What an original!

We’ve been told that selling out is a choice. But the truth is Neil Young is just wired different. You can’t emulate him, because you’re not him.

This interview was very slow to get going. Because Neil was reluctant. And he was mimicking his hero Bob Dylan, refusing to explain his songs and obfuscating in interviews. But then Neil started revealing his choices and they were so different from everybody else’s that you couldn’t help but marvel.

Like being pissed at the cameramen at Woodstock, to the point of yelling for him to get off the stage, the result being Neil’s absence from the movie. But he didn’t care.

And this is fascinating, because dedicated Stern listeners know that Leslie West believes his career cratered as a result of not being in the flick, that his manager’s decision for Mountain not to be in the movie hurt him forevermore.

But then there was the refusal to be on the “Tonight Show” with Buffalo Springfield because it wasn’t their audience. Can you imagine that today? Someone refusing to do press because the audience might not be right? Ever since the Police the goal is world domination, and if you’re not interested, I’m gonna beat you over the head and convince you.

And then the refusal to get back together with CS&N. Sure, he’s got a feud with Crosby, but even more interesting was the lack of motivation. Howard talked about the fans, Neil didn’t care about the fans, he cared about the music, to go play the greatest hits so people could hear them and everybody could make money held no interest.

And then Neil unloaded on AGT. He repeated it a few times, wondered why Howard Stern did the show.

And that’s when the gap was fully evident. Neil Young was refusing to play the game. He wasn’t gonna come on and reveal all his warts and make like they’re all friends just to sell his latest forgettable product.

And let’s be clear, that is why he was on, to flog Pono and his book and his album, which is kind of sad, I’d be more impressed if Neil dropped by with nothing to sell, but in these moments the divide between broadcaster and talent, between talker and singer, between performer and artist, could not have been more evident. Neil Young was gonna be himself, he could only be himself, and it made Howard and his show look small.

That’s how it used to be, when musicians were giants who walked the earth towering over all other media. Before the best and the brightest went into tech and all we got was an endless parade of yes people willing to bend over to get reamed by not only the industry but the corporations. Who can believe in people like that?

And sure, there was some detailing of how the songs came together, but to say this interview was great would be to overestimate it. At the end it finally flew, Neil relaxed, didn’t deny he was dating Daryl Hannah, said he loved to paddle board, but this was not a morning in the clubhouse so much as a glimpse into the mind of an artist.

Who lives in his own head and doesn’t follow the charts and has no idea of this popular culture of which you speak because he’s doing his own thing.

And I don’t agree with all of Neil’s choices, nor do I think much of his recent material is genius. Then again, even he thinks he’s repeating himself.

But you don’t often get a chance to peek into the brain of an original artist who impacted the culture and is still here, with his faculties intact, not retired, but continuing to push the envelope.

I implore everybody making music to listen to this interview. Not because it’s great, because, as I stated above, it’s not, but because it illustrates you’ve got choices.

You don’t have to write hits.

You don’t have to listen to your label.

Your manager’s job is to free you up, to respect your wishes, to allow you time to create.

We’re so far from the garden I doubt we can ever get back.

There will always be music.

But that does not mean it will be art.

Art requires artists. Who question. Who take chances. Who hew to the vibrations of their own inner tuning fork, who we pay attention to because of their strength in following their vision, in continuing to search without compromise.

Whew. It was definitely Neil.

But he was definitely not like anybody else.

Neil Young On The Howard Stern Show 10/14/14

LISTENS NOT DOWNLOADS

Who cares how many people downloaded the new U2 album, the only important thing is how many people LISTENED to it!

This is a huge sea change that is getting little publicity and has been overlooked in the outcry about streaming payments. In the future, you will get paid for every play of your track for all time. Talk to oldsters, the money’s in the publishing, and now the money’s in the play. The more people subscribe, the more each stream is worth. The more streams you get, the more you get paid. So you might have even retired, yet if your music is still popular, if you still have fans, you’ll continue to get paid.

