In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews. Previous installments are available by using the links in the side panel on the right. Part 7: JIM MESSINA The Buffalo Springfield’s recording engineer and producer before replacing Bruce Palmer on bass in 1968 for the final LP, Last Time Around. Also played on Young’s solo debut. I was hired as a recording engineer at Sunset Sound in LA. The first musician I’d worked with was actually David Crosby, who’d come in with a young girl singer who was looking for a record deal. They did about 12 tunes. It was the first time I’d ever heard anybody that phenomenal and it turned out to be Joni Mitchell. She was just exceptionally wonderful. Then I think David went back and told Neil about me. Working on Buffalo Springfield Again was interesting. I had been working with various other people already, so editing tape with a razor blade and all it entailed wasn’t unusual for me. So when Neil brought in “Broken Arrow” what was interesting was that he wanted to use all these separate pieces. That was a first for me, but I knew what we had to do to make it work. The first person I ever met from the Buffalo Springfield was Neil. I was there as the engineer and he came in as the Buffalo Springfield, because that was what was marked on the work board. So I presumed his role was producer. He brought tons of tapes in with him, I think from Columbia Records, who’d started the project. Apparently something had happened with their management: Charlie Greene and Brian Stone. At that time I didn’t know all the politics of it, I was just brought in as engineer. I had no idea what had gone on, so I just thought Neil was the producer of the band. He always seemed extremely professional, with a good sense of what he wanted to do. And he knew how to convey it and was very good at articulating it. He was also very kind and supportive and certainly not someone who wanted to come in and take control. He was interested in it all and would ask questions. I think the most important thing was that I really felt he was there to help everybody, it wasn’t just about Neil. Sooner or later I got to meet the individual guys. But when I worked alone with Neil it wasn’t about making his own guitar parts sounds better, it was about making the best-sounding record he could, with the material he had to work with. I think the episode that most summed up Neil’s creativity was working on “Broken Arrow”. I got a chance to see how his mind worked in terms of piecing all those images together. The last part has that jazz part in it, which I never understood why he wanted it there. But when it all came together, it was quite wonderful. And I would never have pictured that in that way, but Neil did. Sitting back and watching him think it through, then bringing the band in and getting them to play it, then putting that little piece in at the end, was fascinating. I remember him standing up when it was done, with a huge smile on his face, and saying: “That’s it. That’s great.” It’s wonderful to see anybody who has a passion and vision for something and is able to put it all together. With Last Time Around, again I never knew what was going on with these guys, I just heard that Neil had left the band at some point. Then when I was finishing that record, he contacted me to say he had a song he wanted to add to it. I asked him if he needed help and he told me he was going to cut it in this small studio somewhere else. So he finished it up himself. I don’t think it was anything personal, it was just that work needed to get done and I was working on other things. And he took great care in getting it to me. I think by then he’d separated himself from the rest of the band and was happier working alone. When Neil and I worked together, it was all about the music. I didn’t know anything about him because he never talked about that stuff. I didn’t know about his relationships, or his parents or where he came from. It was strictly about the work that needed doing. When I was working with them, the Buffalo Springfield would very seldom play together, with everybody in the same room. Neil brought over a bunch of things from Columbia which needed things adding. It was a very incomplete project. I remember “On The Way Home” was something they did all play together on, but they’d get one piece right here and one piece right there. In the end I got tired and a little cranky so I said “Why don’t you guys go home and I’ll have this thing finished for tomorrow?” The next day I came in and edited it all together into one piece of work. Last Time Around took a lot of work to put together. [Label boss] Ahmet Ertegun had called me and said that he needed these guys to finish the record and didn’t trust any other producers to do it. What I realised though, when I got into it, was that I had to look at each of these guys and ask what were their individual needs. Neil had the least need for me because, again, he knew what he was doing and what he wanted. Stephen, on the other hand, was very impetuous. He’d come in, plug in his guitar and say: “Let’s start recording.” He wanted everything immediately, if not sooner. Richie had the right music but needed to be shown how to get