Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Neil Young

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Neil Young is a legendary singer-songwriter whose career has spanned more than six decades. From Buffalo Springfield and Crazy Horse to a celebrated catalog that includes albums such as Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Gold Rush, his work has left an enduring mark on generations of musicians and listeners. A two-time Grammy winner, Neil has also been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, both as a solo artist and as a member of Buffalo Springfield. His new album, Second Song, recorded with the Chrome Hearts, brings together newly written material with new recordings of songs he originally wrote more than 60 years ago. Works mentioned: NEW STUDIO ALBUM: Second Songs Casting Me Away From You I’ll Love You Forever (2026) The Foggy Edge of Time Day by Day Earth Girl Second Song Soon I Might Be Going Neil Young Archive Project ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

tetragrammaton. Elliot was so great. He was just amazing. He was like a great friend. I met him when I was in Buffalo Springfield. He was with Joni. And we wanted him to manage us and he wanted to manage us. But then the group broke up and I told him he had to manage me.

So that's how we came together. And then he's just been my best friend for all those years. years and fantastic somebody to talk to all the time about everything. Did you talk to him every day? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I was terrible with him. I was talked to him every day and I'd be yelling and screaming about shit and then, you know. He was a good listener, though.

I felt like he was able to digest that information well. Absolutely, man. He was so great. I miss him. But I got him here. He's with us. Yeah. Tell me about the new album.

What was the first thing that happened that led to this new album? I was just kind of in Colorado in January and February of this year. And I just started to feel the music in towards the full moon. And I started thinking about music. And then I started to write things. I wrote a bunch of little notes and titles. and things. Then it just started coming really fast. And I used to wake up in the morning and write the words to the songs. I had a few melodies in my head. So I just started writing and I just couldn't stop.

And the words really were coming fast. So I just wrote them all down. And then I went right to Shangri-La, your studio in Malibu, on March 1. And I moved in there. And March 1st, I think was our first or maybe the second was the full moon. So after writing these during the full moon, I moved right into the studio, and it was the full moon, and we recorded, I had five songs, and we recorded four of them the first day.

Wow. And the second day we recorded the second song, and that was it. I was out of songs. So then I started thinking, I told the guys, I said, well, just let me, you know, let me go to sleep and wake up and we'll see what happens.

And maybe I'll have another song or something. And we'll figure out what to do next. So the next day I woke up and sitting around having a cup of coffee. And I just started playing these songs. One song that I had written back in 1964 or 65, it was on the archive somewhere. And I remembered it. And I started playing it. It was called Casting Me Away from You.

And it was a song that I remembered rehearsing with the Squires, which was my first band. We had moved to Toronto from Winnipeg. And I was rehearsing in the lobby of a theater that my dad had set up for us. So we set up our equipment in the lobby every day because the theater didn't have anything going on in it. So we were in the lobby playing, and that's where we played casting me away from you. And then I did, somewhere along that time, I had a friend named Comrie Smith. It was a guy I went to school with. Since I was back in Toronto, I was revisiting my old school friends.

So I went to his house and we recorded casting me away from you in his attic. And it's in the archives somewhere back in the 60s. So it would be in volume one somewhere. It's incredible that these songs you wrote so long ago found their way to the new record. So I remembered that one, and then I remembered this other one that was from 1963. So these are a 60-year-old song. Oh, here's a couple. So, yeah, it was called I'll Love You Forever.

And I wrote it about my girlfriend, Pam Smith. She was a lovely young lady who I knew in high school. And we went to different schools. and then we got together at this place called Falkan Lake where I was visiting in the summer and sleeping in a tent. That was cool. There's a picture around here somewhere of me and Jack in our tent,

Jack Harbour, the drummer in the Squires. Anyway, I just, I remembered that song. And when I first left home, and we were playing in a place called Fort William, Ontario, I was playing there in a place called the, I think it was called the Fourth Dimension. I was playing. And oh yeah, we rent this disc jockey there. His name was Ray D.

