Din of History: On Tour With Neil Young

Behind the scenes with The Godfather of Grunge

Hey, hunks! After some last-minute paper shuffling in the Editorial Office here at Slow Descent, we’ve moved the post about “one of pop music’s other great duos👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏻” to next week. Instead, today we’ve dredged the deep archive to bring you documentation of one of W.A.S.’s most interesting chapters. We hope you enjoy!

In November of 2012, we played seven shows with Neil Young & Crazy Horse, starting in Vancouver and finishing up in Ottawa. Our shows came in the second half of a two-month run for Neil, which he undertook to support his 31st studio album, Americana. It was the first time in eight years that he and his band Crazy Horse had gone out on the road. Near the end of our twelve days, Los Lobos finished their run as main support and were replaced by Patti Smith.

These comments were collected by various sources during and after the tour, some in 2013.

Keith Murray: “It’s just been so fun meeting all these guys. You come in thinking, okay, a bunch of dinosaurs — no disrespect — but a bunch of crusty old dinos, and then they fuckin rock. I didn’t even really know what Crazy Horse was.”

Mant Iowa (Neil Young & Crazy Horse Tour Manager): “It’s kinda always something in this game. Assholes gonna asshole, and these assholes came to put the holes in some asses, if you know what I mean. So… that’s just the nature of touring. But this has been a really rough one.”

Ralph Molina (Crazy Horse drummer): “Vibes have been super off. Some gnarly energy. Neil in particular is clearly just pissed off all the time. Big gorilla got knocked off his mountain — his pedestal, or whatever. Super not fun.”

Patti Smith (main support on the tour starting Nov. 23, halfway through our run): “When I joined the tour, things had already gotten cray-cray. I think Scientists had two more shows. Neil was a blubbering wreck. His Adam’s apple was constantly doing that thing where it bobs up and down when you’re about to cry. I walked into my dressing room straight out of a car from the Montreal airport, and Neil’s standing there, and I think he’s going to do his fruity little ‘time to party’ dance, but he just stands there with his lip quivering and his apple bobbing, so I kind of gently give him a hug, and the moment I get my arms around him he just sobs. Just… sobs. You could tell he hadn’t bathed in a while.”

Neil Young: “Scumbags. Little rat bastards. And a real displeasure. I’ve been doing this for quite some time now, and this has been unique. Unlimited disrespect. I curse them all.”

Chris Cain: “It was a very competitive environment, let’s say that. I was surprised. You think about ‘Neil Young,’ you’re thinking ‘aging hippie,’ ‘peace and love,’ you know? Or at least I was. It was more like this weird, culty, almost Willy Wonka situation. We kind of said on day one, okay, we can either have fun with this or it’s going to be a ten day bummer.”

David Hidalgo (multi-instrumentalist & singer, Los Lobos, main support act until Patti Smith took over in Montreal): “The first thing I saw was, we had just come off stage in Calgary, and Neil had been supposed to come on for the last song, ‘Más y Más,’ where he kind of dances around in these golden boots and does some flamenco clapping and prancing and stuff, does all these little trilling yelps, but he never came on, right? So we come off stage and Neil’s standing there with this really big ugly dead fish in his hands. I thought he was trying to give it to us at first. I’m like, no way man [laughs].”

Mant Iowa: “Neil does a guest bit at the end of the Lobos set, and he gets ready in a special booth we set up side stage because it’s this very specific outfit, lots of straps and buckles and whatnot, feathers, and he only uses it for the guest spot, so it travels with the Lobos gear. But in Calgary these sequined tassel golden boots he wears weren’t in their box — they had been replaced with fish. Like, two giant awful fish. Snakeheads, I think. Which I think Neil initially assumed had been the Lobos guys kind of playing a joke, and which he did not think was funny. After their set he was yelling all kinds of mean shit at them, really personal shit that I know he later regretted saying. ”

Keith Murray: “Funniest thing ever. Neil Young’s like, ‘Doy…,’ just staring at the fish. I’m like, oh, has this guy never seen a fish before? Does he think his boots melted?”

David Hidalgo: “I mean we’ve opened up for Dylan, U2, The Clash, The Dead, you name it. There’s an art to fitting in on a tour, right? There’s an art to making people feel like they’re happy you’re there, like they can’t wait to see you again when it’s over, okay? The Science guys, I mean they were pretty young, but there was just not a lot of thinking going on. The thinking process seemed to be, how can we entertain ourselves today. Not how can I make this a better tour for everybody.”

