Neil Young and Jonathan Demme on Skype

Neil Young Skype Show
by Nick Paumgarten
April 5 2010

SCENE: A conference room in the theatre district. Jonathan Demme, a filmmaker, is seated at a long table, facing a laptop. He is wearing an Argyle sweater and bluejeans. On the laptop’s screen is a pixellated moving image of Neil Young, who is wearing a white panama hat and a loose white button-down shirt. He and Demme are communicating via Skype. Young seems bemused, not only in the way he usually does but also in the way that inexperienced users of Skype often do in the opening moments of a call.

NEIL YOUNG: Can you hear me? Yo, yo!

JONATHAN DEMME: I can see you. Can you see us, buddy?

N.Y.: Hello?

J.D.: Hello, hello.

N.Y.: I can’t see you guys.

J.D.: Why not?

N.Y.: I don’t know.

J.D.: You’re outdoors.

(Young’s expression brightens. He waves at the screen. Contact.)

N.Y.: You guys are very silhouetted. It’s very spooky.

J.D.: Dude, you look good. What the heck. Where are you?

N.Y.: I’m right here.

J.D.: Is there a pool right over your right shoulder?

N.Y.: A pool?

J.D.: A swimming pool. Because it looks like there oughta be one there.

N.Y.: Well, it is pretty nice here in California. (Young is at home, on his ranch, south of San Francisco.) Actually, I’m in one of my play areas. Where my computer is. And my trains are back there. (In the background, there is a covered pavilion. Behind Young are mounds made of what appears to be driftwood.) Those are a bunch of mountains. It’s a mountain range. If I turn some lights on, you might be able to see it. I’ll make an adjustment. (Young gets up, strolls into the background, and flips a switch. Nothing changes. But the viewer realizes, while waiting for Young to shuffle back to his laptop, that the driftwood mounds are train-set mountains. The background is a giant model-train set.) So, whatchou guys doing?

J.D.: Well, we’re on the tenth floor of 311 West Forty-third Street. That’s where we’re rehearsing this Beth Henley play that I’m directing. We’re on a twenty-minute break.

(A discussion ensues—this Skype chat has been condensed for the benefit of the audience—about “Neil Young Trunk Show,” a film that Demme has just released, which documents a concert that Young and his band gave two years ago, near Philadelphia. It is Demme’s second Neil Young concert film.)

N.Y.: The picture is Jonathan’s. Once again, he’s done what he does, and all of a sudden there it is. He’s made an interesting document of the show, but there’s more to it than just the show, apparently. There’s something else in there, and I love it. (He bobs back and forth, only occasionally glancing up. He picks at bits of lint on his shirt and pants, as one might during a regular phone call.)

J.D.: Neil, you bring a little extra to the party—you trust the camera. You know that the camera loves you, and you’re so at ease with it. You know how to play it.

N.Y.: When you’re there, Jon, and your crew is there, I don’t worry about anything. I just forget about it. I’m going, “I don’t know if they’re on my nose hairs or my butt, and I don’t give a shit, to tell you the truth, because I know they’re professional, and it’ll look beautiful.” (Young sits up straighter and leers at the screen.) It wasn’t an entirely great performance. It was a struggle at times. The struggle to get the beat right on “No Hidden Path” was a long one, and so finally we had to settle for playing it differently. I played it faster than I normally do. Not that it would’ve been longer if I’d played it at the right tempo, but . . . (His performance of “No Hidden Path,” a Hendrixy guitar extravaganza, takes up twenty minutes of the eighty-two-minute film.) That’s the test, the audience test. “How long are these guys gonna play?” It doesn’t matter how long it is, because it’s only convention that dictates how long a song should be. We don’t have to play by those rules. We aren’t competing in that arena. We just play. It goes on for a long time. It’s like jazz, or fusion. I don’t know what the hell it is. It’s what we do, and the older we get the more we do it.

(In the film, a camera mounted on the drums captures Young as he plays the last, distorted notes of a long jam in “No Hidden Path.” Behind him, in the front row, members of the audience look as though they had been robbed of their belongings in the main plaza of a foreign city. Demme has said in the past that he believes no concert film should ever include shots of the audience.)

J.D.: As long as there is a musician in the foreground, it’s O.K. to show the audience.

N.Y.: Yeah, but generally we hate the fucking audience. They disturb the whole thing. (On the laptop screen, Young waves his arms back and forth in the air, in the manner of an enthusiastic concertgoer.) They’ve got people who do that. They have people who wave their hands back and forth in the background. That’s what they do. It doesn’t matter what the music is. It’s a way to make a living, I guess. (Demme looks up at the clock and exchanges a glance with an assistant.) I remember we did a tour, and they had these cranes out in the audience, flying around, casting cones of light down on the audience, so that everyone in the audience had these halos on their heads. I walked out onstage and said to myself, “This is fucked up. I might not even play. This is so wrong.” All night long I was thinking, Why do I have to see people? I’ve never seen them before. I hate looking at them.

(Young faces the camera—eye contact, of a kind. On the laptop, his image breaks apart, and his voice burbles. There is something warm and archaic about Skype’s flaws. A Skype call can feel like a telegram. “It’s so fragile,” Demme says. “It’s sweet.” )

J.D.: Neil, I’d better leave, because Beth Henley and four wonderful actresses are waiting for me downstairs.

N.Y.: You always have a way of doing that. You have four wonderful actresses waiting for you downstairs. That’s tough. Get down there, Jonathan.

J.D.: It’s nice being here with you, even like this, Neil.

N.Y.: Take care.

J.D.: Aloha.

N.Y.: Love you.

J.D.: Love you, man.

N.Y.: Yep.

(The panama hat fills the screen, and then disappears.) ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/04/05/100405ta_talk_paumgarten