So Radio, you know. We were so inventive back in the 60s. So, yeah, Ray and I and the guys went into the radio station and recorded a song. called I'll Love You Forever that I wrote for Pam. But by then, of course, she was in the past. I'd already left Winnipeg and I was on my way to Toronto, hadn't gotten to Toronto yet. So there we were. We recorded that one.

And that's in there somewhere back in the archives way back, 1963 or something. But the version we're about to hear is from the new record. Yeah. I can feel so happy. So that's where that one came from. So I had two more songs, and that made, I think, seven songs total. But there are a lot of long songs in the first group,

the group of five new ones, had three long songs in it for acoustic. They were, because there was no big instrumentals or anything, a little harmonica or something, you know. Yeah, I had those ones. So there I had the seven songs. I recorded them.

And I said, That's it. We don't need to pretend that we need more. I mean, to listen to this, there's a lot of stuff here. What's shocking about this is I listen to the album today. I would have never imagined that two of the songs are from 60 years ago and the others are brand new.

They sound like songs that have just always been in the air. Yeah, yeah, they're all the same that way. They're all just a bunch of, they just hang together. It was always really lucky to have those songs and I haven't come along. And that's the way, now I have to wait for a while to clear my head completely before I can do anything else. But that won't take long.

They're starting this other songs, they're starting to come now. Does it happen that way where you're not thinking about writing songs and all of a sudden it just happens? Yeah. If I'm thinking about writing songs, nothing's going to happen. But if I forget about it, they'll start showing up.

And you said that you started with writing the words. Did you work them out on the guitar first, or were you just working in your head on lyrics? It's hard I can never figure out which comes first. You know, I was playing a few melodies here, just a couple of things. I play a couple of chords, and I got my method now is a little different. I use a cassette player, an old cassette player, and I turn it on, and I play a little bit into that. When I first start writing anything, when I first have a melody, I'll turn on the cassette player, and I'll just play it as I kind of find it.

Then I turn the cassette off and that's it. That's all I ever listened to. So I'm back there where it first showed up when I listened to it. And then it's in my head and then pretty soon the lyrics just start coming from everywhere. Do you think the reason you came back was because somewhere you knew that they fit with the others? Boy, I don't know, man. They just came back. Yeah.

I just, well, I said to the guys, I said, well, I don't have any right now, but maybe I will tomorrow. Maybe they'll show up. I wasn't thinking about old songs. This is the first time I've ever written an album that's got new songs and songs 60 years old. Really, these songs had never been heard by anybody. None of them have, so there's a few people if you're not real archives junkie, they'll get in there and they'll, they'll heard these. And now people that know the archives will be looking for them.

and they'll see them and they'll hear them and then they'll hear the way we did it with the chrome hearts and they're really like the same thing. As nutrition science advanced through the mid-20th century, researchers began to understand that modern eating patterns, limited variety, processed foods and time constraints could leave small but meaningful gaps in daily micronutrient intake. Today, large population studies confirm that approximately 90% of adults fall short on one or more essential vitamins or minerals.

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of applied science. Learn more at drinkag1.com slash tetra. Do it today. Tell me about the whole archive project. Yeah, I think I started it back in the 90s, somewhere back there. Yeah, I could look it up, but it's easier to just kind of drift around in my head. I just started going like, I've got everything, but it's all over the place. I want to put this thing together and make a thing. And see this, those are three boxes. We're making the fourth one now.

Probably going to be five or six of them. I'm not sure, maybe five. I thought I'd be done at four, so that's why we made it like that. So you could have, you know, Neil Young and it all spelled out. Each box had part of my name on it. And then you put the boxes together. If you put it on the shelf, you can see my name and that's my stuff.

Is it songs with all of the different bands and everyone you played with from the beginning until now? Yeah. It's everything. Yep. There's between 10 and 12 discs. At first, I was used to blue or, Rays for volume one because I wanted I-RES. Yeah.

