Waging Heavy Peace (30 page)

Chapter Fifty-Three

N
ear the end of 2010, I did a leg of the Le Noise tour that dipped down to the Gulf of Mexico to play for the people who had been hit hard by the oil spill and Katrina. The economy down there had taken a tremendous hit. At the time, I thought it was the last leg of that tour. We lowered the price of the shows to an amount that let everyone come who there was room for. Johnny Tyson, an old friend of mine from many years back who is a music lover and a man who likes to do good things for people, followed us around with a semi of Tyson poultry products for the food banks.

The devastation from BP’s Gulf oil spill disaster, plus Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, lingering for years, was an incredible load on those folks. I just wanted to go down there and help. I took Lincvolt, and after each show we would jump in the car and go. Ben Young, Zeke Young, Ben Johnson, Dave Toms, and I piled into Lincvolt with the top down and rode into the Gulf night. The warm air and gentle breezes make the Gulf area one of the most inviting places on earth. It was such a rush to cruise along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in a big electric convertible with the laughter of friends and the wind in our hair! We were in the zone.

The shows were very close together, and it was easy to make it to the next motel or rendezvous area with the buses. Lincvolt would then ride in the semitrailer that we brought along. It doubled as a gym in the front and a garage for Lincvolt in the back.

We met with folks along the way who told us of the planes going out at night under cover of darkness to drop chemicals on the Gulf and disperse the deadly oil slick to the bottom, where it was out of human sight and, therefore, out of mind. These people were very upset at the deception being perpetrated by the media that everything was being cleaned up. Some of the coverage that actually reported the cover-up and night flights of dispersants dropped on the Gulf was indeed good, but a lot of coverage reporting that the Gulf was cleaned up was total fiction, according to the locals.

In Mobile, Alabama, we met a young man who would only tell his story if we filmed him from the neck down and didn’t show his face. He was scared of recrimination. He told us how they were working on a fleet of boats paid by BP that had been working on cleaning up the spill for weeks, and suddenly had been given three days off. When they came back to work the oil slick was gone. Everyone working knew it had to have been dispersants from airplanes. Locals told us the planes flew over all night for three nights in a row. The oil was dispersed to the bottom, killing untold sea life.

A lot of folks were greatly intimidated by the oil power that controls so much of the area. People were down, frightened, yet strong. They are not going anywhere. This is their way of life, their roots and family history. Fishing families with four and five generations of history working the Gulf are not going easily. These things don’t change.

The shows along the Gulf went great. I was so happy to play the casinos and smaller halls. Old theaters full of happy folks who I would likely never have played for were enjoying the night and the music, the togetherness and the moments of laughter and tears. You could see it in their faces.

Around the back of the venues after the show, people came to look at the old electric Lincoln, defying preconceptions of what a car like that could do. It silently glided out of the backstage lot, full of our family and friends, Ben Young being gently and easily held in the front seat by a giant Dave Toms, whose long white hair was streaming in the breeze, Zeke Young and Ben Johnson holding down the backseat. At nineteen and a half feet, Lincvolt can hold a lot of happiness.

We played Panama City, Clearwater, Hollywood, Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola, then we headed north to Farm Aid in Milwaukee. Farm Aid was a departure from our normal shows on that tour because of the forty thousand people and a stadium, but it was a good ’un! It’s all about the music. If the music soars and you feel good, then the show is good. If for whatever reason the music does not soar, then it is not a good show. There is no way to tell what it will be like. It’s like the weather.

That short tour will always be one of my best road memories. Maybe it’s because I had Zeke out there again! I’m looking forward to getting back out there with Lincvolt and the boys for another trip someday soon. Maybe I can get Amber to come next time, too. It really felt good to wind down from the show behind the wheel of that old convertible. I guess I was harkening back to the days when entertainers would travel in Cadillacs pulling trailers full of band equipment.

Only the headliners of the biggest shows could afford that back in those days. I wanted to be like them and just keep going to the next town. When I saw Roy Orbison in Winnipeg Municipal Auditorium around 1960, he had a big motor home; very impressive. Gene Pitney had a Cadillac and trailer. So did the Crickets, with Waylon and Sonny Curtis, when I saw them at Winnipeg Beach, sixty miles north of Winnipeg. Dick Clark’s Cavalcade of Stars all rode in one bus when they played the Municipal Auditorium—eight artists and the band all in one bus with the master of ceremonies, Fabian!

Those were my glory days.

With Crazy Horse (Ralph Molina, me, Billy Talbot, Frank “Poncho” Sampedro), in a Copenhagen hotel room, March 1976.

Chapter Fifty-Four

I
n 1974, on the night Carrie’s mom died, I woke up in bed at the ranch and I saw her head in the air screaming at the foot of my bed. It was a nightmare I will never forget.

Although Carrie and I had just broken up, I went to Chicago to help support her in her grieving and be with her family. There were rumors of some strange circumstances around her mother’s death that would lead one to believe that it was very traumatic. It was investigated and concluded to be a carbon monoxide suicide in a garage. I was very uncomfortable, but I felt I should still be there with Carrie because she needed me. Zeke was back in California with a friend.

