Weekly Neil: Scattered (Let's Think About Livin')

When the music calls, I'll be there

“You ready, Briggs?”

Let’s talk about David Briggs. The story goes he was driving in Topanga Canyon in 1968 and he picked up a hitchhiker. They chatted, hit it off, and later that year the hitchhiker brought him into the studio to help produce his debut solo album. The hitchhiker had plenty of musical experience and had bummed around in a fairly successful band out of L.A.. But he had big ideas, psychedelic yet focused. He heard strings and visions of Natives and trees falling down on Cadillac drivers.

Briggs helped him make it all happen. The guy’s record did alright, but they both took a different tack for the quick follow-up. The hitchhiker linked up with three guys in a rock and roll band and started doing long noisy jams. They made a record. The hitchhiker also jumped into another band with some folky dudes he knew in California and found more success than he’d ever had (and didn’t quite know what to do with).

After some weird times — the kind Craig Finn calls “massive highs and crushing lows” — Briggs and the hitchhiker retreated in 1976 to a studio to lay down some new acoustic songs. They were raw, vulnerable, and pretty damn great. One was called, naturally, “Hitchhiker.” The pair worked together for a few more decades.

Briggs died of lung cancer in 1995. The hitchhiker didn’t quite know how to make a record without him, but he got in the studio anyway with his wild man noisy trio and they did what they liked to do. The result, 1996’s Broken Arrow, is a grimy and unvarnished record from Neil Young and Crazy Horse, a fascinating document with some poignant moments that are worth returning to.

I’m partial to the second song “Loose Change,” which rides on a single distorted F chord for several minutes while Neil works a few things out on his guitar. “Changing Highways,” a two-minute country-rock stomper, lived its first life in 1974, shortly after Frank Sampedro came onboard as Crazy Horse’s guitarist, and was revisited here as a slice of open-window, open-road cruising.

Another such passage is “Scattered,” a tune built around a guitar riff that ought to work better on an acoustic guitar but that Neil opts to perform his trusty Old Black. Sonically, “Scattered” exists on the same plane as “Albuquerque,” weary and melancholy but with eyes to the sky. They could be brothers, but really, “Scattered” sounds a lot like the same song grown up and wizened and maybe a bit more bummed than usual but knowledgable enough to do what to do with that feeling now.

Its parenthetical title, “Let’s Think About Livin’,” takes on new meaning given Briggs’ death. After the person whom Neil called his “mercurial, mysterious brother” died, Neil produced his next album by himself. In the midst of life we are in death and all that.

“Scattered” gets a good moment on Year Of The Horse, the live album Neil and the Horse released in 1997, the quiet moment between two monster jams (“Slip Away” and “Danger Bird”). They’ve also included “Scattered” in their set on their current tour, usually at song three, after “Cortez The Killer” and “Cinnamon Girl” — absolute monsters of the catalog. It’s a nice opportunity to slow down and catch their breath, sure, but also to introduce a bit of introspection.

Neil penned a moving tribute to his friend Briggs in his book Waging Heavy Peace. Part of it is excerpted here. Below is the part that made me tear up:

Briggs and I made my best records, the transcendent ones, the ones where I am closest to the Great Spirit. I say that because She visited me more often with Briggs than when I was with any other human being. Briggs and I had a way of getting to the place. We somehow knew the way. He was the most influential person on my music of anyone I’ve met. His guidance and friendship through the creation of countless pieces of music are one of the greatest gifts of my life, right up there with my wife’s love and all of my children. I feel the loss. I feel the memories. I feel the weight of every mistake I made in our long relationship, the times he was right and I was wrong, the times I didn’t use him to produce for the wrong reason, every battle we had. I feel the absence of his unbelievable energy for music, combined with mine. There is no replacement for that. It is one of life’s little voids.

“Briggs and I had a way of getting to the place.” Goddamn dude.

Burying the lede here a bit, but I’ll be seeing Neil and Crazy Horse on May 18 in New Haven. I’m absolutely over the moon, as you might expect, as it’s my first time experiencing that spectacle since they rendered Central Park into pure noise confetti in September 2012. Frankly I wasn’t ready to receive it then — I enjoyed myself but I was mostly a Harvest dude then, you know?

Now, my car is gassed up and ready to pick up the hitchhiker. You ready, Briggs?

“Scattered (Let’s Think About Livin’),” written by Neil Young, from Broken Arrow (1996)

Neil Young: vocals, guitar
Frank Sampedro: guitar
Billy Talbot: bass
Ralph Molina: drums
Greg Archilla: engineer