And then Blu-ray disappeared, kind of. Nobody had Blu-ray, so I went to CDs, and what I was too bad that's not vinyl, it'd be ridiculous. That would really be a lot of boxes. So it's 10 to 12 in each of the three. Yeah. So it's between 30 and 36 CDs. Yeah, and they'll be, you know, it'll be between 46 and 50.

and this next one, I'm not sure how this is going to work out. And it's everything chronological? Yes. That's what holds it together. I keep it all chronological, then I have no decisions to make. One less thing to think about. You're not kidding. So it's great.

Yeah, I love doing it, and it's a lot of fun. I really want to finish the whole thing, and so it kind of gives me a mission, you know. Yeah. I hope that they end up being 10 boxes. so that it keeps you busy for a while. You too. That'd be great.

I really think so. There's so much stuff in it that I really love. There's an album in there with Booker T and the MGs. It's got Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper, Booker T, and Jimmy Keltner. So I got these great musicians playing with me. And I just basically did all the songs that were in my head at the time. Some of them were classics and some of them were new. So that's one of the records that's in there.

That's one of the discs. There's some beautiful stuff in there. When you're working on the archive and you hear something that you recorded 30 or 50 years ago, do you remember everything or does some of them hit you like, where is this from? Oh, I usually remember where they come from because they're organized in discs. You know, they're organized in periods of time and albums. and just cruising along through it. But now I've got everything in order in the archives,

even if there's no disc or there's no box, it all goes right up to the last record I put out. And this record, we're just finishing, putting it in the archives now. So second song is just going in there. Do you know what album second song is in your catalog? No. It's up there.

It's a lot. It's quite an album, yeah. I like that one. Especially today, there's, you know, so much to write about. I mean, look at Bruce has really gotten into the political thing, and he's written a lot of great songs, and he's really on it. I'm really involved in all that stuff, but that's the last thing I want to write about. Yeah.

I want to go somewhere else. I want to escape from all that, and Bruce covered it great. I mean, I have a lot of things that I write about the situation we're in because it's such an unbelievable situation. How the hell we got here, but we're going to get out of it. We are definitely getting out of this. Tell me about out on the foggy edge. Out on the foggy edge is the day I left the ranch. That was about somewhere 13 years ago or something.

I'd been living there for many, many years, like 35 or 40 years. It was a sad time. I was leaving, and I just had to get out of there because things had just gone south like they do in some relationships. And we had just a huge disturbance in the flow that we had, but we had great kids. And that was nice. So I just decided, hey, I'm either probably going to die here and it's not going to be fun or I'm going to go somewhere else and we'll see what happens. I was almost 70 years old when I left, 68 or something. It was your home for a long time, and it really was your home. It wasn't just a house. It was a very particular place.

I loved that place, and I built it. There was an old cabin there, and I built my house on top of the cabin. We just kept going, and I built a recording studio. I bought land around there. I built a place for my trains to be, because I love electric trains. I put them there. We had other houses that were part of it. And the guys had come and stay in one of the houses called the White House.

They'd stay in the White House and we record at the ranch and had a nice analog situation happening there. And it was a beautiful thing. I loved it. It was fantastic. But there just came a time, it was time to leave. Yeah. You know, how life is. So I left.

It was very difficult because. I built this whole thing, everything there. And then I just left it. That was a trip. But I had to do that to keep moving forward because I was getting stuck and mired and things that I didn't want to spend all my time. Did you feel welcome in the new world out of your bubble? Well, when I left, I really didn't know where I was going.

And I recently met Darrell. when I was doing a movie up in Canada about the oil and all of the bad stuff that was happening up there. So it was just doing the world and oil and things are getting upset as far as I could tell. I just wanted to write about that. And I went up there. And it's funny because I'd reached out to Darrell a long time before that because she was the only other person I knew that was into biodiesel. So she had biodiesel transam that she had converted that was running on alcohol and biodiesel and some kind of combination of fuel.

I mean, she was really a genius trying to make a clean car and a cool car. And I was really into that. At the same time, I was trying to make my old Lincoln into an electric car so that I could use it. And I used a biofuel generator in the Lincoln. So I called her and we talked a little bit and then, you know, years won't bother. And then when I was doing this film and I was traveling around in the Lincoln, I was going to just telling the story of what it's like to try to make an old electric car with a generator that runs on bio.

