Waging Heavy Peace (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Meditations

I
was out by the water looking at the shoreline. The waves came in. They receded. The water lapped on the coral when it rushed in, knocking the pieces of coral all around. The lighter pieces got jostled the most, and the pieces that were wedged into other pieces held on and just moved a little, although they got wet. This pattern continued for hours until the tide went out and the water level became lower, causing the waves to not come in as far and to not touch the little pieces of coral I had been watching. The coral pieces dried out and changed color in the sunlight or reflected a little in the moonlight. They were all there together: big ones, little ones, broken ones, ones that looked like little fish.

When the tide returns, it will be higher or lower than it was the last time it came in, and the little pieces will be jostled again. If the waves are particularly big, the coral pieces might get worn down or be broken into smaller pieces, eventually losing their shape completely. If the tide is gentle and the waves are small, very little will happen except to the smallest pieces of coral. It’s hard to track the progress of every little piece, but it is predictable that they will eventually be worn down and disappear, to be replaced by other pieces.

This is an example of paganism to me, possibly Buddhism, one of the ways I learn to accept change through nature and the way of things. I am not looking for a story to explain this or a legend to believe in or a place to go where I can learn about this. I am already here. The horizon speaks to me in my time of need, sharing the ultimate story of the moment of change. I accept the horizon for what it is. This is my religion.

When I was a little boy in Omemee, my mom and dad took me to Sunday school. I don’t remember much about it, but it didn’t last long. I suspect my mom and dad grew tired of taking me down there to the church. My dad always said, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen,” before each meal, generally followed by “Neil, get your elbows off the table.” I don’t even know what religious denomination my mom and dad were.

We had spaghetti a lot. It was really good with my dad’s special sauce. Before he poured in the chili peppers, he used to heat it up in a big pot. OMG, it smelled great! Then he would add hamburger meat and let it simmer for hours, covered. Al dente was his preferred way to cook the noodles, and later I got pretty good at that.

My dad’s spaghetti sauce recipe is framed and hanging in our kitchen today, back at the ranch. It is so faded that I can barely read it anymore, but it does have his original handwriting. Pegi has made it a few times, and it’s great when she does. At least someone is making it, and that feels good to me. I would like to taste that again. Once, when Crazy Horse was doing what we called the Northern California Coastal Bar Tour in 1975, my daddy was living on the ranch in the little red house and driving my 1950 Plymouth. He came down to the White House and cooked spaghetti for us all one night. His glasses were fogging up while he ate it! It was amazingly great, that meal. A real good memory!

My father Scott Young’s spaghetti recipe.

Old memories are wonderful things and should be held on to as long as possible, shared with others, and embellished if need be. Whenever I go back to Canada, my heart is flooded with them—memories, that is. I look forward to seeing my brother, Bob, and Dave Toms up there in Peterborough when I go back for the premiere of Jonathan Demme’s new documentary. It will be a great time. (Canadians say
great
a lot, in case you haven’t noticed. I know. I have looked up many other words I could have used in the thesaurus, but that is not my style. I prefer to be boring and use the same words over and over, because that is more true to who I really am. That may not work for you if you pride yourself on your great vocabulary.)

Visiting my mom, Rassy Young, in Winnipeg, June 1968.

With my dad at the Riverboat club in Toronto, February 1969.

Chapter Forty

W
hen I arrived back in Toronto from Blind River in the mid-sixties, I visited my dad. I had not seen him much in the few years since our family split up and I moved to Winnipeg with my mother at age twelve or so. He had never shown much interest in my music or supporting it, and he had constantly urged me to improve my grades at school before he would help me with my music in any way. So I was not surprised when he thought I should get a job to support myself while I was looking around for gigs in Yorkville Village, the place where artists and musicians and former beatniks hung out and did their thing.

I got a job at Coles Bookstore on Yonge Street and took a flat nearby at 88 Isabella Street so I could walk to work. I had a hot plate to cook on there. Beans mostly. My job at Coles was described as stock boy. I was the person putting price tags on all the books. I only lasted two weeks. I had no discipline and could not put anything ahead of my music. I spent the days wandering around the Village, trying to meet other musicians and seeing if I could get a gig or a band going.

