Neil Young once called up his biographer after a year of silence to rant about being mentioned on Bob Dylan‘s comeback album, Time Out of Mind.
The Harvest hitmaker seemed stunned by the name drop, which came during a career lull for Young. Dylan’s Time Out of Mind album closer, Highlands, mentions Young. The line “I’m listening to Neil Young” reportedly caused ripples in Shakey’s camp as the songwriter called up his biographer to rant about being featured on the album. Biographer Jimmy McDonough revealed what Young said to him shortly after the release of Time Out of Mind. Young had not listened to the album on the day of its release, September 30, 1997, but happened to be calling about Dylan anyway. McDonough says that hearing Highlands for the first time had been a shock, describing the whole album as a “telegram from the last man on earth”, which ended with a “rambling, sixteen-minute-plus piece of psychobabble that became even more curious when Dylan threw Young’s name in the stew.
For McDonough, it was a full-circle moment in a way, as he had chased an interview with Dylan for the Shakey biography for some time. He explained: “For a moment I thought I was going nuts. I had chased Dylan for years to talk to me for this book and he’d agreed – I’d even submitted a lengthy list of questions, taken the urine test and passed the credit check.
“But despite scores of faxes and phone calls, he evaded me. Somehow it made sense. And now here he was, mentioning Neil Young in the same breath as Erica Jonh. Funny, but I wasn’t laughing. How do you finish a book about a guy when you feel in your heart he’s ignoring his muse?”
McDonough claimed that Young’s muse had stood him up and that the book needed confirmation and comment from Dylan to work. While it did come, it came about in a bizarre way as Young would ring McDonough to rant about the inclusion of his name on Highlands. McDonough continued: “To be around Neil Young you had to give your all – he demanded it. Yet I felt he was far from giving it himself these days.
“Neil had always been important not just for the things he did but for the things he didn’t do, and now he seemed to be doing them all. Arrogance on my part? Lack of respect for a lifetime of achievement? I don’t think so. I had believed him when he proclaimed that if you weren’t willing to ‘go right to the end of the candle… you shouldn’t even be there.’ And however clichéd or troubling or ridiculous the idea might be, I had believed him when he said it was better to burn out than to fade away.”
McDonough’s questions were answered when “not two minutes after Dylan crooned Young’s name,” the Rockin’ in the Free World legend called up his biographer to speak to him nearly a year on from their last interview. McDonough recalled: “‘Jimmy, it’s Neil.’ It had been nearly a year since the last interview. I was thinking maybe I wouldn’t hear from him again. But it’s never over with Neil.
“Strangely enough, he was ranting about Dylan. He hadn’t heard the album, but he recognised the significance of its arrival. ‘When I saw that Bob put this album out, I thought, “Look – it’s comin’ around. It’s comin’ around again.”‘ He’d read an interview in the newspaper the day before. Dylan had come across so real in the short Q&A that it moved Young enough to call me.”
Despite Young being moved by the interview Dylan had done, his biographer was not pleased to hear from him and gave him both barrels when it came to how he had presented himself in interviews of his own. “You’ve talked to everybody – and I don’t think you’ve gotten anything out of it,” McDonough told Young.
The biographer continued: “I told him everything he’d been doing lately was inconsequential. ‘You’ve done too much shit – you haven’t gotten closer to the source, okay? All the stuff I warned you about has come true.’ ‘Yup,’ said Young blandly, unfazed and unimpressed. ‘Well, we all knew it was coming. Whatever happened, it isn’t that big of a deal. It came and went.”
It appears Young finally listened to the advice McDonough had offered after the release of Time Out of Mind, with the Old Man hitmaker effectively disappearing into the recording studio for much of 1998. McDonough recalled: “Young spent the rest of the year sporadically recording, overdubbing himself playing different instruments on the tracks. Then, in March 1998, he switched to recording with a band. A new band – Duck Dunn and Jim Keltner from the Booker T. tour, plus Spooner Oldham on keyboards. And Ben Keith had come back to co-produce and play steel.
“In addition to this, Neil returned – after endless delays – to the Archives project, concentrating on a multi-CD Buffalo Springfield set. To some insiders, it seemed Young was making peace with the band – and his turbulent role in it – by giving his all to this definitive collection of their music.
“As far as the outside world was concerned, Young was an invisible man in 1998. He didn’t tour, didn’t appear on TV, didn’t do interviews or anything else. He just disappeared. For the first time in years I didn’t have a fucking clue how to reach him. It brought a smile to my face.”
Elsewhere in Shakey, McDonough drew parallels between Young and Dylan. The pair were reportedly both “flighty” when on the road, and a former tour manager who looked after both men explained how this had come to be. Elliot Roberts said: “They’re both very flighty.
“They have the exact same road habits, they prep the same way. They’re very, very similar in what satisfies them – good shows, bad shows. There’s some huge dissimilarities. Bob likes to have his families in place and go to them. He’s on the move, doesn’t like to stay in one place long. Neil will stay in one place forever, given the opportunity.”
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