And so I called her and we talked a little. And she met us out there somewhere in Colorado. And we tripped up to Canada and went up there. I mean, she's just really cool, and we were really good friends. But we didn't know each other that well, but we know each other pretty well. It was not like a romantic thing, but we just had such a good time, and we had so much in common. So we were just thinking about the same things and talking about them and all of that. So when I left the ranch, I called her, and I said, listen, I'm leaving my home where I used to be.

and I'm coming down to L.A. where I used to be before that. And do you know anywhere or is there someone who just put me up for just, you know, on a subtle way for a couple of weeks until I get my stuff together, you know? She said, yeah, yeah, I know a funky old place that you could stay. And it's pretty funky. It's not like a big deal. So I went down there and I drove down there. there that day and got there and found her place, which is this funky place that she just described. It was a beautiful place.

And then I just stayed. I never loved. Amazing. Yeah. Now we got to know each other and fell in love and eventually got married and, you know, that's life. It's a trip. You never know what's going to happen. The second song on the album is called Day by Day, and it sounds like a very personal love.

song. You say in the song, you're scared about what you're talking about in the song. It's in the lyrics, almost like it's too personal to talk about. I'm guessing if it's a new song, maybe it's about Darrell. Yeah. Way after day, after day. This isn't a fast song, so fade to say something. There's nothing worth waiting on. So we should go. Yeah. It's a lot of words in that song. We're going to make a video of that next, I think. Nice.

Yeah, no, she's throughout it. She's all over it. L-M-N-T. Element Electrolites. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add Element Electrolites to your daily routine.

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It's weird, isn't it? Yeah. Did you ever listen to music like that, like 1920s or show tunes? I listened to all music. It just came to me in a way. I just kept hearing this melody and I could hear the melody and I could play it. And then it was like two melodies at once. And I'm going, well, wait, one of them has got slow words and the other one's got a lot of words and a lot of

of changes, but they happen on the same chords. So I put the two together, so you can almost hear two songs at once in there. That's what might be one of the most complex songs that I've ever written. I don't know how I did that, but there it is. I love that one. It's a beauty. Yeah, I really do love that song. And then was second song, the second song you wrote, of this group of songs? No, I don't know what it was. I don't know why I called it the second song. I think it's because it might have been the second song I wrote of this group. The first one was Foggy Edge of Time.

I remember playing the piano and hearing these just two changes going back and forth. And then the melody came and then the words came and everything happened. That was good. I love that song, Foggy Edge. But second song is like, it's like in my life, this is my second song. Definitely yearning for a simpler life. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, you know, Rick, when I think of these songs, and I try to think of them, I have a feeling,

but I can't specifically remember the songs. It's just a big feeling. And it was cool to have that. And in a way, it sounded like something I wrote in 1970 or something, you know. when I bought Broken Arrow Ranch in 1970 and arrived there in September. And I drove there with my friends, Bruce Barry and Guillermo Chiquetti, two of the roadies that work with me. And Johnny Barbeta, I think, too. And I drove up there from the Chateau Marmont where I was staying in L.A.

in this old Jeepster. And the Jeepster is, that's the car that we're in, when. we're driving down that road and second song. It's the same. And then the next video is casting me away. And it's the Jeepster again.

But it was 20 years earlier than the first song. It was 1972 or something or 71. And I was cruising along and in the Jeepster and we're listening to this song, casting me me. And Carrie rides by

on a horse. Carrie Snodgrass is Zeke's mom, and she rides by on a horse, and she's galloping along in front of me on the road. It's a fantastic video. It's just they're all really personal. It has nothing to do with, we're not trying to be cool or anything. It's just what it is. But it was fun. We've had a great time doing these videos because they got people's videos from years ago that I'm using.

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So I didn't want to play it for her anymore because I didn't like to hear it. Didn't like to see that. It's a song about change. Yeah, it's a pretty sad song, but it's, but it also has some, all of these songs, even though there's some sad moments in them, there's a lot of them that have uplifting parts. Inside it, there's a good positive energy. it's moving forward, you know. That's what I like about it.