Chris Cain: “Some of it’s generational, for sure. Like I do doubt Neil Young has seen Jackass, or — what was the Ashton Kutcher show? Yeah, Punk’d. I doubt Neil was a big Punk’d viewer. So I think some of it is just different ideas about what constitutes a solid prank.”

Mant Iowa: “Joking around? When you’re getting a whole date on a tour canceled, you’ve sped right past joking around. You’ve left ‘joking around’ on the side of the road with its thumb up, coughing in your dust. I can say that with reasonable certainty. When a whole town is basically without police for an hour, as a result of your actions, and for no good reason… Sorry, I’m not laughing.”

Billy Talbot (bass & vocals, Crazy Horse): “Neil’s tough as nails, but he’s always been kinda nervous around cops for various reasons, let’s just say. Suspicion of authority figures, maybe. So there we are in the dressing room like noodling on an idea for a new intro into ‘Walk Like a Giant,’ I think it was, and BOOM BOOM BOOM, the door is like knocking off its hinges, and honestly on the third knock the door actually falls down, and all these cops pour in, like, guns drawn, man. Insane-o.”

Keith Murray: “You’ve never heard of swatting? Swatting is basically where you call in a bomb threat or whatever, or a husband killing his wife with like, a tree saw, and they send a SWAT team that breaks down the door and freaks everybody out. Basically your friend is freaked out for like, two minutes, and then the city buys him a new door. It’s one of my favorite things.”

Billy Talbot: “Cops screaming ‘down on the ground, down on the ground,’ and me and Ralph are like, flat on our faces immediately, but Neil just stands up and stands there, right? He’s like so freaked out his body just straightens him up off the couch into standing position and then short circuits. He’s like standing there white as a sheet just staring straight ahead. I’m like Neil, dude, maybe get on the ground. Except obviously I don’t say shit cuz there’s literally a guy pushing into my back with a shotgun. And then I see this big fuckin’ dude all in body armor just plow his knee into Neil’s gut. Just folded him in half like he’s closing a book. I’m just like, fuck.”

Mant Iowa: “We were in full cooperation from minute one. One hundred percent cooperation. We had no idea what was going on, obviously. And it went on for hours. I think the last officers left at two in the morning. Searched everything. Every door in the arena, opened every flight case, every merch box, guys with geiger counters, it was nuts.”

Chris Cain: “Man, I’m not even sure. I think we said they were selling counterfeit t-shirts? Like they brought in a bunch of t-shirts from America to sell in Canada?”

David Hidalgo: “A fuckin’ dirty bomb. These little shitheads call the cops in Calgary and tell them Neil’s got a dirty bomb and he’s gonna blow up the show. And the genius cops are like, yep, that fits!”

Neil Young: “Probably the worst night of my life. We had no idea what was going on. Police were everywhere asking, ‘Where’s the bomb? Where’s the bomb?’ We thought somebody had planted a bomb, so we were all desperate to get out of the building. But the cops are saying, stay where you are or I’ll shoot you. I’m thinking, uh, should we get farther away from the bomb and talk about this?”

Keith Murray: “I regret that we weren’t filming. If I regret anything, that’s it. We thought it would give away the fact that we made the call, but goddamn, of all the tour experiences I wish I had video of… I’d watch that shit every day.”

Chris Cain: “I have this grainy photo of Neil cuz I was on the other side of the arena floor — they made everybody stand out on the arena floor while they searched — and he’s puking into a trash can, and I swear to fucking god you can see where piss and shit stains had soaked through his pants.”

Patti Smith: “I’ve known Neil a long time. I have never seen him so down. I thought he must be sick or something. I went to Mant and said, hey, so, Neil… And Mant just rolled his eyes and goes, ‘One more day,’ meaning the Science band was getting kicked off the tour. I guess it was somehow Neil’s responsibility to make sure they left Canada with the tour, so they were kicking them off in Boston. Which in retrospect was a really bad call. They should have been gone already.”

