Post subject: Neil and Me: My Pilgrimage to Broken Arrow
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:15 pm
Yeah Yeah Yeah
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 4:20 pm Posts: 3649 Location: Scottsdale, AZ
Well I've finally managed to finish a short story I began working on during my creative writing class last spring. It's a blog written by a crazy, obsessed Neil Young fan as he drives out to Broken Arrow to meet his idol, with disastorous results. Since it got a really good reception in my class, I thought I'd share the finished product here, but be warned: it's 28 pages, so you may want to get a drink or go to the bathroom now before you start reading.
Neil and Me: My Pilgrimage to Broken Arrow
FEBRUARY 20TH, 2007 – ROCK AND ROLL WILL NEVER DIE
For me, music isn’t just entertainment; it’s a way of life. It’s my drug of choice, and an irresistible groove, a timeless melody, a blazing guitar solo or a hook that grabs at your very soul gives me much more of a high than any line of coke or hit of a joint. And if music is my addiction, the drug I need in order to survive, then Neil Young is my aural dealer. It’s not just the fact that he can write some of the most beautiful music to ever grace human ears on one album and then play his guitar as if he’s strangling the very life out of it on the next that appeals to me. It’s the fact that he wants to make the kind of music he wants to make when he wants to make it, and he doesn’t give a damn about what any person or record executive thinks, even if it means being sued by his label for not making music that “sounds like Neil Young.” If that means ditching a completed album at the last minute, or dropping out of a tour without warning, or changing his political views more often then the wind changes directions, then so be it. Sure he may piss off some people by acting this way, but he always walks out of every situation with his integrity intact, and it’s not only something that I admire and respect, but it’s the way I try and live.
For those of you in the Neil Young fan community who may not know much about me (which is rare: I’m right up there with Mark David Chapman and the Unibomber in infamy among Rusties), I am easily one of Neil’s biggest fans, to the point where describing me as being “obsessed” is a major understatement. I have been voted “Rustie of the Month” 5 times, which I believe is a record on the Rust List, and my friends, family, and fellow Rusties describe me as being a walking encyclopedia of Neil knowledge. Of course, this will happen when you’ve listened to every album at least 5 times and have read every autobiography you can get my hands on, and as a result, I can tell you the release dates of all of his albums, where they were recorded, who played on them, all the lyrics to every song and the inspiration behind many of them. I have studied every nook and cranny of his vast career, leaving no stone unturned, even the critically and commercially-loathed experimental 80s period where he went from techno music on one album to good old 50s rockabilly on the next. In essence, I have dedicated my life to Neil, and without his music, I am nothing.
Now many fans have heroes that they idolize, but are simply content to just admire there work and place them on some God-like pedestal. But for me, I don’t just worship my idol; I try and live like him. When he announced in ‘04 that he was endorsing John Kerry for President, for example, I immediately volunteered for his campaign and caucused all over the San Diego area. Whenever he tours with a band like Pearl Jam or has an artist as an opening act, I immediately download their music and join their fan clubs (after all, if it’s good enough for Neil, it’s good enough for me). When I found out a few weeks ago that he had an 19 year old daughter, I immediately looked to see if she had a Myspace profile so I could be friends with her (because really, what teenage girl . doesn’t have a Myspace profile?). And when Neil said in an interview a few months ago that he drives a bio-diesel car and uses alternative energy whenever he can, I not only had a solar panel installed at my family’s house at my expense, but I even bought a diesel engine and installed a vegetable oil fuel conversion kit so that my car can be powered with leftover French fry grease I get from a local McDonald’s. On top of all of this, I even try and do my part to help out Neil whenever I can, too. I’ve contributed hundreds of dollars to his Bridge School to help educate kids like his son, Ben, who have cerebral palsy and other debilitating disabilities. Plus I’ve gone to every one of his Bridge School benefit concerts, which is a serious expense on my part since the concerts are all the way up in San Francisco and I have to drive all the way from San Diego to see them. But it’s the least I can do to help him and Ben overcome their difficult challenges, and I even plan on naming my first son Ben in his honor (that is, if I can ever leave my computer and stereo system and actually find a mate).
And it is this obsession, this undying passion for Neil and his music, that has led me, Daniel Smith (better known as CortezKiller to those on the Rust List), to start this blog. However, I will not only be sharing my obsession with you in the coming months, but I will be sharing with you my quest to fulfill my lifelong dream: to meet my idol, Neil Young, in the flesh, to tell him in person just how much his music means to me. Plus I’ll be using this blog to perfect my writing skills, since my folks have always said that I’d be a great author, but I have never found anything interesting enough o write about…that is, until now . But anyway, I hope you will follow me over the next couple months as I venture out to Northern California in achieving my lifelong goal!