And I'll say that even if you look at your songs from your 20s, there's a lot of sad songs. It's not like sad songs that are a new thing for you. Oh, no, they're all over the place. Yeah. But these ones have got a certain positive vibe to them. But even though they're like songs from the 70s or 80s or whatever in a lot of ways, it's the kind of songs that people apparently really remember me for,

Because what people are writing, it's like it's freaking me out to see what they're, while they're reacting. It's great. It's nice to feel that I've touched a lot of people. So you can't make a plan for all of that stuff. It just happens. Yeah. Well, I was thankful to be here and still doing it. Tell me about Roy Orbison.

Well, Roy, he was amazing. It was one of my favorites. Back in the beginning, I used to go with. to this record department in a hardware store in Toronto. I used to go there and they had 45s and I'd go through it. And that's when I first heard Roy. I'd heard something he did, only the lonely or something like that. He was amazing.

So I checked out all those 45s. Fantastic. Tell me about the scene in Winnipeg when you were coming up, when you were first playing with the Squires. Well, I was in high school. we started playing at high school dances and stuff, you know. There's some pictures in the archives of the band back there and have an mascot and, you know, dress as three of us.

Yeah, so we played high schools and community clubs and gigs like that for a couple of years. And just the first time we got paid, we got 20 bucks for the whole band and for everything. And that was great. We felt, oh, they're paying us to do this. I mean, hell, this is fantastic. it. And then we just kept on doing it. When you went to school, were all the kids in bands, or was it kind of an unusual thing at the time? Well, it was kind of unusual, but there were a lot of bands in Winnipeg. Winnipeg is a very musical place. My friend Randy Backman, he had a great

band that he was in with a guy called Alan Cobble called Alan in the Silvertones. And it later became the guess who was Burton Cummings joining the... group. Burton Cummings used to be in a group called the Devereigns before the guess who. And oh my God, there were just so many bands. It was amazing. You know, our band was, we weren't a big band in town. I mean, we were maybe the 10th band or something. The Silvertones were probably the number one band. And the Devereons were maybe three or four, rotated around, following each other everywhere. I played on the back of some trucks and parking lots and stuff like that. Yeah, that was fun. We had a good time. It sounds great. It does. It's a very lucky man.

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Who would you say your favorite guitar players have been over the course of your life, if you think back from different eras? Hank Marvin. He was from the Shadows, lead guitar player in the Shadows. Jimmy Reed. Yep. My all-time favorite guitar players and harmonica players.

Jimmy was a big influence on me. I had a C. Bree's record player, my mom's record player, and I had Jimmy Reed records, and I'd come home for lunch from school and put on Jimmy Reed and listen to Jimmy Reed while I was eating lunch through the whole lunch period and then go back to school. So where I really learned was Jimmy Reed. I didn't learn anything at school.

Yeah. Worked out. Yeah, it worked out okay. Yeah, what a great musician Jimmy Ree. Oh, my God. And I love Randy. Randy is a great guitar player. I loved the way he played.

And I actually, I copied him or was influenced by him a lot. I even got a guitar like his, an orange Gretch that I used in the Springfield. And I had one in the Squires, and I sold it. And then I got it back recently. So that was a trip. How'd you get it back? Well, this guy online said that he could find it.

He said, if you have pictures of it, I'll be able to find it. Because it's a gretch and it's made out of wood. And the wood you can see, you can see the grain and the wood. There's no duplication there. They're all different. Yeah. On the picture of one that was in exactly mine. Wow.

And I got it. And, you know, I bought it. And when you play it, does it feel like your guitar? Yeah, it feels pretty cool. It's great. It's wild. I haven't used it much. I love old black so much.

I just keep playing old black. But the orange scratch is there. I got this white falcon that I really like and a couple of guitars. But this weird thing happened just thinking this is off the track. Yeah. I was listening to a prototype. for Neil Young Radio that's going to be on my website. That plays music from my whole life from the archives,

everything I have all the time. And it plays it like a real radio station. Whoever's listening to the radio station, that's what they hear. Everybody hears the same thing. Yeah. But it keeps randomly selecting songs from 60 or 70 years, you know, and it keeps changing.

