Neil Young Embraces Imperfection

It sounds as though you and Rick Rubin have unusually compatible approaches to recording. What in particular have you liked about working with him?

We make chronicles of things. Or I do—I make chronicles of an experience. I play the songs, and we’re doing it live, and everything happens, and then we capture it like that. Rick is a genius. It’s so easy, because he loves music. You’re not gonna find a person who loves music more than Rick. He’s dedicated to preserving it. If you talk about an environmentalist trying to save the Earth, then he’s a music-mentalist. That’s the way he looks at music. That’s a great thing. He’s just living it. He’s made some really cool records in other genres, but they’re all the same thing to him. It’s all music. We worked on it together every day, sitting on the couch, listening, making changes. As soon as we start getting tired, we leave. We don’t work hard—we work until we’ve done something, and when we feel good about how far we’ve gotten we leave and come back. He’s into the flow of things. That’s how he likes to live his life, no matter what he’s doing. We have a lot in common in that respect.

Many of the lyrics here are sort of optimistic—or, at least, they suggest that if we love well, and love selflessly, if we take care of each other and the planet, anything is possible. Have you had to work to arrive at this place of hope?

Yeah. In a natural kind of way, without knowing it was happening. I’m conscious of what’s going on in the world all the time. But these songs are from different people. They’re all me, but they talk about different things, and they come from different places. I don’t feel connected to the whole vision of the record in the same way—it’s got all these characters. The point of view of “Love Earth” and the point of view of “Break the Chain” are so different. It’s not the same thing, but it is the same thing. I don’t want to go too off the deep end with this. There’s whistling coming out of a forest somehow; there’s an entire dead species of tree right there in front of you, and not just a few trees, it goes for miles and miles. So, with that background, and then knowing what’s going on in the world . . . I don’t like to dwell on it much, but I think everybody’s terrified.

Yeah, I’d say so.

But they’re not terrified about politics. They’re terrified, period. Because of [climate change], and how we’re not dealing with it. You’ve got all those TV networks, warring personality against personality, building this side against that side, blowing everything up into the latest episode of whatever what’s-his-name is doing, how they almost did this to what’s-her-name’s husband. . . . Just on and on and on. The reason everybody’s so uptight about the things they’re talking about, in my view, has nothing to do with what they’re talking about. I think it has to do with what’s happening to the planet. That’s what I think. So that’s where I go.

We haven’t quite realized that [climate change] doesn’t care. It’s a little bit like a virus. It doesn’t care. It has a thing that it does, and it’s doing it. This is not a sci-fi movie; this is real. Just because it’s science doesn’t mean that you can ignore it. But we compartmentalize it. We don’t look at the situation the way we should. I can envision the Chinese guy, the Russian guy, the American guy, the German lady, the leaders of all these countries, the guy from South America, all these people onstage together, talking, one by one, in their language, to the world, with subtitles underneath. We have to get to the point where we all come together, and we realize that we’re all on the same Earth, and there’s one way we can fix it. We need to grow food, and we need to grow fuel. Imagine if, instead of dust rising into the sky, the carbon started returning to the Earth. Animals on the ground, instead of being in little metal cages with antibiotics and fans, on top of each other so they can make it to the supermarket.

For some musicians, the idea of making art in the midst of a crisis—during the pandemic, say, or in the face of an ongoing climate catastrophe—can feel small, or silly, or inconsequential. It’s the artist’s imperative to make work that’s personal and important to them, but then there’s also this larger question of whether art can help solve problems. Can it?

Well, I have a plan. I’ve been working on it with a couple of my friends for about seven or eight months. We’re trying to figure out how to do a self-sustaining, renewable tour. Everything that moves our vehicles around, the stage, the lights, the sound, everything that powers it is clean. Nothing dirty with us. We set it up; we do this everywhere we go. This is something that’s very important to me, if I’m ever going to go out again. . . . and I’m not sure I want to, I’m still feeling that out. But, if I’m ever going to do it, I want to make sure that everything is clean. What was the last thing you remember eating at a show, and how good was it? Was it from a farm-made, homegrown village? I don’t think so. It was from a factory farm that’s killing us. I’ve been working on this idea of bringing the food and the drink and the merch into the realm where it’s all clean. I will make sure that the food comes from real farmers. Once it’s up and going, and I’m finished with my part of the tour, there’s no reason why the tour has to stop. The tour can keep on going with another headliner. It’s about sustainability and renewability in the future, loving Earth for what it is. We want to do the right thing. That’s kind of the idea.