The best musician Neil Young ever played with: “He blows my mind”
Working with Neil Young often means knowing that he could decide to ditch you at any point.
The folk icon has made some of the greatest albums that the rock and roll world has ever seen, but it’s not out of the ordinary for him to scrap something if he thinks it doesn’t work or end up leaving his band behind altogether to work on a record that fits more in line with what he’s feeling. And while that’s what all of his fans both love and hate him for, Young could admit that there were a few musicians who were beyond compare whenever he started laying down the right kind of riff.
Because while the lineup of Crazy Horse has changed quite a few times throughout the years, Young would have never been able to get to where he is today were it not for them. Those musicians were the ones breathing life into every one of his tunes, and while people like Danny Whitten weren’t long for this world by the time that Young was working on Tonight’s the Night, Young appreciated everyone who made his dreams a reality.
But by the time that he started working with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Young knew that he was never going to be a team leader like the rest of them. That was half the reason why Graham Nash had a few problems with him behind the scenes, but it wasn’t like Young didn’t have good instincts. He could tell when his work with the supergroup wasn’t panning out, and while he could have been a little bit more diplomatic about it, he wanted to follow the muse rather than worry about everyone’s feelings.
No matter how tough their relationships got, though, Young always had time to work with Stephen Stills. They had already been friends since the days of Buffalo Springfield, and even when Young joined to give CSN a bit of an edge, Stills was the real creative dynamo whenever they worked on their albums, even if it meant playing everyone else’s parts on their debut record.
Young could only be true to himself, but there was never a point where he didn’t feel like Stills was one of the finest people in the industry, saying, “We’re like brothers, you know? We love each other, and we hate each other. We resent each other, but we love playing together. I see and hear so much in Stephen that I’m frustrated when it isn’t on record or something. There have been a lot of frustrations through our whole lives with each other, but there’s also been a lot of great music. He continuously blows my mind with the ideas that he has for my songs. He’s one of the greatest musicians I’ve ever met in my life. Great singer. Incredible songwriter.”
Which probably explains why the supergroup’s zany period included Young going off with Stills for a string of albums. After all, Stills was the one who was willing to hang out and play the best music that he could, no matter who he was hanging out with, and since Young was into the rootsy side of rock and roll, it wasn’t all that hard for his old partner to find his footing whenever they started working together.
And considering how well they got along, it’s really saying a lot that Young was able to help Stills finish off some of the songs that were straight-up crap. No self-respecting songwriter would have been able to put out something like ‘That Girl’, but since Stills didn’t have much else on American Dream, getting Young to help him throw something together is like watching someone ask their older brother to help them out with finishing their chores.
So while Young and Stills might still bicker to this day, there’s nothing preventing them from coming together and making something fantastic if the time is right. The stars might have to be aligned in just the right way for everything to work, but for as fickle as Young could be, he knew he could never say no to the person who helped give him his first shot at the big time back in the 1960s.