MAY 19TH, 2007 – ‘CAUSE YOU KNOW HOW TIME FADES AWAY
Now I know that some of you have been wondering why I haven’t posted an entry or so long. You were probably thinking “where the hell did CortezKiller go?” or “did he die on a car crash on the way to Broken Arrow or something?” But no, I just had to put this on the back burner to tend to some other Neil-related events in my life. For one, about two days after my first post, I happened to find a rare vinyl copy of the still unreleased-to-CD album Time Fades Away on eBay, which is my fav Neil album of all time. However, I had no room in my budget for such a purchase, so I decided to forego WiFi access on my laptop for two months in order to pay for it. Now this was one of the biggest decisions of my life, right up there with having to choose my favorite song off of After the Gold Rush, but I figured that not only can I get it signed by the man himself, but I can also advocate that he release this classic on CD ASAP (after all, I’m getting sick and tired of listening to a crappy bootleg version of it in my car). Now I know he apparently hates this album for personal reasons, but he has to sign it for me; after all, I am his biggest fan.
Needless to say, my shoestring budget and lack of Internet were the least of my worries these past few months, as I let my infamous hot-head explode again. Now you’d think that, since I try and live my life by the code of Neil, that I’d be worshipped in the Rustie community, but yet I’m not loved by all, and am even loathed by some, mostly because of how my passion for Neil can sometimes boil over. For example, for those that weren’t there, at the annual Rustie Convention last year in Anaheim I got into a fist-fight with fellow Rustie CinnamonGirl because, get this, she claimed his best live performance ever was his version of “Cowgirl in the Sand” from the first Fillmore East show of 1971 with Crazy Horse. I mean sure, she probably didn’t deserve to get her front teeth knocked out, and I shouldn’t have punched a girl, but really, how can anything top his version of “Like a Hurricane” from the second of his Hammersmith Odeon shows of 1975? I mean those solos are just absolutely insane, and he has yet to top them in his career. Yet ever since that fight, many on the Rust List fail to recognize my existence. But that incident pales in comparison to what happened recently.
It started out like any ordinary day. I was working my usual 12-8 shift at Virgin Megastore, putting $10 tags on some CDs that were going on sale, when I noticed a regular customer wearing a kick-ass Jimi Hendrix T-shirt. I complimented him on the shirt, to which he replied “thanks, man, Jimi’s my favorite guitarist of all time!”
“Yeah, he’s a damn good guitarist,” I told him, “but my all-time favorite has to be Neil Young.”
“Oh,” he replied, “isn’t he the dude that sings ‘Sweet Caroline?’”
Of course, my only reaction was to stick up for Neil and pulverize him the way a smoothie would a banana. Needless to say, though, I was arrested, charged with assault and battery, fired from my job, and I now forever have a criminal record (which, the way I see it, is a rite of passage for any aspiring rock star like myself). And as a side-note, the last time I talked to one of my former co-workers, he told me that dude still can’t lift his arms over his head.
So I will admit that I have an anger problem, and I am seeing a psychiatrist regularly to calm my temper, upon court order. But my parents also insist that I seek help from him regarding my Neil Young fandom, which they claim is ruining my life. They say that, as a 21-year-old, I should be working hard, focusing on my classes, saving money, and getting ready to move out of the house and live on my own. Instead, they say, I’m wasting my money on books, tour posters, hard-to-find vinyl, autographed memorabilia, and those solar panels, which they think are an absolute eyesore. At first they were just concerned, then they became furious when they discovered that I was spent a good chunk of my student loan money for my first semester on live bootlegs I bought on eBay. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when they discovered that, once I persuaded them to let me have access to my saving’s account, I spent all of my money following Neil Young on the California leg of his Greendale tour with a fellow San Diego Rustie, a trip which I do not regret to this day. I mean, you never know when you can see history, the ultimate performance of a Neil classic before your very eyes. But really, that is not “ruining my life”; ruining my life is when I start destroying my organs, start popping pills like they’re candy or drinking booze like it’s water. All I’m guilty of is doing something I love, something that brings me a sense of euphoria, and in my mind, there’s nothing harmful about that at all. Besides, it was my money I was spending, I worked 35 hours a week at the Virgin Megastore to earn it, and I deserved to spend it how I want to. However, my Neil obsession did come up unexpectedly at the session I had this morning, when he asked me what my outlook was on life.
“Well,” I told him, “as Neil Young says, ‘there’s more to picture than meets the eye,’ and I believe…”
“Pardon me for interrupting,” he told me, “but I’m noticing that you’re identifying yourself way too much with Neil Young, as great of a musician as he is.. I want you to tell me a few things about you, what you’re personality traits are, what things you like.”