it done. Stephen was really just trying to keep everything together by that time. But around completion time, people started giving up. My own biggest hope was that if I could get this thing completed and it was a biggish success, it might bring these guys back together again. For me, their biggest problem was that I got a sense they were struggling financially. It was hard to make ends meet. I’d go around to Richie’s house, for instance, and the food on the table was very modest. From a songwriting point of view, you had Richie writing in a more country-rock direction, Neil in another and Stephen in a different one. But when all these pieces came together, it really was phenomenal. To this day, “Bluebird” is one of my favourites. When they were actually together, it was wonderful. I think Neil was initially dismissive of Last Time Around because it wasn’t the album he wanted it to be. But I knew it was what it was, what each of them had or had not contributed. Maybe Neil felt there were things he hadn’t contributed, which would give cause to that effect. I remember Neil being aloof and not saying a lot, but I didn’t take that as something personal. I felt that my respect for him and my service for him was a case of giving him all that I had to give. I gave him no more or no less than any of the other guys. It’s just that someone like Richie required more attention. So yes, Neil was aloof but I remember other people feeling the same thing too. The final Buffalo Springfield gig at Long Beach [May 1968] was very emotional. My heart felt like it was ten times bigger than it should be and I was really trying to keep myself from leaking. I guess I was feeling lost. I felt it was like ‘What are we gonna do now?’ I’d put so much of my heart and soul into that record [Last Time Around] and, as well as being the engineer, I was also the bass player. I was very much tethered to it in as much as wanting to help all of them. From what I recall, the record wasn’t finished yet, so I felt very suspended. While everyone was celebrating, I still had commitments to honour. I couldn’t just say ‘fuck it’. I knew Neil had had seizures before, but had never been in his presence while he was having one. My aunt had had them, so it wasn’t a mystery to me. Neil had a seizure on stage in Jacksonville, Florida, in April 1968. What really saddened me about that night, and I’ll go to my grave with this feeling, was it was the first time I recall that his parents had come over to the United States to see him play. They were in the audience. It was a very hot night and on the way there, Dewey [Martin] had been begging us to stop for something to drink. He finally convinced us to get some Applejack wine. Needless to say, when we rolled out of the limousine I was totally ripped. So I grabbed my bass and went out on stage. When it came to “Good Time Boy”, Dewey got down from his drums, took his shirt off and jumped down into the audience, where he started singing. A very large Southern policeman then came over, grabbed him by the hair of his head, jerked the mike around and said: “The concert’s over.” Around that time, Neil had walked off stage and then had fallen. Everyone was scrambling to get out of there, then I saw him lying there all by himself. My thoughts were, ‘Isn’t anybody going to help? Where is everyone?’ And I remember there was a little tear coming out of the corner of his eye. It really saddened me because I knew his parents were there to see him. So it must have had an effect on him, to have a seizure at that point. And I didn’t see anybody coming to help. It really freaked me out. Then somebody grabbed me and said: “You’ve got to leave!” So he was just left there. To this day I find that memory really sad. I remember visiting Neil at the house that [astrologer and “good witch”] Kiyo Hodell had sorted for him in Laurel Canyon. She had a very interesting cottage of her own: very fantasy-like, very fairy-like. I was in her house and these beehives came pouring out of her fireplace. She was very sweet and I certainly never felt she was a bad person. I never had any sense that Neil was in danger, for example. There was no sense of her leading him or misguiding him. If I looked at it in this day and age, she’d be seen as more of a goddess type than a witch. I enjoyed playing on Neil first solo album. I can’t remember exactly what song we were working on, but I recall walking in there and saying to him “I’d like to write a chart out on this.” Neil just replied, “Well, it’s pretty easy.” So I wrote the chart out on it, then went and sat down and asked if we could run through it. After we’d done that I told Neil “Right, I think I have it. Let’s play it for real.” And he just said, “Nah, we’ve got it. That’s fine.” And that was it. It was wonderful working that way. I have to tell you I would have loved to have played with Neil again after that record. But after Buffalo Springfield, I felt Richie was the one left hanging the most. And because he’d helped me get the last record finished, I had that empathy with him. And that’s what led to Poco. Neil never really conveyed to me that he would like me to work with him again, although I probably would have enjoyed that experience