So the first time I listened, to it. I got a link to listen to what it was going to sound like, how was going to work. And I was listening away, and right away, I hear this thing. I've never heard it before. I'm going, where did this come from? And it's a song, Change Your Mind that I put out in the 90s, I guess. But I'm playing it, I'm playing it on Old Black, which I didn't do on the record. And it sounds like an earlier recording of it. And I'm listening to this. I'm going, well, this is a trip. The instrumental was like eight minutes. Wow. And then the first verse happened. And then it ended. And I went, wait a minute, that was the last verse. So this recording started

halfway through the version we were doing or something happened. I don't know. And we haven't been able to find the recording. You only heard it because it was selected randomly from everything I did. Wow. And we are looking and looking and looking trying to find this recording. It's the coolest recording of that song I've ever heard. It wasn't complete, but it was great. And anyway, that was a real, that's kind of a distraction I've been dealing with for the last four days. No, that sounds great, though. And I love that you can have that experience, even with your own songs, to hear a version that's not familiar and be surprised by it and love it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of remember it when I hear it. Yeah. I go, yeah. It's not like the record, but it is, it sounds like it's done in the story. because I can hear Ralph and Billy singing, and it's everybody singing and playing live like

Crazy Horse does, but it's a studio. There's no audience. Either that or it sounds great for an audience, no audience live recording. My guess is it was a studio recording, so we're looking for it. We're going to looking all over the place. I can't find it anywhere. But it's from 1993, I think. I think, probably one of the first versions, probably not done where I did the record of Change Your Mind, which is at the complex in L.A. Sleeves with Angels, I think, was the album. It was the last album that I did with Briggs before he passed. Anyway, what a trip. I'm going to find that thing.

I'm looking for it. How often would you record songs in studio and then they wouldn't come out and then maybe later you would come back to them or try it again? Not that often, but occasionally. I think this was one of the first times I played it, and I was just jamming, having a good time on changes. Then I did a verse, and then it was over. Wait, it's the last verse. Wait a minute.

Where did this song start from? And then right away, when I went back to listen to it, the radio had changed to a new random bunch of songs, chosen from everything that I have. So we haven't been able to find it, even though the computer found it. Something about hearing music randomly, there's a really cool thing about it.

It's different than deciding what you're going to hear and putting it on because you really can get surprised. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. I love it. You're very lucky. You've been able to do this for so long. Yeah. Tell me the first time you played with Stills.

Stills. I played with Stills in Fort William, Ontario, 1963. at the same time I recorded, I'll Love You Forever. Stills was playing in the club, the Fourth Dimension, where we played on Saturday afternoons, and he was in the headlining band from New York, called The Company. They played at night, and so I met him,

and we got to know each other, and we hung out, and that's when it started. How would you describe the similarities and differences in the way you guys play? Well, Stephen is actually a better player. He's got a lot of chops. He's got a lot of things he can do. I'm kind of sloppy, but I have a feeling.

But we love each other, and when we play together, it just goes a lot. That's really good. So when we started at Springfield, we discovered that. And people at the Whiskey O'GoGo, and they heard the Springfield for the first time they heard it. And people started showing up to listen to the Springfield because we do these jams and stuff and we get crazy. It was fun.

Do you feel like you make each other better when you play together? I think we make each other, a light comes over us. Yeah. I don't know if we're better or worse, but something happens. Beautiful. When the Springfield was playing in clubs in L.A.,

who would have been playing those same nights? You know, Van Morrison and Three Dog Night. How would you say living in Northern California and living in Southern California are different? Well, Northern California, I was a recluse. Southern California, I was all over the place. And I ended up living in Malibu on Broad Beach Road in Southern California.