“Well…um…gee, um…,” I stutter, clueless as to what I should tell him. “Ahh…well…I like Neil Young.”
“Really? I had no idea” he told me rather sarcastically. But after a good five minutes of soul-searching, we discovered that I had a great interest in trains and antique cars, although I failed to tell him that the only reason I was interested in those was because Neil was.
Oh good! I just looked at my checking account, and my tax refund from the IRS has just been direct deposited! Now I finally have the funds necessary to make my trip a reality! And since I still have a good couple of months of house arrest left, I have plenty of time to plan for it.
At long last, my long-in-the-works demo tape is finally complete!! Luckily I was able to use some of my tax return money to buy an eight track recorder, have it shipped overnight and then spend the next couple of weeks recording some more overdubs to flesh out the songs more. Now granted, I am far from the world’s greatest songwriter, my skills at guitar and (especially) drums are amateurish at best, many of the songs basically consist of me taking some of Neil’s chord progressions from various songs and twisting them around a bit, and I came up with most of my song titles by taking a title of his (like “Old Man”) and using a thesaurus to come up with my own (“Elderly Gentleman”). But even though none of these are classics, the melodies are straight out of Harvest, so someone’s bound to like them. Now I know my songs got quite a bit of criticism on the Rust board when I posted the rough demos here, with some saying they sounded “just like Neil, but without the songs…or talent.” But while some may be insulted by these remarks, I tend to focus on the positive, which is that almost everyone said that they sound like Neil Young. And really, that’s what’s important. Anyway, for those of you that haven’t heard them, check them out HERE and let me know what you think! After all, I plan on giving him this demo tape in hopes that I, too, will become a star worshipped by millions.
Also, many of you readers have been e-mailing me asking “why do you want to meet Neil so bad?”, “do you have anything better to do with your time,” “are you a fucking nutjob?”, etc. Well, in all honesty, one of the things that has constantly bugged me was that I was so close to meeting him in person, even though I had no idea who he was at the time. You see, I was 8 then, and my family and I were celebrating my dad’s birthday at Lloyd’s, a local bar and grille my family would frequent, and still do. We were sitting outside on the patio at the time, and me and my cousins, all younger than me, were singing commercial jingles at the top of our lungs for God knows what reason. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, we heard a noise that sounded like a rocket launching right next to us, and this gigantic bus pulls up next to the restaurant, which, when you’re 8, looks more like the spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is landing next door. Once the shock wore off and we were able to breathe again after the enormous cloud of diesel cleared, we rushed over to see who was inside this gigantic bus. “It’s Neil Young!” I heard my mom shout, and even though I had no idea who he was, I, being the curious boy I was, wanted to meet this guy, since he clearly had to be famous if my mom knew him. But she said that he was busy eating, and that we shouldn’t disturb his dinner, so we finished our food and left. Of course it didn’t help that I ended up becoming his biggest fan years later, and that not only was he getting something to eat before performing a show that night, but my mom told me that one of our neighbors was at the restaurant and got him to sign her ticket for that night’s show. So ever since then, I’ve made it my ultimate goal to one-day meet Neil Young in the flesh, and now I am finally getting that chance.
Well after weeks of planning, my trip to Broken Arrow is all planned out. I looked at the Sugar Mountain setlist website to see if he would be on the road or not, and luckily he is finishing his tour the second Thursday of July, a little over a week after my probation ends, so the timing couldn’t be more perfect. Then, thanks to the wonders of Wikipedia, I discovered that Broken Arrow is a 1,300 acre estate located in Woodside, CA, just south of San Francisco, and I also unearthed a website I saved a long time ago from Google Earth that showed an aerial view of the property. Not only that, but I was able to get in touch with a fellow Rustie recently who use to live down the street from him on Skyline Blvd., and him and his family would see him quite often at nearby shops and restaurants. Finally, as icing on the cake, I somehow managed to convince my parents just this morning that I would be spending the weekend at the University of California in Berkeley to see an old friend of mine from high school, and they let me go so long as I showed some proof that I was actually at the school and not at some Neil-related event. So thanks to the fact that I have such gullible, naïve parents, everything is going to plan. The countdown has begun!
Well after a sleepless night, the day had finally arrived. I got up, took a quick shower, filled my backpack with some essentials (Cheetos, Sun Chips and Hostess cupcakes, a map of the state, my laptop, vegetable oil, my demo, a copy of the Neil biography Shakey, 8 Neil CDs for the ride there, some blanks and my Time Fades Away vinyl) and left at around 7 a.m. My dream, the trip that I had been envisioning in my head since I started listening to his music almost a decade ago, was finally coming true. But just as I was pulling out of the driveway, my mom ran out the door, her arms flailing in the air like the world would be coming to the end if I did not stop the car at that very moment. I rolled down the window so I could hear what useless drivel she would be spitting out.