much more, if only because Neil was so much into the electronics of music. He and I both liked old sounds and compressors. He still has an amp of mine that I lent him many years ago. And we traded guitars. I gave him my old black Les Paul that wasn’t tuned up. We shared a lot of things back then. In the long run I probably would have been more musically satisfied if I’d played with Neil. But working with Richie was a choice I made that was comfortable. In the end he needed my services more than Neil did. I have heard a few rumours over the years that Neil had some dissatisfaction with what I’d done with him. But you know what? He never told me personally. And I always feel that if that had been the case, he would have told me. We never socialised, it was all about the work. But Neil did seem to be more comfortable, verbally, alone with me rather than with a bunch of other guys. I think what made him unique was that he thought things out carefully, came in organised and was ready to work. There was no bullshit, no drugs, no drinking. He was always right there. From a creative standpoint, he did things differently in terms of how he approached things. When I look back now, he was trying to be unique. I’m looking at an old picture of him and I together and he’s wearing a sweater with Indian symbols on it, he’s wearing a choker chain and he’s got a look of his own. I think he had a very good sense of self. If there was any negativity about him, I think it was disappointment at his inability to be there sometimes. But then again, I don’t know why he left the Buffalo Springfield. He must have had a good reason to leave. INTERVIEW: ROB HUGHES

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews. Previous installments are available by using the links in the side panel on the right. RICHIE FURAY Guitarist, vocalist and co-founder of the Buffalo Springfield. Formed Poco with Jim Messina after Springfield’s split in 1968 *** UNCUT: What was your very first impression of Neil? What do you remember of him calling in on you in New York in 1965? FURAY: I didn’t have a clue as to who Neil Young was when he showed up at the apartment on Thompson Street, other than he was a friend of Stephen [Stills]’s and his band The Company. He was a high-energy guy, friendly and someone I saw as being very talented. It’s funny that when he played his songs for me, I never once thought “this guy has a strange voice”. I just liked his songs and the way he sang them. Apparently, you loved "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing". Can you explain what you liked about it and also what you remember of Neil teaching it to you? The lyrics to “Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing” were a bit quirky, but it was folk music so that was OK. And the melody was good. But what intrigued me the most was the changing time signature of the song. It was unique and just, well, different. I heard something original in it and that drew me to it. I had an old Revere tape recorder with me and had him sing it for me and that’s how I really learned it. After you'd bumped into Neil and Bruce [Palmer] at a Sunset Strip traffic jam, you invited them back to listen to an arrangement of "Nowadays..." that you and Stills had done. What was Neil's reaction? And how did the rest of the day go? What an historic moment, we were all pretty amazed. It was nothing short of fate and destiny. Neil and Bruce were leaving LA and we didn’t even know they were in town. We did take them back to Barry Friedman’s house and played him the song. I don’t remember exactly what his reaction was but it must have impressed him enough to stick around and start the band. Knowing Neil and how he operates, if he didn’t see some potential and an opportunity, he’d had left. I suppose we sat around and talked about putting the band together and things like that. That was pretty much what was on our mind at that time. Can you explain the unique chemistry of Buffalo Springfield? Again, the Buffalo Springfield was a group of destiny, a vehicle to launch the careers of some significant musicians. I don’t remember the group as being something we had to work at, to make it work. When we’d go over a song, each writer pretty much led the way and then everyone would contribute from their own observation. Stephen and I had worked out most of the vocal arrangements for his songs. For whatever reason I had the task of singing a few of Neil’s songs early on. As we’d go over them, each member would make suggestions to instrumental parts and vocal harmony. It was really fun in those days listening to a song develop. When you have a group you have to let each other experiment and, believe me, you knew right away when something didn’t fit. What do you remember about their early residency at the Whisky A Go Go? It was at The Whisky where we began to see and hear the potential we had as a band. No one was doing what we did vocally or instrumentally. It was during this time we began to sense we had something special to offer. People started coming out of the woodwork to hear us. Word of mouth was spreading and certainly we saw our dreams start to unfold before our eyes. Was there a particular chemistry between Neil