Number 88 Isabella Street was filthy, because I never cleaned anything. I was a little pig. But I did write a song called “The Ballad of Peggy Grover” up there. It was pretty good, but not too good. “Peggy Grover” was a play on words for Grover pegs, which were the best tuning pegs you could buy for a guitar.

The way the story goes,

she just ran out of clothes.

This world just wore the
peg down.

Then I wrote a song called “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.” That song had a little more depth and was more a stream of consciousness about how it felt to be in my body at the time.

Hey who’s that stompin’ all over my
face?

I was beginning to feel like songwriting was what I was about more than anything else. I wrote a few more songs there and started playing them for people in the Village. Some people said they liked what I was doing.

Then one day I bailed on the flat without paying because I had no money for the rent. I went and slept on the floor at Vicky Taylor’s flat above the Night Owl, a club on Avenue Road, just north of the Village. Vicky was a folksinger struggling in the Village, and her parents were paying for the apartment. She was an important part of the scene there with musicians and hippies. She was a magnet. Everybody knew her. She had long, straight, jet-black hair. We were all trying to make it somehow in the music scene. One of the LP records we listened to with Vicky, and I in particular loved, was by Bert Jansch. His singing and guitar playing were masterful. I never forgot that. I learned a lot from him. Vicky was a big fan of Bert, as well.

John Kay, who would later sing “Born to Be Wild” in Steppenwolf, also slept there on the floor in front of the fireplace. We burned anthracite in the fireplace, white coal. We both would be sleeping there, listening to records and crashing. He showed me some cool guitar stuff that helped me to define the way I played. He had been in the Sparrow, a local band that did well. They were really great and had a slippery lead guitar player, Dennis Edmonton. They were the Toronto sound, along with the Hawks, who later became The Band. The Toronto sound featured R&B-based rock, with a Roy Buchanan–influenced Fender Telecaster guitar playing style that Robbie Robertson and Dennis Edmonton, along with Domenic Troiano, were all great at.

One night after hearing me at a hootenanny, Chick Roberts of the Dirty Shames told me he really liked my song “Sugar Mountain”—that made me feel like I was somebody.

—

F
olk clubs and the folk life were burning their way into my psyche. Back in the beginning in Winnipeg, I played with the Squires at a club called the Fourth Dimension. That was one of my first gigs. I was green as could be and played the Hootenanny every weekend, and I would watch the headliners: the Thorns, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the Dirty Shames, the Allen-Ward Trio, Chuck and Joni Mitchell (who I first met there), Don McLean, Danny Cox, Lisa Kindred, the list goes on and on . . . They came through regularly, a new act every week or couple of weeks.

Joni Mitchell also really loved my song “Sugar Mountain.” Later, she wrote “The Circle Game” about “Sugar Mountain.” It was a real feeling of recognition that Joni wrote her song to answer mine; I didn’t even hear it until she had already been singing it for a year.

Meeting all of these people had an effect on me. I saw myself as a part of it all, the music scene, the writers and performers. I wanted to do just what they did, too—get in a truck after they finished their set and leave.

Eventually that is exactly what I did, taking the Squires to the Flamingo Club in Fort William, Ontario, where to my surprise I discovered
another
Fourth Dimension Club! We played there, too. There was a guy there who played a Fender Telecaster, and he played the shit out of it. He was better than most of the players I had ever heard. He had the Toronto sound, that string-bending Telecaster technique. I don’t remember his name or much else about him. He was pretty straight-looking, with really short hair, kind of like a Kingston Trio look. He was there watching the Squires one night when we played “Farmer John.” When the instrumental break came along in the song, I just went crazy on the guitar solo. I had just started to do that. One night it just happened, and now I was doing it all the time.

When the set was over, he came up to me.

“What the fuck was that?!” He exclaimed. “What the hell were you doing? I have never heard anything like that in my life! It was fucking great, man! Shit!”

I knew that while I was playing like that I was out of my mind. It felt right, but I don’t know what it was. Every note was out of the blue! I went places I had never gone before with no fear. It made an impression on him, and me too. That was the beginning of something. I knew I was doing something that had just come out of me, not something I learned, but something that
was
me.