“You almost forgot the ice water I made you in the refrigerator,” she told me, placing the bottle in my hand. “Lord knows what would have happened if your car stalled and you were stuck in the middle of nowhere.”
“I would have been just fine, mother,” I tell her.
“Well you never know what could happen, so you might as well be prepared,” she replied. “Now promise me you aren’t doing anything Neil related in secret, Daniel.”
“I’m not, mother.”
“And remember that you have to bring back something from campus.”
“I know, mom!”
“And don’t do anything stupid, either. The last thing you need is a more extensive criminal record…”
“I! KNOW! MOTHER!” I shout, hitting the car horn with each word. “I WILL NOT! DO! ANYTHING! STUPID!”
She signed. “Well alright, Daniel. Just be safe, Ok?”
“Alright, mom!” I tell her, before shutting the window.
So I pull out of the driveway, getting ready to hop onto the I-5, when I go through everything in my head to make sure I have everything. Let’s see, I have the Cheetos, my laptop, my demo, Time Fades Away…OH SHIT! A Sharpie!! Neil can’t sign my album without one! So I quickly pull into the nearest Shell gas station and rush in. And that’s when I noticed Heather was working behind the counter.
Now Heather is someone I’ve known through all of high school. She was a classmate in quite a few of my classes, and we would talk every now and then. She would always smile at me when I would sit next to her, and would usually twirl her hair, too (now I’m horribly awkward when it comes to women and sexuality, but that’s a sign a girl likes you, right?), but being the shy guy I am, I never acted upon it. After we graduated, she started going to community college and took a part-time job at this gas station, and though she usually does the stocking duties there, she occasionally manages to give me a smile the few times I do see her. But for whatever reason, today she was working the front counter.
“Hey you,” she said with a smile. Her hair started to twirl.
“Hey Heather,” I told her as I handed her my Sharpie, “how are things?”
“Oh, they’re OK,” she replied, “classes are kicking my ass though.” Then out of nowhere, she asks me “has anyone told you that you look like Matt Damon?”
“No,” I told her, “but people have told me that I look like Neil Young.”
“Eh, I can kind of see it,” she told me, “but I do like his music.”
“Really!?” At this point, I was in shock. Heather…likes NEIL YOUNG!? I had no idea. “Have you ever seen him live?”
“Nah, I don’t have the money to go to concerts.”
OK, that’s a minor setback, I tell myself. “Well he puts on a great show. What’s your favorite album of his?”
“I don’t really have a favorite album of his. I’m more of a casual fan.”
What!? I thought to myself. How can a Neil fan not have a favorite album!?
“Well, do you at least have a favorite song.”
“Not really, though I like the one about the heart of gold.”
And then was when I lost it, and grabbed the sharpie from her hands. “And you CALL yourself a FAN!!” I shouted, knocking over a display of Bic lighters before storming out. There was no way I could date any Neil fan that didn’t have a favorite song. I just couldn’t.
The rest of the ride there was over 7 and a half hours, yet it was easily the shortest 7 hours of my life. No matter how much Friday morning rush hour traffic I had to sit through, no matter how many elderly slowpokes were driving in front of me, I just kept my eye on the prize, fantasizing about the moment I’d finally be able to look him straight in the eyes and place my demo in his hands. Of course, I was also thinking about his infamous archives, the vast vault where he keeps all of his legendary unreleased albums and material. A couple months back I read in an interview with Neil in MOJO magazine that he kept his archives in a converted barn just north of the San Francisco International Airport, and before attempting to meet Neil, I wanted to make a quick stop to see if I could find this building, sneak into it and put some of the digital files of these albums onto some blank CDs. Now of course Neil’s promised to release all of his archived recordings in 4 boxes of 10 CDs each, but the release date for Vol. 1 has been changed at least a dozen times, and every time I’ve circled a planned release date on my calendar, I’m just left both disappointed and extremely frustrated. So it was time for me to take matters into my own hands and get this material myself, since it was (and still is, imo) clear he wasn’t going to release it anytime soon. I mean this material, from everything I’ve read, just sounded too amazing to be left under lock and key, and one album in particular, Homegrown, sounded so spectacular that it was enough to make my mouth water, as it was described in Shakey as containing “some of the lonesomest sounds ever recorded.” In a few hours, though, I thought, I’ll be able to hear it, if all goes according to plan.