STREAMS NOT SALES

SoundScan is nearly irrelevant. Furthermore, Spotify lists plays, information that used to be hidden from the hoi polloi. The fact that old media trumpets an old metric is indicative of their failing and flailing status. They do it because they’re brain dead and everybody else is doing it. It’s good to be number one, but much more important to be number one on Spotify or YouTube than SoundScan. Ask yourself, who IS buying music these days? Only the ancient Luddites, the rest have moved on to access.

HIGH QUALITY STREAMING

Deezer Elite is SO good you’ll gladly pay. I want to listen to all my old music all over again, to hear what I might have missed, especially on tracks where I never owned the CD. Tidal is coming and expect Spotify to follow. Sure, it’s double the price, but worth it if you’re a music fan. This is gonna change the face of both listening and the kind of music we are listening to. Rich acoustic sounds sound better in FLAC, it’ll pay to get it right in the studio, because once again people will be able to hear it!

RESALE/SCALPERS/SECONDARY MARKET

What kind of bizarre world do we live in where the only person standing up for paperless is Cat Stevens, who canceled at the Beacon because of high resale prices?

It’s sad that the NY legislature is so ignorant and so swayed by the wrong powers to the degree they ban paperless.

This is an artist issue. The only people who can prevent tickets from being sold at a multiple of face value are artists. But most don’t want to move on this. For fear they won’t sell out, or because they’re participating in the secondary market themselves.

It’s sad, income inequality has infected the music business. But, once again, it all comes down to the artists. They can solve this problem. You don’t have to make every ticket paperless, you can still do platinum, but you can either be part of the problem or part of the solution.

But the sad thing is the public has become inured to scalping. They know the only way to get a good ticket is to comb StubHub, and now even Ticketmaster lists secondary tickets. The enemy has won.

CONCERTS

The only thing that can’t be stolen, that cannot be replicated online. This is the music business’s advantage, one that everybody else is trying to copy. Events are rampant, publications have conferences, but music was there first. This is the silver lining of the internet era.

PHOTOS

The new autograph, the new souvenir.

Acts can charge for meet and greets, just as long as they let their fans post the resulting pictures to social media.

YOUTUBE

Was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006.

WhatsApp was purchased for $19 billion by Facebook in 2014.

Who got the better deal?

Yes, there are huge infrastructure costs, but one has to laud Google for picking up YouTube at what now appears to be a bargain basement price.

As for Facebook, I assume you saw the article that teen use had declined,

“Teens are officially over Facebook”

It appears that Facebook paid quite a premium for WhatsApp, but the truth is you can’t be victimized by not invented here syndrome. Acquisitions can help you, the same way Apple purchased SoundJam to build iTunes.

SAMSUNG

What did Gretzky say, skate to where the puck is going?

Samsung is screwed in mobile because it doesn’t have unique software. The Korean company is being undercut by cheap Chinese Android phones. The big money goes to those who can predict the future and plan for it. If you’re focusing on today, you’re soon to be behind the times.

SHARING ECONOMY

It doesn’t matter how many people downloaded U2’s album, or Thom Yorke’s, but how many people shared them. Your goal is to get people talking about your production, it’s the only way to both keep it alive and make it grow. The old mold of mainstream media promotion is purely one on one, it engenders little virality, which is why new albums and movies are hyped to high heaven and are instantly forgotten. Your music should be a disease. Which can spread through the whole world via one person. If someone is not eager to share your work, you’re dead in the water.

It was a party.

The classic rock era was passive. Today’s music scene is participatory!

People have become stars in their own lives, utilizing their mobiles to post to Instagram, everybody believes he’s famous, is it any wonder today’s music reflects this?

We used to adulate the acts, now we adulate ourselves.

And this is very hard for the oldsters to understand.

Pitbull came from nothing. And so many of today’s concertgoers don’t have much. What else to do but dance? While you’re plotting your ascension up the economic ladder.

You would have cracked up. The show began with a scroll of text akin to “Star Wars,” detailing Pitbull’s rise from the depths. And then the man elevated from the floor and from there on the energy sustained, the audience was happy, it was everything yesterday was not.

Pitbull flashed pictures of a private jet on the big screen. As if your goal in life was to have a NetJet account. He was the ringmaster, and you can sit at home and judge it, but it was so much fun!