and Stephen? There was nothing more or less than mutual respect for each other. Everyone’s looking for a story or some dirt to dig up to give intrigue to a situation, especially when it seems to explode in your face. These were two very talented guys and no matter what band your talking about there will be differences of opinion during the creative process. Do you remember cutting an early version of "Mr Soul" in the Atlantic studio in New York? I know we did some studio work during that time but I can’t really remember much about it. Can you describe how Neil was in the studio at that point? Was he very protective about his own compositions? In an interview with Teenset magazine in early 1968, you described your bandmates like this: "Stephen's bold, Neil's sly and Bruce is silent but deadly", adding that "Neil is tricky about getting things done the way he wants them done"… What else can I say? I’m not sure I know anymore about what I said other than what was written. Do you remember recording the songs "Sell Out" and "Slowly Burning"? No! When the end of Buffalo Springfield came, was it inevitable? You were obviously pulling towards country-rock, but was Neil more interested in symphonic pop? The break up of Buffalo Springfield was inevitable. After the first few months we were together, it was a struggle making forward progress. There was somewhere around nine different people in and out of the group in the two years we were together. My feelings were that as long as Stephen was pressin’ on, I’d be there with him. Make no mistake about it, the Buffalo Springfield was Steve’s band. He was the heart and soul of the group. We all had our roles and contributed our gift and talent to the whole, but it was his band. When he decided to move on then, I was ready, along with Jimmy Messina, to go on to the next project. Can you explain your reaction when Neil suddenly announced he wanted to quit and disappeared on the eve of the Tonight Show appearance? My reaction was one of disappointment. In those days, being on TV was a big deal. It was a national platform that never came to be. So of course I was disappointed, but I didn’t think of it as betrayal. Whatever was going on in Neil’s heart and mind at that time: who knows? Could he have gone about it any differently? Certainly, life is about choices. Do I have a theory as to the real reason he wanted to quit? Not really, unless there was someone in his inner circle that told him he didn’t need the rest of the band to be a success. From my perspective, as it turned out, he did need Crosby Stills and Nash to really connect. Stephen claimed that "On The Way Home" was addressed to Neil. What are your thoughts on that? And, as many people have assumed, do you see that song as the story of the Springfield itself? You’d have to ask Stephen what he meant about that comment. Maybe it does sum up his thoughts and feelings about everything that was going on. It’s a shame sometimes that along the journey you just can’t enjoy the ride. There’s a great story about your wedding and Neil, where you begged him not to show up in his fringed jacket. So he showed up in a Confederate uniform instead… Oh boy, Neil! What a great guy: unique and unpredictable. You gotta love him. Neil really was unpredictable. He caught us off guard, but to think he was gonna come dressed conventionally for the wedding, now that I look back on it, was out of the question. Neil was his own guy in all respects and if he needed to be a focal point, even at our wedding, he was gonna do what was necessary! Of course, he didn’t tell me, or anyone that I know of, what he was up to. He’s a big one on the ‘shock’ approach. I don’t remember saying anything to him or him to me afterwards but I’m sure there was a lot of conversation among the folks who came to the wedding. In many respects it was just Neil’s sense of humour. And he can be a funny guy. What did you see as Neil's unique qualities when you were working with him? He may have had an idea about how he wanted a song to go but I don’t remember him being overly possessive in getting what he wanted. He had it pretty much worked out in his head and we all adapted to his basic arrangement and approach. As we would work on a song he was patient as we worked through the process. I don’t remember any tension during the process. INTERVIEW BY ROB HUGHES

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews. Previous installments are available by using the links in the side panel on the right. Part 5: COMRIE SMITH Young’s high school buddy in early, short-lived ‘bands’. Also played with Toronto folk-rockers, 3’s A Crowd UNCUT: Tell me about you and Neil before he moved away in 1960. Was he already into music? SMITH: I remember when we were kids I’d meet Neil everyday on the corner to walk to school together and he’d have his white bucks on and his transistor radio just blaring out. He’d say, “Hey Comrie, listen to this one!” He loved the Fendermen with “Good Morning Captain”. I had a Go Bo Diddley album which had the greatest funky guitar song that we used to listen to a lot. He liked Gene Vincent and Link Wray. I had those albums and we’d listen to them all the time. We used to buy records from this little