Finally, after hours of driving through some of the most confusing, congested freeways on Earth, and constantly stuffing my face with so much junk food that my stomach felt like Mt. St. Helens moments before its top blew off, I finally arrived in San Francisco, where I hopped on I-383 and proceeded to get off on the first exit after the airport. Then, as instructed by MOJO, I drove north, trying to see if I could spot a barn of any kind within striking distance of the airport. Unfortunately, I spent a good 5 minutes driving around in circles and going nowhere. There were no barns in sight, only airplane hangers and warehouses that looked like clones of each other, the confusing streets and similarity of the buildings surrounding me left me confused and disoriented. Plus, since I had no idea where exactly this building was, Google Earth was of no use to me, either. Then, like a lighthouse beacon guiding a boat to shore, I saw what appeared to be a barn straight out of Little House on the Prairie standing on a field, and now acting as giddy as a school girl, I parked my car and approached the building as quietly as I could. Then I noticed a sign: “Bay Area Naturists.” That’s clever, I thought to myself; if you disguise the building as a nature center, no ordinary Neil fan will suspect that it’s the home of his archives. And after all, this has to be it, I thought; I mean it can’t be anywhere else, I’ve driven through 80% of this neighborhood, and there’s not another barn within a 10-mile radius, at least not near this airport. So I gently pulled on the handle of the front door and was quite surprised at how easily it opened, and thankful that no alarms were blaring for the whole neighborhood to hear. But what I found inside was enough to make me vomit: a group of nudists sitting at a make-shift commissary eating lunch, more naked flesh stood in front of me than all of the pornography I’ve ever watched, times the 10th power, and now they were all looking at me with that “what the Hell are you looking at?” sort of look on their faces, a look that is now scarred in my brain for the rest of my life. Now I know that San Francisco is the birthplace of flower power and free love and all that jazz, but I didn’t expect to be baptized into this culture so quickly.
Now traumatized and a likely candidate for post-traumatic stress disorder, I ran like Hell off that colony, got into my car and checked myself into the closest Holiday Inn for the night so I could recover from the horror. Of course I checked in under the name I always check in as, Neil’s movie director-alias, Bernard Shakey. After all, Daniel Smith is such a bland, boring name that I absolutely loathe, while Bernard Shakey has a mysterious quality to it that I loved. Even when it comes to aliases, Neil can do no wrong.
So here I am, typing this blog after re-reading Shakey for the 8th time and lying on the bed for awhile, staring at the spinning above and fantasizing me and Neil recording my debut album together. If only my blanks were filled with all those unreleased albums, then I could be experiencing the joy of discovering a hidden gem, the kind of feeling you get when you open a Christmas present as a kid and realize it’s the one thing you’ve been begging for all year. But due to the fact that I didn’t want to run the risk of getting a heart attack, and the fact that tomorrow is when Neil’s tour ended, I have to abandon the archives to focus on the bigger prize. Besides, why try to hunt for the treasure myself when I can go to the man who holds the map and key?
This morning I hopped into my car and used the handy-dandy map I brought to guide me to Skyline Blvd., which I prayed all night was the correct street and wasn’t some sort of practical joke that that Rustie decided to pull on me. But this was no time for me to be a pessimist. After all, it was the day where my lifelong dream would finally be realized, and I couldn’t contain my excitement. To celebrate, I put Neil’s live CD Weld in the CD player and listened to my favorite Neil Young song of all-time: “Like a Hurricane.” If you want to hear a song that has all of the necessary ingredients to become a classic, then look no further. It’s got a hypnotic groove that sucks you in like a vortex, a melody that sticks to your brain like a mouth full of peanut butter, and a riff that, quite simply, penetrates the skull. Every time I listen to it, I can’t help but to bang my head like a madman, and this time was no exception. As I drove towards Skyline Blvd. and (hopefully) Broken Arrow ranch with the song blasting through my speakers, I began to imagine myself thrashing about in the mosh-pit of that ’75 Hammersmith Odeon show, bouncing off the flesh of fellow fans as sweat pours from our hair and pours and onto each other skins. All the while Neil’s playing those passionate, ragged solos on Old Glory, that powerful, gut-wrenching guitar of his, and controlling our very souls in the process, playing as if he’s the devil trying to possess our souls with his glory notes. Unfortunately, I became so caught up in this daydream that I neglected to check the amount of gas that was left in my tank, and my journey to Fantasyland soon ended with the slow sputtering of the engine before the car stopped dead, like a rock. And then once the shock of what just happened began to wear off, I felt, embarrassingly, like a dumbass. And on top of it all, I discovered that I had no vegetable oil left.
Of course, being the stubborn individual that I am, I wasn’t going to let such an obstacle stop meet from meeting Neil, especially since I was only minutes away from the ranch. So I started to push the car with all the strength that I could muster, but unfortunately all those years of doing nothing but sitting on the computer and listening to Neil did nothing to maintain my physical stamina, and as such I was only able to push it a good 30 feet or so. So then I went to Plan B, which was to use my hitchhiker’s thumb to my advantage and get someone to pull over and help me. Of course quite a few drivers just sped past and stared at me as if I was some sort of alien who was looking for someone to take me to their leader, but a few minutes later someone did pull over, and he looked harmless enough.