Usually it takes five or seven minutes and then I’m bored. I’ve seen it. They’re playing music I’m barely familiar with with lyrics I can’t comprehend and I stand there wondering how long it’s gonna be to the end. But in this case the show was a pleasure. I enjoyed it.

As did those in attendance.

It also didn’t look like a classic rock crowd. Everyone said it was 60% female, but when I went out for a pee, in between acts, when the deejay kept most people entertained, I encountered nothing but women, dressed in their finery. You didn’t come to this show in your duds, you put on your look. Was it a Latino thing? Christy Haubegger, my firsthand expert, told me that’s what her people did. But not to snare a man, but to show how fine they were. Yes, there were endless lines of women with no guys in sight, prancing as if they were in one of those MTV videos.

And Pitbull had six dancers, constantly changing outfits, akin to those girls you hire at your wedding or bar mitzvah, but it did resemble a rap video of the nineties. Only in this case Pitbull wasn’t being exclusive, but inclusive. It wasn’t about drawing a line between performer and audience but keeping them connected.

And sure, he played his hits. Duetting with Kesha on “Timber,” who appeared on the big screen, as did other famous personages.

And interspersed were famous rock songs, like “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” it cracked me up, this wasn’t a concert as much as an event.

But Ne-Yo did show up in the flesh, to sing “Give Me Everything” with Pit. The worldwide hit produced by Afrojack.

And there you have it.

While you’ve been home practicing your guitar, writing dreary songs about love lost, the genres have merged. They rap in country, and this huge hit would play just great at Electric Daisy.

And in the Sahara Tent.

Yup, instead of a deejay, there could be a live performer at these shows, and then everything you thought you know would be history.

It’s a brand new world out there. One the young people have only known.

Sitting in the audience passively watching longhairs strum their tales is now passe. Sure, it still exists, who knows, it could come back, but our entire scene has flipped upside down, it’s about having fun in our brutal culture that venerates winners and excludes losers and today’s young people know this and have decided they’re going to climb the ladder, because being at the bottom is anathema.

Pitbull’s just the cheerleader.

With worldwide hits with worldwide sounds.

Wake up to the new world, it’s not going anywhere, it’s not a fad. Everybody knows these hits and sings and dances along to them, whether they be white, Latino or black. Society has moved on. Warner Brothers might have been the icon of the seventies, but today it’s not about your soul but your bank account, and to deny this is to exclude yourself.

So join the festivities, have fun, dance while you’re plotting your ascension, to get your mind off reality, to escape the punishing life fostered by baby boomers who claimed to love one another, but turned out to be the greediest souls on the planet.

Their children know this. And have decided to party like it’s 1999.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

They couldn’t be anything else.

The first time I heard “Dream On” was just about now, only forty one years ago, crossing the great state of Massachusetts from Amherst to the 91.

There were no iPods, never mind Walkmen, and unless you had a modern car, you were limited to AM. And my automobile was a ’63 Chevy, which I inherited from my older sister and eventually passed down to my younger sister who threatened to leave it on Nantucket until my father insisted she fix it and drive it back to its homeland of Connecticut.

And that car required full-time attention, it had a wandering front end. But it was a convertible, when those were almost extinct, and if you drove on the east coast the goal was to keep the top down until it snowed. And I did. And rambling down this two lane highway I heard this magic elixir emanating from the one speaker in the dash that had me riveted and exhilarated to the point where I purchased the band’s debut album just to hear it.

And although uneven, I took the plunge on the second, “Get Your Wings,” which may not be their best but is certainly my favorite. Sans any hits, tracks like “Lord Of The Thighs” and “Seasons Of Wither” had you playing them over and over again and for others to the point where Hooker borrowed my cassette without asking so they could flip to it.

A little explanation… When you drove cross-country back then you prepared, you spent two days making cassettes, because before satellite radio there were vast stretches of highway where your antenna pulled in absolutely nothing, and you needed your tunes, they truly drove the culture back then. And I made a cassette of “Get Your Wings” and I played it that magic month in Mammoth Lakes in the spring of ’75 and I got everybody hooked on it, even Hooker, who blasted it while he and Dave and the rest were practicing their flips on Mammoth Mountain.