Billy Talbot : “So, like, Neil, man, he’s always been adamant that we nail harmonies. It’s just one of his things. And we work ‘em pretty hard. And for me, if I’m being one hundred percent with you, remembering the lyrics is the big thing, cuz there are so many of them. And like some of Neil’s lyrics fuckin’ rock, no doubt, but some of them get a little out in the woods and just kind of don’t make a ton of literal sense, so you have to just sit down and memorize ‘em. Saying this one hundred percent complimentary. Complimentarially? Complimentarilily? Anyway, Neil’s the greatest, obviously. But so when lyrics start changing in the middle of the song, in the middle of the show, that’s a problem.”

Keith Murray: “The second we saw that Neil Young uses a teleprompter — the millisecond — like on the first day, we started figuring out how to change the lyrics.”

Billy Talbot: “So we’re up there jammin’ away on ‘Oh, Susanna,’ right? Which is an American classic, and everybody knows the lyrics, more or less. And like, Neil totally knows the lyrics, too, I have no doubt. But I guess you get in a zone with the prompter, and you just sing whatever’s coming at you. I mean… I guess. That seems to be what happened.”

Chris Cain: “The real lyrics of ‘Susanna’ are

Oh, Susanna
Don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee
Oh, Susanna
Don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee

But what Neil sees on the teleprompter and sings is

Oh, Susanna
Don’t deride my teeth
For I come from Alabama
Weren’t a dentist I could see
Oh, Susanna
Your breast, yea, you may beat
I’m a bum from Alabama
With a mouth of fucked up teeth

Which makes the audience start booing. And actually hissing, some of them. It was pretty funny. Apparently there was a big group of fans and old industry folks from Muscle Shoals who had come up for the Ottawa show. So perfect. We messed with like half the songs. Sometimes more subtle, like the original lyrics of ‘This Land Is Your Land’ are

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

We just changed the last line to ‘This land was made of poo and pee.’ And we did it every time that line happens, which is at the end of pretty much every verse. So at the end of every verse, you could tell there was a palpable increase in how pissed off the audience was getting.”

Mant Iowa: “It was weird because you could see Neil noticing the audience’s little eruptions of anger, and it was confusing him. He had no idea what was wrong. Meanwhile, he’s causing it by singing these Mad Magazine versions of the song lyrics. But his brain is on autopilot, he’s such a pro, when it comes to using the teleprompter, that his conscious mind isn’t even noticing the words. It would be like if you laid out the clothes you wanted to wear on-stage, and you had a white t-shirt with a big plus sign, for positivity or whatever, and then when your back was turned somebody switched it for a t-shirt with a swastika, and then you wore the swastika shirt on-stage later and everybody was throwing shit at you and you had no idea why. Which, of course, the We Are Scientists guys did at their last show.”

Patti Smith: “It was — pardon my tongue, but it was fucking crazy. Ottawa, I had just finished my set, which was great, it was a lovely audience. And I think I had even said something at the end about remembering the lessons of history, because there had been a huge white power rally in Portland a couple of months before, and I actually got a little emotional. It was like, ‘Your time has passed, assholes’ — I think we even got a chant going to that effect. And then Neil walks out onto the stage wearing a t-shirt with a swastika on it, and I just about fainted. Never in my life… just… never in my life.”

Keith: “Okay, you want us off the tour? No problem, but it’s about to get pretty boring around here! You’re gonna miss this!”

Ralph Molina (Crazy Horse, drums): “I blame myself partially, yeah, for sure. For sure. Billy and Poncho [Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, Crazy Horse guitarist] and me were standing in the wings with Neil, and he had on his leather tassel jacket, and then underneath… well, underneath he’s got the swastika. I mean we all noticed it. I guess we thought, you know, hey, Neil’s the boss, let’s see where he’s going with this, you know, assuming he has a plan. Like some way he’s gonna turn it into shitting on the Nazis or whatever. Sometimes he has these big lessons, like these big long speeches he gives between songs about genetically modified food or TV streaming or whatever. Last thing in our minds was, oh, Neil’s just wearing a Nazi shirt with no plan in mind.”

Patti Smith: “God, I get teary thinking about it now. I should’ve know, I absolutely should’ve known it was those fucking brats. How did I not know? But, Neil… he’s funny, you know? Like not ‘laughter’ funny, but quirky. And he’s also such a boss. Such a boss. Neil knows what he wants, he knows what he wants to say, he, he has a plan. So I hesitated. I got off stage, and stood there, holding onto the edge of that fifty foot velvet curtain, and stood there on tenterhooks, and stood there, and waited to see how my good boy Neil was going to spin this… atrocious garment… into gold.”