“Is your battery dead or something?” the man asked
“Nah,” I told him. “My tank ran out of fuel before I could get to a gas station.”
“I’ll tell you what, there’s a gas station a couple minutes down the road. I’ll drive you over there and you can fill up a tank, and I’ll bring ya back,”
“Yeah, well the thing is, I don’t need to go to a gas station. I need to go to a grocery store to get some vegetable oil.”
“What the fuck do you need vegetable oil, man? You plan on frying some eggs on the top of your hood, or something?” At this point I could smell a faint smell of whiskey on his breath
“Nah, I’m just trying to be a little more environmentally conscious,” I tell him, “but I don’t want to bother you or anything…”
“Don’t worry about it dude,” he replied. “There’s a Safeway about five minutes from the office park where I work. Hop in!”
So I took him up on his offer, despite some misgivings about it, and as we started driving, he asked if I was from around these parts.
“Nope,” I told him, “I’m here to find Neil Young and give him my demo tape.”
“Well you’re gonna have a hell of a time with that. He’s a total recluse, that dude, and he just lives up that road there,” he says, pointing to a street called Woodside Road (so that Rustie was lying after all, the SOB, I thought). “You have a better chance of finding a Martian on Mars than you do spotting that guy.” Now I’m beginning to notice that he’s swerving from side to side a bit.
“Well,” I tell him, my voice shaking somewhat in fear of his driving ability, “I e-mailed Neil on his official website and told him I’d be coming to see him this weekend.”
“Wait a minute,” he asked in disbelief, “you think he actually reads any of that crap?”
“Well I e-mail him at least 3-4, sometimes 5 times a week about a whole bunch of things, sometimes to plead for him to finally release his archives, sometimes to ask how his son’s doing, sometimes to send him a demo of mine, and sometimes to just tell him how much I like a song or album. So surely he’s bound to read a few of them”
The man then stared at me as if I told him I had x-ray vision or could leap tall buildings in a single bound or something. “Well, if believing that makes you happy…” he told me.
“Well, once I get a record deal and I’m around here again recording my debut album in his home studio, maybe I’ll run into you again.”
“Then I guess the next time I see ya is when pigs fly,” he replied. I’ll show that bastard, I thought to myself. I’ll show him big time.
As we pulled into the parking lot, I notice that he had a small Golden Bears mascot on the back window of his car. “You a fan of the Golden Bears?” I asked.
“Damn right!” he told me, “I graduated from there over a decade or so, and I’ll be a fan until the day I die.”
“Yup, they’ve always been my favorite college team” I lied like a fox, and just as he was distracted with getting the Crisco, I carefully took that suction-cup doll and tucked it in my pocket, making sure he was still in the store as I did so. At least I found something I could show my mother, I thought, so I don’t have to hear her constantly ask me if I really was at the university.
A little while later he walked out with the Crisco and handed to me when we got in the car. Then drove out off the parking lot and on to the road, and for a second it seemed like everything would be going to plan. That is, until he suddenly ran through a red light without even managing to look both ways.
“What the fuck are you doing, man!?” I shouted.
“Whoops, did I just do something wrong?” he asked me.
“Yeah, you just fucking ran a red light! Have you been drinking or something!?”
“Just juice,” he told me.
*Whew* I thought to myself.
“With some gin.”
“WHAT!?” I’ve never drank an ounce of alcohol in my life (after all, why do drugs and alcohol when Neil can write such harrowing songs about the subject matter, like The Needle and the Damage Done), and now I’m driving shotgun in what feels like a date with certain doom. Then, just when I really started to panic and my car was within eyesight, I heard the sirens. He then pulled to the side of the road, and we were both sweating bullets.”
“Do you have your ID and proof of insurance?” the cop asks the man, and he proceeds to show him both.”
“I smell some alcohol on your breath, sir. Have you been drinking?”
“No officer, honest,” the man pleads.
“Well can I perform a Breathalyzer test on you, then?” "Sure thing, officer,” he tells him before stepping out of his car. I was in deep shit.
Sure enough, he blew a .13, twice the legal limit. And then my mind went into panic mode. If we go to jail, there was no way I was going to see Neil, and there was no way I was going to let that happen. So I did the only thing I could think of doing: run, and run like the wind.
“Get your hands on the ground! Get your hands on the ground!” the officer yells. And I did manage to get on the ground…only because some of that oil manage to spill out of the container, causing me to slip and fall flat on my face.
“Give me ONE good reason why I shouldn’t arrest you, young man!?”