elderly lady at Robinson Radio. Once they were off the hit parade she’d sell them for 39¢. So you could get an Everly Brothers 45 and there’d always be an interesting song on the B-side and we’d listen to those. Neil and I both loved Roy Orbison. We would listen to “Only The Lonely” and “Candy Man” in my living room. We had both started playing earlier with Neil on his baritone ukulele and me with my acoustic guitar. We had thought we would form a group together when we were in junior high but then, of course, he left. I knew Rassy, too, before she and Scott split up. She was a great mom for us in that teenage time. She was very supportive of our musical interests and I understand she did the same for Neil in Winnipeg. Did you remain in touch with Neil after he moved to Winnipeg? Only once [laugh]. It was after Grade 9. Neither of us were terrific students. He sent me this long, scrawly letter – he still writes in that style – about Winnipeg and how cold it was in the winter, stuff like that. And that was about it. We never saw each other until he came back to Toronto in 1965. When he came out he ended up at a friend’s, Richard Mundell’s house in North Toronto. I had an old car, a 41 Plymouth at the time. Neil phoned me one night in the middle of the summer from a party and said, “Bet you thought I didn’t know much about cars. Well, I sure know a lot about them now.” And he told me all about his hearse breaking down. He said, “There’s a party going on here, why don’t you come over and bring your guitar?” So I went over with my guitar and we played. After that he hung out a lot with me at my place with my girlfriend. Neil had left Winnipeg for Fort William (Thunder Bay) with his band The Squires in the spring of 1965 before heading further east to Toronto in late June of that year. The band folded soon after with Neil pursuing a folksinging career. Was this about the time you met up again? Sort of. He still had his Gretsch electric guitar. We had been friends before Neil moved to Winnipeg in 1960 so when he came back we kind of picked up where we’d left off. I was playing in a band that was folding as well so it was just the two of us really. Neil had this idea at the time that the coolest thing in the world would be to have two Martin guitars with d’Armand pickups on them. My girlfriend at that time ended up giving me a d’Armand pickup. But on those tracks Neil’s still playing his electric Gretsch guitar unplugged and I’m on a little Hofner guitar unplugged. Neil hadn’t traded in his Gretsch for a Gibson 12-string acoustic yet. I had been playing for 2 or 3 years in and around Toronto with my own band and various bands basically playing rock ‘n’ roll, not necessarily folk. And I was really into writing songs and Neil was, too. So together our ideas just seemed to work well folkie-wise. Tell me how these tracks – “Hello Lonely Woman”, “Casting Me Away From You” and “There Goes My Babe” – came to be recorded. Those three songs were recorded in the attic of my parents’ house in Toronto, 46 Golfdale Road, and it’s just me and Neil on a couple of unplugged guitars. Neil likes things pretty raw and that’s what those tracks were. We were good music friends. It’s just the two of us and a friend who operated the tape machine. The recordings were made around late August or early September of 1965. There were more than those three songs on the tape. I remember a song of Neil’s called “Betty Ann” that had the line “Betty Ann, if you can, won’t you mend my broken heart again.” Marty Onrot who was sort of managing Neil had him make a tape of his songs around then and I think I heard parts of that. But this is a different tape from that same period. It was kind of a routine for us at night. We’d go to this hamburger place up in Willowdale and get a hamburger around 8 or 9 at night. Then he’d come back and I had my girlfriend’s tape recorder and Neil would fool around on it, all these wonderful monologues on it making up stories about his auditions or pretending he was a club owner telling him, “Hey kid, you don’t need drumsticks. You just need pencils ‘cause you’re too loud,” all in his humorous voice. We had a lot of fun with that. I wish I still had those tapes. So we were up in the attic and there were some heavy vibes going on. There was another guy running the recorder. “Hello Lonely Woman” was kind of an R ‘n’ B number and you can hear Neil’s foot tapping on the linoleum. I felt pretty bad about my playing on the tracks, it wasn’t that good. There was a great version of “High Heeled Sneakers” on that tape but I guess it didn’t get used for copyright reasons. There was another one of Neil’s on the tape called “Don’t Tell My Friends” that was an early Neil Young tune. “Hello Lonely Woman” was a Squires-era song Neil later resurrected with The Blue Notes in 1988 and “There Goes My Babe” was one of his first demo recordings with the Buffalo Springfield” in 1966. But “Casting Me Away From You” remains a mystery. “Casting Me Away From You” I would call a folk song with a little bit of rhythm. It’s in G. The lyrics go, “We used to laugh and play games together; we found things to do in stormy weather. But now I find you’re leaving me behind, casting me away from