“Hard to get along with”: How Pearl Jam killed Neil Young’s relationship with his producer
For a man who has been in two bands, Neil Young is a famously difficult musician to work with.
What makes him a great artist has ultimately made him a terrible bandmate over the years: uncompromising, cantankerous and a staunch perfectionist who will make sure the song and its lyrical intent are put before anybody’s wishes. So it comes as an utter surprise that he’s been an integral part of two bands that were supposed to represent the pioneering democratic spirit of the late 1960s: Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
So it was known to approach musical collaborations with Young with some caution, but somehow, Pearl Jam managed to buck the trend in such a way that Young ended up ditching his producer on account of emotional intelligence.
In a rare case of awareness, Young realised that his trusted collaborator, David Briggs, had something of an abrasive creative style that would have potentially wounded the more fragile minds of Pearl Jam, who were recruited to help him on his 1995 record Mirror Ball, and so decided to put him on the bench during their collaboration. He explained, “I played with Pearl Jam for a while, and we made this record; this was good.”
He continued, “Well, actually, this one here I made without David Briggs because he was so much of a, maybe a little hard to get along with for these guys to understand. It might have been, well, he would have been really abusive and abrasive in the studio, and I only had a little bit of time to work with them, so I decided to work with their producer, Brendan O’Brien, to make things go fast because I knew I only had a few weeks to make this record, so that really pissed off David that I did this.”
It makes you truly wonder how furious Briggs’ working process must have been if the famously uncompromising Young had feared him too dangerous a producer for Pearl Jam. But maybe it was down to the shift in eras for Young and his career.
In the ‘90s, he was no longer in the position of youthful rebellion, spearheading a musical resistance at whatever cost. Instead, he was something of a mentor to the Seattle band, stewarding and sheltering them through the music industry with equal measure.
In fact, Vedder recalls one moment when Young offered up a moment of unfiltered wisdom, informed by his many years on the road and in and out of bands. According to the Pearl Jam frontman, Young said, “Hey, just so you know, there might be some people that’ll try to pull you away from this group, but you guys, the sum is greater than the parts. Remember that. I’m sure that’s probably already happened to you.”
Years of fractured relationships had potentially caught up with Young, who was keen to impart some wisdom to the next generation and offer them some sage advice that hadn’t been given to him. Briggs may have been the collateral in this realisation, but we, as fans, got the continued joy of Pearl Jam as a result of Young’s newfound self-awareness.