“Um, well…” then I come up with a brilliant solution. “I’m Neil Young’s son.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I’m Neil’s son,” I tell him as I got up and brushed the dirt off of my pants, “Zeke’s the name.”
“Well, you do kinda look like him.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Do you have your ID to prove it?”
“Nope, I left it at home, since I wasn’t the one driving.”
"Well why were you letting an intoxicated man behind the wheel?”
“I didn’t smell anything, officer. He’s a member of my dad’s farmhands, and since I can’t drive with my cerebral palsy, and my dad’s out of town, he volunteered to drive me to Reprise Records so I could drop some copies of my demo tape over there.” I then showed him the demo tape I kept in my coat pocket.
“Well that looks like a genuine demo,” he told me. “But why the hell do you have vegetable oil with you?”
“I had to pick some up on the way home for my mom, since we use bio-diesel on all of our vehicles.”
“Well look, I don’t want to have Neil in the headlines, since I must admit I like his work,” he told me, “so I’ll drive you to your home, and so long as you can produce an ID, I’ll let you off the…” At that moment, the man decided that it would be a perfect time to drive off, leaving the officer in the dust.
“STOP THE CAR! STOP THE CAR!” He shouted, proceeding to forget all about me as he hopped in his car and chased him down the road. Talk about luck.
So with my tank now full and that whole damn fiasco behind me, I drove up the road and turned down Woodside Road, in the direction the man pointed to, to see if it was indeed where Neil lived. I slowly drove at a snail’s pace to look at each of the various houses and mansions to see if there were any likely candidates. Then, a few minutes later, I came upon a ranch-like property with an iron fence with arrowheads on the top surrounding it, and a gate that had the image of a broken arrow straight down the middle. If this isn’t the place, I thought to myself, then nothing is. So with this being the day after the last show on his tour, I figured he would be showing up at any moment, and I pulled over to the side of the road and waited patiently for his arrival. And as I’m typing this blog now (thank God someone around here has a WiFi connection that I can tap into), it’s 10 past midnight, and I’m still waiting.
It’s been two days and I haven’t seen nothing, except for a few trucks carrying some plowing equipment, probably to maintain that massive farm of his. After one day of waiting, I stayed in my car for the entity of the next day, polishing off my bag of food and listening to each CD I brought several times over. Yet there was still nothing. It was then that I started to doubt my choice of property, but being the stubborn, persistent man I am, I stuck to my guns, and just so no cars would simply ignore me, I pulled into the right side of the entryway directly in front of the gate, so they would have to notice me parked on his property.
Then the day turned into night, and rain began to pour down hard, bouncing off my car like tiny bouncing balls. At this point I was exhausted, having stayed up for two straight days waiting for Neil to come. My stomach was growling like the San Andreas Fault, and my body was shaking from the cold to the point that I thought the vibrations would measure on the Richter scale. To calm myself of the cold and the hunger, I started to imagine my violent shakes were the result of feedback from one of Neil’s amplifier, and that the rain was a roaring crowd clapping and cheering for one last encore. But my vivid imagination wasn’t enough to rescue me entirely this time.
Now here it is, two days later, and I feel like I’m one step away from falling off the deep end. Maybe my parents are right; maybe I am to obsessed, maybe I do have a mental illness, maybe I should take those drugs my psychiatrist keeps suggesting I take, maybe I should turn around at this very moment and find Heather and try to live a normal, picket-fence-and-2.5-kids life. I mean I always thought that McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was insane, but he never resorted to eating leftover chunks of cupcakes from in-between the seats to thwart starvation, like I am now. But then again, I’ve spent too much money, too much time, too much effort, too much Crisco. This has been my dream all my life, and if I don’t accomplish it, then this all would have been worth jack shit. I have to see Neil…I have no other choice. I’m going to try and get some sleep now, before I go completely bonkers.
That is how I woke up this morning. The sound of a car horn made me lunge out of my chair as if a defibrillator was charged on my chest. After recovering from the shock, I turned around to see where the hell that noise came from, and I noticed that a Hummer was parked directly behind me. I got out of the driver’s seat to look and see who was behind the wheel. Sure enough, it was Neil. I was absolutely stunned, to the point where I was frozen like a statue. Yet despite my shock, I knew seeing him wasn’t enough; I needed more.
“What the Hell are you doing on my property!?” he shouted at me from the driver’s seat.
“I’m sorry, Neil, but I’m your biggest fan, and I wanted to give you a demo tape that I’ve spent years working on.”
“Well I appreciate that you’re such a fan of my work,” he said, “but I’ve just finished a tour, and I just want to go home and get some sleep.”
“Well didn’t you get any of my e-mails telling you I’d be coming?” I asked.