you.” He remembered the melody years later because on his first solo album there’s an instrumental called “The Emperor Of Wyoming” and that’s the same melody as “Casting Me Away From You”. Did you and Neil continue to hang out that autumn? Neil spent quite a bit of time in and around my place but by then we kind of lost him. After we made those tapes a couple of weeks went by and I couldn’t find him. I had the chance for us to play a couple of places but I couldn’t track him down to get him to play. He was living for a time with Vicki Taylor who was a folksinger in Yorkville. We lost Neil for a time, we didn’t know where he was, but that’s where I found him again; at Vicki Taylor’s. I would knock on the door and ask for Neil. Donna Warner would answer the door and say, “Neil’s not here right now.” I kind of liked her. [Smith later played with Warner in 3’s A Crowd] So I wasn’t sure if Neil was actually living there. Finally I got in and found that Neil was fairly ill at the time with a bad flu bug and stayed there quite a while. There were all sorts of people coming and going through that apartment, Joni Mitchell being one. I talked with [Squires bass player] Kenny Koblun a lot during the time Neil disappeared in the fall of 1965 and he was getting real depressed. Neil kind of dropped him. Kenny was kind of deep and mysterious at times then, pretty introverted. It was rough for Neil at that time. He didn’t really have a place to stay. He could have stayed at our place but he stayed at a few places. I think that’s when his dad made him hock his Gretsch and get a haircut and a job. He moved in with his dad for a while on Inglewood and that was a very disciplined world that he wasn’t used to. When I did finally see him again he had a new winter coat and short hair and he had a job at the Coles’s bookstore on Yonge and Bloor. I went over to see him at the store. He was a stockboy and he was showing me all these funny books. He was telling me, “You gotta get a job, Comrie. You’ve gotta pay your debts,” because I was kind of in hock over guitars and things. So I think his dad forced him to go straight for awhile. That was the message I got. It was frustrating for him in Toronto. He wasn’t very good as a folksinger then. After he left in the hearse I went to Arc Records in Toronto with this tape Neil and I had made of this acoustic stuff. Bill Gilliland who was the record promoter said, “Get your band together and come in and we’ll make some demos’,” but it never happened because people weren’t that big on Neil’s voice. I thought he was great because he had such a melodious approach, melody and chords. At that time it was just chords and words but Neil always had nice melodies. That came from The Shadows but also Neil really liked Floyd Cramer, that piano player who’s famous for those little triple trills that Neil later played in the Buffalo Springfield. At the time did you know that Neil had left Toronto for California? I heard he was in the Mynah Birds. I didn’t realize that Neil had moved quite as quickly into adapting to the Mynah Birds. He played a Gibson acoustic 12-string stuffed full of newspapers to kill all the feedback and he played beautifully. They sounded great. He came around to my parents’ house to say good bye when he had that 1953 Pontiac hearse and was leaving for California. We went for a ride in it. He didn’t try to convince me to go with him. I kind of knew he was thinking of going but I wasn’t sure. He had taken the band’s Ford Econoline van, which I think was rented, out to Pickering. I wasn’t sure what he was doing exactly. He had me follow him in my car out on the 401. He parked the van, he had unloaded all the Mynah Birds equipment, and said, “Okay, let’s go.” We drove through Broughamtown where he had fond memories as a child before driving back into North Toronto. About a week later, or maybe even less, he showed up at my house with Bruce Palmer and they were leaving that night. So how did the 1965 tape come into Neil’s possession? We had this problem for years of not being able to communicate because my letters weren’t getting through to him and nothing was happening. Then in 1997 I picked up the phone one day and there he was saying, “Remember those tapes we made in the attic, Comrie? Have you still got them?” So I took what I could find to his show in Hamilton, he sent some tickets, and I gave him the tape. The next time I saw him was I guess in 2000 in Toronto at a concert and he said, “The Archives are a go ahead!” Did you know that you are playing on Neil’s highly-anticipated massive box set? I didn’t know these tracks were going to be on the box set. No one called me to tell me. I would have thought that someone would have wanted me to sign a release or something. One of my friends said, “Geez, Comrie, get a lawyer.” But right now I’m just trying to get a car. [laugh] Gosh, I sure hope people like those songs. They have a kind of raw appeal. I love those old songs and those old stories not so much because Neil’s so famous now but because it was so surprising. He always wanted to make it big. He really had a fixed eye on where he needed to go. And he knew that writing his own songs was important. INTERVIEW: JOHN EINARSON