Freaking out Motown and the shelved album that saved Neil Young’s career
While it seemed like Buffalo Springfield was Neil Young‘s first big break, and although it played a critical role in his origin story, before making a name for himself as part of the group, Young already had several years of experience in the music industry and was even briefly signed to Motown Records.
Young devoted himself to the road as a teenager and began touring throughout Canada as a solo artist after leaving school. During this period, the singer-songwriter met a vast array of like-minded people who were equally as obsessed with making music as he was. While playing in Winnipeg, Young became friends with Joni Mitchell, whom he’d later grow close to when they both relocated to Los Angeles.
Another character Young met on his travels is Rick James, who moved to Canada after escaping the Navy. At the time, Young was unaware of the reason for James being in his home country, but in 1965, he accepted an offer to join his band, The Mynah Birds.
The Mynah Birds were already signed to Motown Records, and their future looked immensely bright. They were even receiving press coverage, hyping them up as future stars before they released any music.
During an interview with the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum in 2005, Young looked back upon his experience as a member of the Motown roster. He was unlike anybody else signed to the label and didn’t fit into their traditional mould, but Young claimed they “always treated me really good” despite the musical differences.
He recalled: “When I was recording at Motown, which I did before I came down and was in Buffalo Springfield, I was signed to Motown with The Mynah Birds. I was in there with Rick James, and we recorded there. They were really freaked out by me. I had a Gibson 12-string with a pick-up on it, an acoustic 12-string. I was playing lead on this 12-string, and this was 1964, I think, I liked to play stuff on that 12-string which were a little bit influenced by Steve Cropper and a little bit by Hank Marvin. But it was a 12-string, it was electric, it was weird, and they really dug that country thing I was putting into the music.”
Young continued: “A lot of times when we were recording, they’d stop, and a guy would walk out, and they’d replace like three of us, but they always left me. So I’d be playing with three guys from Motown, a drummer, and a bassist during these sessions. And then when we’d do the background vocals, suddenly there’d be three or four more guys there behind you singing. So it had that sound because that’s what they did, and they all played on everybody else’s records. They always treated me really good, apart from the choreography class, I didn’t do very well in that.”
The opportunity to learn the inner mechanism of Motown was a learning curve for Young, but it didn’t lead to anything spectacular for The Mynah Birds. After a disagreement with their management company over finances, Motown were informed about James being AWOL from the Navy, and the album they recorded was shelved.
Inadvertently, this helped Young advance his career to the next step and form Buffalo Springfield, which introduced him to the world. With the band, he would become one of the most celebrated songwriters of his generation, using the group as a springboard into a solo career that has rarely been eclipsed.
It’s a very potent reminder that even the most inopportune moments can launch you into possibility. Young likely felt completely dismayed when his record with the band was put on ice, even more aggrieved when it became clear they wouldn’t release it. But without learning how to freak out Motown, there’s a good chance that he would never have made the bold leap to become a musician in his own right.
No album meant no obligations, and that meant a chance for him to fully explore his songwriting style and settle on a sound with which he would dominate the singer-songwriter circuit for years, and even decades to come.