“What makes you think I have the time or energy to read any that shit?”
“This is true, you’re a busy guy. But all I’m asking is that you give my demo tape a listen, and that I can talk to my idol and play music with you and listen to some of your archived material.”
“Look,” he told me, “I’ve been on a tour across America for two months, man. All I want to do now is get some shut-eye, relax on my ranch and catch up to what my kids have been doin’ lately. As for the archives, you’re just going to have to wait like everyone else”
“And that’s understandable,” I told him. “Well, the relaxing part, not waiting for the archives. Can you at least sign my vinyl copy of Time Fades Away I purchased for $150? It’s my favorite album of yours.”
“I hate that album, man” he told me. “Two of my friends died before I made it, it was recorded live during a tour I didn’t want to be a part of, and I was drunk on tequila and fucked up through most of it. There’s no way I’m signing it. Now get off my property before I call the cops.”
That’s when my temper started to boil over. “Look, I’ve driven all the way from San Diego to see you, I’ve spent my entire tax refund on recording my demo for you and driving all the way up here to see you, my car ran out of gas on the way over here, I waited for two nights in my car with hardly any food, and worst of all, I had to see fat, ugly-as-fuck nudists while looking for your archives. The least you can do, Neil, is SIGN THIS ALBUM!!
He then put his Hummer on drive, drove around my car and stopped beside me, pressing a button to open the front gate. And as it slowly opened, he looked at me straight in the eyes as if he wanted to strangle every ounce of life out of me. Then he said with a vicious growl, “Fuck you, maaan,” and drove into the ranch
And I just stood there, frozen. I couldn’t believe what just happened. Neil turned down me, the biggest fucking fan of all time!? I can’t believe the piece of shit would do that to me, after all that I’ve dedicated to his music, after telling him how much of a God I saw him as. My first reaction was to throw my laptop on the gate, smashing it to a million pieces. Then I drove off, album in hand, to the Redwood Forest. I knew I had to rid myself of Neil, and I had just the way to do it. Plus I started to hear sirens coming towards me, so I had to get out of there before they arrest me or something.
I stopped by a gas station to pick up some matches and a tank of gas, then grove deep into the heart of the Redwood Forest until I came across a hiking trail called Fern Canyon. I must have walked up that trail for a half hour or so before I came across an open patch of land big enough for my cleansing. I then threw Time Fades Away, Shakey all all my other Neil shit on the ground, doused it in gasoline, lit a match and threw it on the album, watching it explode in a raging inferno. I bathed in its light for what felt like an eternity, simultaneously laughing and crying amidst the blaze, cleansing myself of the pile of shit, washing my hands of anything to do with that piece of crap that I’ve devoted my life to. Then I got up, stared at the inferno for a good minute or so, and walked away, leaving all that shit to burn.. And now I am writing this blog from a nearby Internet coffee shop some 30 minutes from the blaze in God knows where, checking CNN.com to check out their live broadcast of the blaze. In the 8 hours since I started that fire, it’s burnt a good 750 acres of redwood trees, and none of it has been contained. Of course, it makes perfect sense, as none of my anger has yet to or will ever be contained. It’s slowly burning every inch of my soul, from my feet to my hands to my brain to the very heart that I gave to that bastard! And now is the time that I say “farewell” to this blog, for I am fucking done with Neil, done with his music, done with everything about him!! Goodbye, fellow Rusties; enjoy your continue worship of a golden cow!
Well after a few weeks of reflection and meditation, some of the wounds that Neil has inflicted upon me have managed to heal. Thanks to some soul searching, as well as the consultation of my psychiatrist, I have come to realize that Neil is not the God I made him out to be, but rather a human, like everyone else on this Earth. He is not perfect, he makes mistakes, and in reality, what Neil did that day was exactly what deep down I knew he’d do; he doesn’t really care about what anyone thinks of him, or how others perceive him or his actions. He does what he thinks is right for him and the ones he loves, not what other people think he should do, which explains why he didn’t want to sign my album or didn’t want my demo tape after a grueling tour. And really, it was this exact attitude that made me idolize him in the first place, but despite this I let it fuel my blind rage (and fire) against him.
So now that I have finally realized that Neil is indeed merely a human, I should treat him as such, not as some sort of God or second coming. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll still listen to his music and continue be a fan of his work. But I’ve finally come to realize that there are more important things in life than one man, and with the help of my family, my doctor and others, hopefully I’ll be able to live my life as such (my parents insist that I turn myself in and admit that I started the fire, though, but I don’t want to return to that old part of me, even if it is to undo the wrong). So I wish all of you Rusties the best of luck in life, and remember, as Neil said “rock and roll will never die.”
Now I hope it isn’t too late to try and win over Heather.
_________________ "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."
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