To mark yesterday’s release of his book Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars Neil Young appeared on The Howard Stern Show, The Colbert Report and Mad Money With Jim Cramer
. . . informing us that he thinks Obama should be impeached, is still mad at the Woodstock camera men, recorded his new album live in the studio with no overdubs, and refuses to even say “David Crosby”….
Howard’s long awaited first interview with Neil covered everything from his childhood and musical beginnings to former bandmates Rick James and David Crosby, why he’s returned to occaisonally smoking pot, Woodstock, Neil’s new book, PONO, ISIS, environmental issues and Young’s new relationship with Daryl Hannah.
Some standout quotes from Neil:
“[The Woodstock camera men] didn’t have to be right there on the stage…Use zoom, dickhead. We were playing music and there’s some jerk standing there in black clothes. We’re playing music, get out of there.”
“I love the Woodstock movie.”
“Playing with Stills and Nash in that band was really great. I wish [Crosby] the best with his life. There’s love there. There’s just nothing else there. [A reunion] will never happen. Never happen, no, not in a million years….”
“There’s nothing to apologize [to Crosby] for. It was fixable, but it didn’t get fixed…I did everything I could to make sure it got fixed…We were together for a long time. We did some good work. Why should we get together and celebrate how great we were? What difference does it make? It’s not for the audience. It’s not for money, either. When you play music, you have to come from a certain place to do it and everything has to be clear and you don’t want to disturb that.”
“I’m going out paddleboarding with my girlfriend tomorrow morning. It’s a beautiful thing…I can’t worry about the paparazzi. You can’t see them anyway. They are taking pictures from behind trees. You can’t think about that.”
“I was in a room with all these musicians. We [recorded upcoming album Storytone] all at once. There’s no overdubs. Be great or be gone. That’s what my producer David Briggs always said. You only have one shot at a time and you can’t go fix it. I knew where I wanted to go with the songs, and the orchestra had charts and an arranger and everything…It was done with up to a 90-piece orchestra. We did it live in the room like Sinatra.”
Stream the entire interview below (or stream highlights here if you don’t have an hour to listen to the full deal).
When Neil was last on The Colbert Report in 2006 he discussed his disappointment with George Bush, his then brand new album “Living with War” and its key single “Let’s Impeach the President” (Watch that here). Last night Neil updated the Colbert Nation on his POTUS views (hint: now he wants Obama impeached) and sang “Who’s Gonna Stand Up?” with Stephen. “I think we should impeach [Obama] for fracking. It’s not in the interest of the American people,” he said. He also gave his sales pitch for PONO, the music download-service he’s currently launching. “You get to have millions of songs [on iPods], but you just get a tiny little bit of each one. You don’t have to listen [with PONO], You feel the music!”
Watch the full interview with Colbert here.
Finally on CNBC’s Mad Money With Jim Cramer, Young further discussed Pono, including his negotiations with car companies to get the Pono player built into cars. Watch that segment here.
The Future Heart 