Rick James once claimed Neil Young wanted to be “bigger than Bob Dylan”
As Rick James and Neil Young represent different aspects of the musical landscape, it seems unbelievable that they played in a group together in the days before they made it as solo artists. Named The Mynah Birds, the band was active between 1964 and 1967 and fused R&B with rock ‘n’ roll and soul, and were such a brief success that they signed to Motown Records, one of the era’s most influential and culturally significant labels.
Although the group never released their storied album, it set a precedent for the brilliance to come in both James and Young’s careers. Not long after they split, Young and bandmate Bruce Palmer would move to the West Coast and become founding members of the pioneering folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield. Although James and Young’s careers veered off in different directions, with the former becoming a master of funk and the latter hailed as ‘The Godfather of Grunge’, the old friends would look back glowingly on their time together.
During a 1981 interview, Rick James remembered the moment he first came across Neil Young playing in a Toronto coffee house and instantly knew he was perfect for The Mynah Birds. He recalled: “I worked in Toronto in the 1960s, you know, when Yorkville was just starting to happen, and we had a group called The Mynah Birds. And when Neil came into the group, I found Neil in a coffee house; he was playing acoustic guitar, and when he came with us, I decided I wanted to… I’d just got back from New York, and I saw The Lovin’ Spoonful, and it blew my mind, I said I wanna go folk-R&B, you know, I had a concept for soul music to be like R&B with acoustic guitars, and I ran into Neil, and he’s playing in a coffee house, and I said, ‘Wow, that’s perfect, you can come.'”
James then relayed an anecdote of the band’s first show, where the “rambunctious” Young was so overjoyed to be in a band, and a comical moment where he lost himself in a guitar solo. He continued: “First gig we ever did with him, his first solo, he was so rambunctious, he was so happy to be playing this music with this group. I mean, he was excited about it because it was a group, it was great, and he hadn’t done that. He leapt out, and he’s soloing away, and we looked back, and there’s no chord, and he’s soloing away. Everybody laughed; it was crazy.”
At the Juno Awards in 1982, Young was asked about James’ comments and expressed his desire to play again with his old bandmate someday. He said: “Rick, he was great when I was playing with him. I’d like to play with him again sometime, actually.”
The most fascinating part of Rick James’ 1981 interview was when he revealed the discussions he and Young would have when they were budding musicians hoping to emulate the greats. He claimed that Neil Young explicitly wanted “to be bigger” than Bob Dylan.
James reflected: “Me and Neil Young, we used to get together, and we used to talk in those days of poverty and music, and he wanted to be bigger than Dylan, that’s what he wanted, he wanted this, and he believed this was going to happen. He wanted to be bigger than Bob Dylan, and I wanted to be bigger than Sly Stone.”
At the Juno Awards in 1982, Young laughed and refuted James’ claim, saying his old bandmate was the one wanting to eclipse the greats, as he wished to be the next Mick Jagger: “No, he dreamed about being the next Mick Jagger when I knew him.”
Watch the two interviews below.