While I was there in Chicago, I called Ben Keith, who was in Nashville, and Crazy Horse in LA so that they could come and play with me at Chess Recording Studios, the historic Chicago studio where so many great blues records had been made. I had already played with Poncho once at Billy Talbot’s house in Echo Park. Billy and his new, young wife, Laurie, had been there with a few kids. We had played on the porch, and the music had echoed in the canyon outside. I guess that’s why they named it Echo Park. Poncho had fit in real well, and we’d been able to jam on some cool stuff. I don’t remember what we were playing, but it had a good sound. Poncho is Spanish, Billy is Italian, and Ralph is Portuguese; three Latins and a Canadian, I thought to myself. There was something sympathetic about the way we played together. It felt really fluid and hot, yet funky and solid.

When we all got to Chess Studios, we found it on the fifth floor of a big old brick building that really had a historic vibe. I felt I was in a hallowed place. It was funky and there was nothing high-class about it, like some of the studios we had played in Hollywood. It had everything it needed, though. We recorded one song, “Changing Highways,” at that session. It was kind of an experiment with Poncho in the studio, and it went well. We rocked. Crazy Horse went back to LA.

After that session, I said good-bye to Carrie and her family, and Ben and I drove south to Nashville in the ’59 Cadillac Eldorado I bought in Chicago—the as yet unnamed Nanu. That did not happen until Mr. Briggs first laid eyes on her and named her Nanu the Lovesick Moose. The car was really cool, and we had a good trip. It felt great to be on the road again; I was relieved to be free from all of the feelings around the death of Carrie’s mom and the aftermath of my breakup with Carrie.

When we got to Nashville, we had a series of sessions with Levon Helm, then Karl Himmel, and, on one track, Kenny Buttrey on drums. Elliot Mazer was in the control room. Tim Drummond and Ben Keith were on all of the tracks. It felt really good. It was the beginning of an entire album I have held back, entitled
Homegrown
. I was making so much music then, it was hard to keep track of all of it and complete a record. The creative process was spinning slightly out of control because I had so much music to record. When
Homegrown
would normally have come out, I put out
Tonight’s the Night
instead, because we all listened to both of them and
Tonight’s the Night
, although almost two years old, just had to come out. I had delayed it originally, having felt it was not yet the right time for release, and also I had a sense that it needed something else added to it for perspective. I did find those tracks eventually, and then the record was complete. Now when I listen to it, I am not sure about that decision. Some things take a while to settle with me.

When I got to LA, I was soon in the Malibu groove. Briggs and I were up to our old tricks, having a lot of fun in the bars at night and lying around in the sun all day. I had rented a house on Broad Beach Road. Nanu became a regular on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). Ben had driven the car out from Nashville and brought it to LA. Nanu was the scene of many good times. There was a bar named the Crazy Horse Saloon in Malibu that we frequented. Poncho had a house on the PCH, and we hung out there, too. There were lots of girls and we were living the dream.

I kept writing, and when I wrote “Cortez the Killer” and “Hitchhiker,” I called for the Horse to come and record. We decided on Briggs’s Point Dume house with the Green Board as the ideal location. I lived a few miles north near Zuma Beach. Malibu, with the Crazy Horse Saloon, was a few miles south. It was a perfect situation for good times.

The album
Zuma
is the first album we made with Crazy Horse after Poncho joined the band. It’s one of my favorites. The cover is by Mazzeo and came out of a conversation we had on a day trip from the ranch to Zuma. We set up a Green Board control room in Briggs’s den. We played in the garage. One day Bob Dylan, who lived nearby, came along and sang a blues tune with us. On a break, Bob and I took a walk around the neighborhood, talking about the similarity in some of the paths we had each taken. It was the first time we had ever really talked. I liked him.

Back at Briggs’s, we kept playing day after day and partying at night. We did the original “Powderfinger” and held it back. We did “Sedan Delivery” and held it back. My song “Born to Run” was recorded, left unfinished, and held back. “Ride My Llama” was completely finished and mixed and held back. We recorded a lot of tunes and held them back, but we released “Cortez,” “Don’t Cry No Tears,” “Stupid Girl,” and a bunch of other tracks on
Zuma
. It has a great feeling to it. Today I like listening to all of those tracks together in a compilation I call
Dume
that is in
The Archives Volume 2
. Those were some of the finest, most alive days of my life. I was getting past the lost relationship with Carrie, living the life with my best friends, making some good music, and starting to get a grip on something: an open future in my personal life and a new future with Crazy Horse after Danny.

Recently, I was in Point Dume visiting my producer friend Rick Rubin and told him about the sessions at David’s old house; we went for a drive and could not locate it. It may have been torn down. It was a classic ranch-style house with wooden shutters around the windows. I saw a few others still around in the style of David’s but couldn’t find the one. Strangely, though, when Rick ordered some fish tacos to go for us at the local place located in the Dume Shopping Center, it turned out to be the same spot where Briggs and I used to eat breakfast every morning back in the day.