AARP Hearing Center
DH Lovelife
"It's better to burn out than to fade away,” Neil Young famously sang. At 73, the Canadian-born rocker has yet to do either. Colorado, his 39th studio album and first with Crazy Horse since 2012's Psychedelic Pill, arrives with a companion documentary, Mountaintop Sessions, which was shown Oct. 22 in 130 theaters nationwide. The doc, along with unreleased tracks, films, photos and ephemera, is destined for the Neil Young Archives, his ever-expanding online file cabinet that currently holds every note he has ever released.
He and Phil Baker cowrote the new book To Feel the Music, tracking the musician's long uphill quest to restore audio quality to recordings. And he's writing a science fiction novel called Canary.
He and his wife, actress Daryl Hannah, 58, split their time between Malibu and her ranch near Telluride, Colorado.
You've had a long ride with Crazy Horse, ever since Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in 1969. Does it feel like 50 years?
It feels great. I'd like to do more. We're all on the same page and doing it for the same reason — to serve the music. It's all we've ever done. We're not going to make a crappy record after being together for 50 years. This record is not that different from what we sounded like 50 years ago. There's still that spark of youth.
Much of Colorado focuses on climate change and the environment.
It's the only thing that really matters. People on the streets can't see past next week. They're not thinking about their kids or their kids’ kids. I don't fly anymore, except to Europe. I can't do the (Swedish climate activist) Greta Thunberg thing. She's so great. I tried to reach her but she's swamped; I couldn't get her. I just wanted to tell her to remain positive and not be emotional. She's not very emotional anyway, but when she is, (opponents) are going to grab those images of her face and sensationalize it. You can't give them anything like that to work with.
"Rainbow of Colors” looks at intolerance and immigration.
I reject outright the idea of locking people out and putting up walls. It doesn't make sense to me. One thing I see is that everyone is trying to get away from the hot zones, the equatorial regions. The closer you get to the equator, the more political problems there are, and I think that's directly related to climate change. I see immigration as one offshoot of the climate crisis. People are moving across borders because where they are has gotten sick. It's not a good planet right now.
If radio doesn't play Colorado, who will hear it?
Who knows? It will do what it does. Now people don't buy CDs, they stream, so you don't know how it does. There's no feedback loop. Nobody has been able to explain to me how I get paid for streaming. Apparently they don't have the technology to tell you how many times your songs are played. So I'm throwing it into a black hole.
More on Entertainment
A Guide to Popular Music Streaming Services
You can 'rent' a variety of songs from classics to new
Movie Review: 'David Crosby: Remember My Name'
The singer-songwriter comes clean about his rocky life