And that's where I first saw Shangri-Law, when the band was still there. And I went up there and hung out with the guys in the band and Bob was there and we were hanging out. You know, I've always loved Bob. What a great writer. He's such a great writer. He's like in my impression,

he's the greatest writer of our times. That's the way I look at him. But we, you know, we were just out there hanging out. I was trying to be cool and, you know, these guys are all great. And I was hanging out, you know. How long did you live in that house on Broad Beach? Maybe a year.

And then I moved to another house, a great house on the sea level drive, which is off a broad beach, right on the ocean. And the other house was on the ocean, too. What a great place. And anyway, the second place I lived, F. Scott Fitzgerald used to live in it. Wow. And then when I found it, Catherine Ross was living in it. And that's when I bought it. And she was renting it.

And I bought the house. So I moved in there on sea level drive and lived there for a few years, got married there to Peggy outside the house and the grounds. And it was right. It's such a beautiful house. It was an old Cape Cod cottage covered with Bougainville plants and beautiful flowers everywhere. Fantastic. And I just loved it so much, Rick, that was so great.

And then remember the Mandiville fire? It burned it to the ground. So my house was gone. And there weren't that many other houses in that area that burned, but that one burned. Oh, it blew my mind. Yeah. I was playing at the forum the night that it burned. Really?

Yeah. So did you leave the house to go to the forum show? I never went to the house. I went from in my bus right to the, from my last gig to that gig to another gig. But I heard, oh, my God, when I came off the stage. They said, well, the fire, I think might have burned your house down. So I didn't go there right away. But when I went in a few days after that, it was just, whoa, what a mess.

Everything was gone. Terrible, wonderful house. It's a trip. Yeah. Really, really, really something else. I read somewhere in the past that you said, everybody knows this is nowhere was your best album. Do you still feel like that about that album? You know, I really like it.

It's a great album. What I like about it is it's the first real crazy horse album. Yeah. And, you know, it showed a lot of stuff. We were all so young and Danny Whitten was playing with us before he passed. So, yeah, that was a great album. There was one of a kind because it was Crazy Horse with Danny. And after that, it was heroin.

And Danny was not the same. and then away he went. It's also different than all the other crazy horse albums in that it's more of a studio album. It seems like since then it's been more this is what we sound like live recorded. Yeah, even though that's the way we played that first album too, but I didn't sing everything live.

I see. We started singing live after that. So we just played live and I would be singing, but we weren't recording that. Tell me about the story. story of after the gold rush, how did that project come to be? That was at my new house that I bought when I first moved to Topanga. And I was there, and I met my wife.

I met Susan. She had a restaurant called the Canyon Kitchen. And then we fell in love, and I had this house I just bought. And she moved up and stayed in the house with me there. That was a fantastic house. And then I built a little studio. in it. And Briggs and I made after the gold rush there.

And we started recording. And we had, Nils was there. Danny was there for parts of it. He was struggling with his heroin. But he came in and out. We had Nils Lofgren playing piano. And that was cool,

Billy and Ralph and Danny and Nils and I. And it's a lot of fun. That record just happened pretty fast. It's a good one. Yeah, it's up there with those other ones. Yeah. They all happen in their own way. I mean, this second song is a lot like it.

It's a similar kind of a thing, you know. Yeah. After the gold rush is after the gold rush. Because there's no other one. It is that one. And there's a lot of variety in that record. It goes from one thing to another quite a bit. But second song is kind of like that, too.

I don't know. It's hard to say, hard to compare. pair of them. Those two are like 60 years apart or something. How did you know to ask Nils to play piano? Because he's known as a guitar player. Well, I met Nils in Washington, D.C. at a place called the cellar door. We were playing there, me and Crazy Horse. It was Danny and Ralph and Billy and I playing the cellar door. And Nils came and visited. He hung out with us and he was there, just grew up, grooving, you know, on the music. It was there all the time. And I knew he was a good guitar player. And so when I, during around that time, everybody knows this is nowhere before, after the Gold Rush.

He said he was going to come out to L.A. I mean, we conversed somehow. And I said, oh, come on out, come and see us. We can figure out something. Maybe we can do something. Came all the way out to the house from the airport. I don't know how he got to the house, but he got there. and I was in Topanga, and Nils shows up and we're playing. It was great. And Danny was sometimes there and sometimes not, but Nils played piano on that whole album.