Chris: “It was a good one to end with. For sure.”

Dan O’Brien (Scotiabank Place Venue Manager): Worst fuckin’ thing I ever saw. I thought we were gonna have to firehose the fuckin’ audience. He coulda’, Neil Young coulda’ had everybody’s spouses’ heads on a big tall spear and it woulda’ been the same effect, eh? You follow what I’m sayin’? If Neil Young, I don’t know how he could do this, but it’s an example so it follows example logic not quote unquote real world logic — if Neil Young come out there like Poca Hama [‘Pocahontas’?] with a hundred foot spear, goes all the way to the ceiling, stacked with the head of every person in the audience’s spouse, get me? Or beloved pet, if they’re not married, right? That would not have becurred [‘incurred’?] a more negative reaction. These fucks wanted Neil Young’s blood on the floor, and they wanted to put it there, end of story.”

Patti Smith: “I stood there and I wept. For what else could I do?”

Neil Young: “I been sad a long time now. I been sad for quite a while, and I don’t need a shrink to, to explain it to me, you know? It’s been a year since we finished it out, that devilish tour. That awful tour. I haven’t touched my guitar. Haven’t written a note, haven’t touched a guitar, haven’t listened to music. I haven’t listened to music in thirteen months. I pulled the stereo out of my car. Had a nice stereo put in my car, that my wife put in my car, and I had it torn out. Had some guy in a Home Depot parking lot rip the thing out for fifty bucks, told him he could keep the fuckin’ thing. Pegi and I, my wife, we’re divorcing. We been together since 1978, how about that? What a shame. What an absolute shame. Just a shame. The whole thing is a damned, a goddamned shame.”

Keith: “It’s like part of the good list. I always say in life you have your good list and your bad list. Maybe some people have their ancillary lists, their kill lists and their fuck lists and their list of rums they want to try. But everybody has the good list and the bad list, and those are the ones you think about when you wake up at three in the morning, or when there’s crazy turbulence and you think your plane might go down. The only difference is which one you think about. Which one do you think about on your death bed? Good list or bad list? For me, it’s good. Good one hundred percent. And the Neil Young tour [laughs]… is pretty high on that list. Man, it’s pretty high on that list. I know Neil was bummed in the moment, but I bet it’s on his good list, too, and he thinks about it as much as I do.”

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The following email was sent to our manager Dave in December of 2013. It came from the Arts editor at The Guardian, Anthony Kristgil, who, earlier in the fall, had commissioned us to write a series of articles that would recount stories from the road or the studio, with the aim of giving readers a “behind the scenes” look at life in a successful band. The series was to be called “Din of History,” and although we submitted several pieces for publication, none was ever printed.

Hi, Dave.

We’ve been able to read over We Are Scientists’ proposed first installment in the Din of History series, and a number of questions have arisen. Perhaps most pressingly, none of this appears to be true. I realize now that’s not a question.

To expand a bit, we can find no record of We Are Scientists having toured with Neil Young, Crazy Horse, Los Lobos, or Patti Smith. Indeed, Neil Young’s people claim never to have heard of W.A.S. I’m embarrassed to say that we actually reached out to Neil Young’s people.

Dave, from what my assistant has been able to dig up, it doesn’t even look like W.A.S. has ever played in Ottawa on their own, much less with Neil Young. What is this meant to be? I suspect I’m missing something.

We can’t print this, obviously. It’s full of all kinds of libel. We can’t print that Neil Young “pissed” and “shit” himself if it’s utterly untrue. Or that he was “folded in half” by an aggressive anti-terrorist cop. We cannot — I suspect you know — print a made up quote from Patti Smith in which she describes Neil Young’s “fruity little dance.” Dave…

I’m going to charitably assume that W.A.S. has misunderstood the assignment here, and ask that they return to the drawing board and give it another whack. Scratch that. Please tell them to avoid the drawing board, and to instead dive into their historical archives. The point of this series, again, for total clarity: (sincere) stories, (accurate) anecdotes, (true) tales from the band’s rich touring history. Honestly, they’ve been going for over a decade. I have no doubt there’s more than enough material to fill out this series.

Thanks, Dave. Please let me know if any of this needs clarifying.

Yours,

Anthony