album could be considered a reaction to Young's spate of mid-'90s work with his electric band, Crazy Horse. But he notes that
the songs on ``Silver & Gold,'' including the title track and the first single, ``Razor Love,'' date back quite some time.
``Some of them are pretty old; some of them are brand new,'' he says. ``They're written in the same state of mind, I think, over
years. The ones that are old, like 'Silver & Gold,' they all got put aside for one reason or another. They had to wait until now to
come out.
``'Silver & Gold' I recorded 11 times, and didn't like any of the recordings because as soon as the band learned the song, it sounded
contrived. The song's so simple that once you actually started playing parts, 'Wow, that's terrible.'
``It's better if it's just simple. They're the kind of songs that have to be performed in a way that is real; you have to deliver the song.
There's really no way to explain why they're all together other than that I just let them find their way.''
One of the most provocative songs on ``Silver & Gold'' is one of its newest, ``Buffalo Springfield Again.'' In it, Young sings about
the band he and Stills played in during the mid-'60s, best known for the hit ``For What It's Worth.''
Young has produced a boxed set on the band that's due out this fall, and the song seems to openly pine for a reunion (''Like to see
those guys again/and give it a shot'').
But sitting in the Driskill Hotel hall, Young says, ``I don't know if the Springfield will ever play again. I played with Dewey Martin
and Bruce Palmer a couple of years ago at my ranch for a couple of days. I wasn't playing much because that was right after I cut my
finger (in 1997); I had a big (bandage) on my finger, so I really couldn't play that much. But we had fun, so anything's possible.''
That's Young's motto, of course -- anything is possible. He says he has no plans to tour to promote ``Silver & Gold'' since he
``already did that'' with a 1999 solo acoustic outing that yielded a ``Silver & Gold'' DVD filmed in Austin.
Meanwhile, he's still coy about whether the CSNY reunion will become a going concern; ``We'll stop for awhile and see what we're
gonna do after that.''
Next on Young's agenda is bringing out the Buffalo Springfield box and possibly the first edition of his anthology, an eight-CD set
that will track his career from 1969 through 1972 with lots of rare, unreleased and live tracks.
So, can he hazard a guess about what might be next in terms of original music?
``No,'' he states. ``I don't really have an idea of what the next song I'm gonna write is about. I don't ever know. I don't try to know.
If I thought about that, I wouldn't be writing the way I have.
``I have a notebook in my room. I have a guitar in my room. I have a piano in my room. Everywhere I go I like to have musical
instruments ... so I'm ready when (an idea) comes.''
(Gary Graff is a nationally syndicated journalist who covers the music scene from Detroit. He also is the supervising editor of the
award-winning ``MusicHound'' album guide series.) |