That's what he did. I don't think he had ever played piano on anything before that. Well, he might have played, you know, he had played accordion. Okay. Close enough. Yeah, close enough. Keyboards. I liked it just the way he played.

It didn't matter what instrument you played. That's interesting idea. The person who plays is less about the instrument and more how the player hears music. Nellis is wide open. Nellis is a great musician. Bruce is lucky I have Nils in his band. Bruce's band is so huge. It's like people disappear. That's great, though. I love Bruce. Yeah, I love the way that in the studio watching you play a song, on the piano and then move to the pump organ or maybe the guitar.

It really is like you're looking for the voice of the song. Like you'd know the song in your head, but the instrument could be anything, really. Yeah, yeah. It was one song on one of those albums. I can't remember what it was. I did it on the piano. I played it in your studio. I think it's the first song out on the Foggy Edge.

It sounded like you were playing piano. Yeah. Yeah, that was me. Yeah, that was fun. I should have played vibes on it too, but I didn't put them on. Now when I hear the song, I go, wow, I could have just a couple of notes here. That would have been nice. But nope.

How is the energy different when you're playing something live in the studio versus live in front of an audience? Usually in the studio, it's one of the first times I've been playing it. I haven't played it live in front of people yet. I don't like to play things live in front of people. people that I haven't recorded. I like to play them first in the studio. That's the way to get them. I like to record and play. It's all one thing to me. Do you feel like the first version you get in the studio, do you think that as the definitive version of the song? Mostly, maybe 85, 90% of the time. Yeah, the song I was thinking about that I played on the piano at Shangri-Law was Love Earth.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, lovers. And I was playing the piano on it. I loved that song. I do, too, thanks. Got a good vibe. When did you first fall in love with model trains? Well, my dad got me a model train set in 1952 or something.

Marks set it up into my bedroom, built a little table. And I've been into them pretty much since then. and off. Some places I didn't have trains. But once I got back into it, it was great. I mean, I got stuff. Oh, there's probably something here on my desk. There's a little, there's a Rolls-Royce.

I picked these up when I'd go places. I just get them. This is a Ford station-wide town and country, I think. And this one is a, this is a pencil sharpener. See this? Cool. So I get these, wherever I go, I get these things.

Do you have a favorite car? Well, I got a couple. I got a 47 or 48 Buick Roadmaster. That's a sedanette. It's the fastback kind. I've got Linkvold, you know, 59 Lincoln Continental Convertible. Yeah. Which is now electric.

I love that one. And I love taking Ben Young for rides in it. And Zee, can we all go for rides in Linkvold? That's a good trip. Did one of your cars explode? Maybe. What do you think? I don't remember it exploded.

Oh, I thought one of your modified cars might have exploded. Well, it might have, but I don't think so. Okay, good. Oh, no, that was linkfold. It exploded? One of the guys I was working with, he was charging it, and he left it charging, and we hadn't developed the charging system very well. So he left it charging and went home.

and caught on fire and the whole thing exploded in the whole house, the whole warehouse that was in full of recordings and everything. We saved a lot of it. I heard you say once, my whole career is based on systematic destruction. Could have been. I'm not sure. Does it sound right? Kind of, but I don't know. I might have said that. I mean, I'll say anything, you know, depends on how I feel at the time.

Yeah. You have to be, it's all part of the moment, you know. Yeah. How would you say your relationship to music has changed over the course of your life? Well, it still drives me. I love music. It's always been there, and it comes and goes. usually I'm just figuring out that I can't do two albums that are the same because I want to shed the last one before I can start the next one. That's just a natural thing. I have to get all of that out of my head. There may have still been some in my head when I finish the album.

And I go, well, there's other songs I could have done and stuff. But it doesn't matter. I just kept going and I just wait for everything to clear. And then when it clears, things start happening, and that's the new direction that I'm going in. And so there's no thinking. Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

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