And when you were in the boonies back then you were on a virtual news blackout, I was unaware that Aerosmith had released a new album that was suddenly dominating the airwaves, that there was one song that might not have crossed over but had made the band stars. That track was “Sweet Emotion.”

Joe Perry is flogging a book. I haven’t read it, I usually don’t, they’re all the same. How drink and drugs and fighting drove the performer to oblivion and then they returned, intact, for a victory lap. But Howard Stern elicited the nuggets we were interested last week and when they were talking about “Sweet Emotion” I had to pull it up in Deezer, to hear it stream in CD quality.

And it is all about the sound. It’s about Tom Hamilton’s bass, the percussion, and then the way the band settles into the groove and absolutely wallops it. You stood in the audience nodding your head like a zombie, if you were privileged to see the band live, if not, you replicated this behavior in front of the giant speakers you worked minimum wage to buy.

Talk about things that nobody cares

Welcome to my world. Somewhere along the line I lost the plot, or the world forked off and I wasn’t even aware there was a choice. Suddenly it became all about the money and our heroes were people who could make things, the perpetrators of ideas took a back seat, if they were in the car at all.

Wearin’ out things that nobody wears

I’m stuck in the seventies, I wear the same clothes I did in college, and I know I stick out, but I’m afraid of inauthenticity, feeling fake in the attire of the day which is gonna fade and be laughed at in far less than a decade. That’s right, I’m proud I never wore a leisure suit.

Ya callin’ my name but I gotta make clear
I can’t say baby where I’ll be in a year

That’s the difference. Once upon a time I was itinerant, sleeping on floors all across the west, and now I’ve lived in the same place for decades, waiting for the one big break that seems to constantly elude my grasp.

Some sweathog mama with a face like a gent
Said my get up and go musta got up and went

You can’t even say that today, the politically correct police will denounce you. That’s the society we live in, one of gotcha, where the goal is to find the mistakes of those who raise their head above and pull them down into the hole you’re in.

Standin’ in the front just a shakin’ your ass
I’ll take you backstage you can drink from my glass

We were envious, the girls had something to give our heroes. They sacrificed themselves at the altar of rock and roll, and we just wished  we could have been there at the ceremony. And this behavior is deplored today, but sex makes the world go ’round, and when you speak from your heart and your words and music resonate the world spreads its legs and lets you inside. And no amount of naysaying will deny this. The only difference was back then the money was not the primary attraction, you just wanted to get closer to the people singing and playing these songs.

Sweet emotion
Sweet emotion

There’s something that goes on in your ears, and it’s perfectly sweet, and it’s definitely emotion. And the older generation couldn’t get it, never mind understand it, and those listening to AM radio were out of the loop but by this time nearly the entire younger generation had slid over to the FM dial and rock star was the apotheosis, the peak of living on this mortal coil.

The rock stars got politicians elected. Just ask Jimmy Carter, who was helped by the Allman Brothers. Or Jerry Brown, who was helped by his paramour Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles and so many other SoCal performers.

The rock stars defined society, we hung on every word.

And yet, still, the scene was not embraced by the mainstream.

Until MTV. Which rained down coin previously unfathomable.

And then came the Internet, which made the rest of the nerds rich and famous to a degree the musicians could never foresee.

And now everybody wants to say nothing has changed. When the truth is everything has. Music does not only not make as much money, it doesn’t even glorify the same people. Used to be outsiders ruled, who insisted on doing it their way, who gave the middle finger to social mores, whereas today’s doofuses do it for the label and the corporate cash and the ability to show up at the Met Ball and the rest of the affairs that used to exclude them.

No more no more

Actually, “Sweet Emotion” was not my favorite track on “Toys In The Attic,” that role was filled by its follow-up, “No More No More.”

No more rock stars dominating our culture, respecting the past but focused on making the music and the world their own.

No more rock stars recording their albums without label input.

No more cheap tickets.

No more practicing in isolation, honing your chops so your nonverbal self could get laid.

No more buying the latest release and playing it for weeks until you knew every lick.

No more satisfaction with your success and your station, today the musicians are as greedy as the rest of our society, bitching about being ripped off and unable to be…

Aerosmith.

“Joe Perry On The Howard Stern Show”