The Steel Guitar Forum

I've been reading the new Neil Young book "Waging Heavy Peace", and was kinda dumbstruck when I read about Neil's memory of Jerry Garcia on rhe "Teach Your Children" sessions. Pg. 237:
"For some reason I have a vivid memory of that group of sessions [at Wally Heider's]. One day after CSN cut "Teach Your Children" which they sang perfectly without me, I was in the control room, and Jerry Garcia came in and played the steel guitar part on it.
It was actually on a regular guitar with a slide, as I remember it. He just sat down with it on his lap in the control room under the speakers and put that part on..."

I have it from a source that was at all of "Teach" sessions and he says that Neil's comment is incorrect, as most of us know.
Way to much pedal steel "grease" for it to be a guitar.

I don't think Neil's "remembry" is very good.

Well if he bothered to listen to it one more time to refresh his memory, he would hear immediately that it's pedal steel and nothing else.

I can't imagine what it must be like for Neil to lose a playing partner like Ben Keith, who played together for many years. Salut

I just read that the other day and had the same reaction Jim did - even if there weren't other memories more accurate than Neil's on that point one listen would be all you would need to know it is a pedal steel. (Unless of course you are one of the Garcia-dissers who think what he did bears no resemblance to pedal steel!). Funny though that Neil perceives his memory on that point as vivid. there have been a couple of times where my "vivid" memory of a long ago event turned out to be wrong in some significant way, so I kind of understand, but I would have thought Neil would have heard the cut a time or several over the years.

Maybe he said that on purpose, knowing the forum has had its history of discussing the song. I dunno

Maybe he said that on purpose. Stirring up the steel world nest for whatever reason. I dunno.

According to Beng Fong- Torres' "Hickory Wind" p.181, Neil himself knew how to play the pedal steel.

It's possible that Jerry laid down an experimental lap steel track before the pedal steel overdub session.

That sounds like a good possibility. A good thought.

There's another pedal steel bit in Neil's book which jumped out at me:

"Ben," I said, can you play the same note on acouple of strings and sort of phase them against each other instead of a chord?"
"Like this?" he replied, and played a long, deep, wide note that rang forever.
"Yes," I said. "That is definitely what we are looking for."
Then we recorded "Old Man" with the signature Ben Keith sound that went down in history. What a musician!

I'm sure that wasn't exactly like it happened but still, I was confused by this, it sounds like he's referring to the lick in "Out On The Weekend", there's nothing like that in "Old Man". Maybe the editing of the book makes this misleading, I can't believe Neil would make that mistake. But then the Garcia thing is an eyebrow raiser.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book though, can't wait to see Neil and the Horse when he comes over in June.

I'll tell you something else that neil said that is significant to us pedal steel sidemen........and I don't have the book here so I can't quote him.....but it went something like ........>he'll never perform those songs again with another steel player<.
Bens gone. His parts were huge. Those boys were tight.

In the immortal words of Tommy Chong:

And to all thos people who think that pot affects your memory, I just want to say one thing...

uhhhh...

uhhh...

uhh...

Because I have multiple sclerosis (which my grandfather had) and is not at a debilitating stage, and if I've misplaced something at the house or elswhere, I tell myself "at least I know it's in the house or the room". This can be helpful.

I'm enjoying the book - it's kind of a stream of consciousness effort....Neil just writing about things that have come to mind that are important to him.

Being from Iowa, I like to look for other avenues, Jim Cohen can detest to that. What if it was a 6 string guitar, I could sell my heavy D-10 and maybe sound like I know what I'm doing. I could play Anthr apology and sound like D. Jurnigan.

Ever notice why big music stars always have someone write their memoirs? Like Neil, they don't know where they ....... last, cause they were busy coming up with far fetched answers to questions they intended to answer someday.


SOUND LIKE A PEDAL TO ME

Most likely, most of the book/ideas were written by Neil and edited by his co-writer and then modifications would be approved by Neil. The book is a good read.

Since we're on the topic, Neil let the other members of Buffalo down, especially Bruce Palmer, because they were ready for a reunion, but he didn't keep his promise. Anything in the book about that?

Being a huge Neil Young fan, I also read the book and was puzzled by his recollection of the "Teach your Children" session. Jerry doing a rough track on the guitar sounds very feasible. I did enjoy the book and found his stream of consciousness approach fun and unpredictable to say the least. Long may you run...

One of my favorite records of Neil's is "On The Beach", but "Old Ways" is one too, .
I think Neil mentions "Comes A Time" as one of his favorites.
I'm very interested in what Neil has to say about the degradation of the sound of music in the digital domain, these days, and his efforts to remedy this with his "Pure Tone" system.

Shakey

Bob Blair wrote:I'm enjoying the book - it's kind of a stream of consciousness effort....Neil just writing about things that have come to mind that are important to him.

Sort of like his music.

Joachim Kettner wrote:Since we're on the topic, Neil let the other members of Buffalo down, especially Bruce Palmer, because they were ready for a reunion, but he didn't keep his promise. Anything in the book about that?

Neil hired Bruce for a European tour in the late '70s but Bruce couldn't cut it. He was too out of shape and had personal problems. Neil had to replace him. Now that's a pain in the ass after trying to do a friend a favour.

You can't blame Neil if he doesn't want to do something musically. He doesn't owe the members of the Buffalo Springfield anything. That band was together barely two years. I'm sure Neil has an affinity for that time of his life, but it's a pebble in the lake compared to what he's accomplished since.

Bruce was, in my opinion, perhaps rock's best bassist. He's certainly my favourite. Incredibly influential. But let's face it: he was a casualty from day one.

Chris LeDrew wrote:
Bruce was, in my opinion, perhaps rock's best bassist.

I agree, Chris! Let's just leave the other thing aside.

I've seen them both perform together on a date of their European tour.
The gutitar on "Helpless" is a pretty good PSG emulation, IMO.