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![UR012: "The Young-plugged Saga, Part One" w/ Alex Coletti (Neil Young & MTV Unplugged) [1990, 1992, 1993] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=54,quality=85/image-files/66ea0b235fcf51d2c9a0b7cd/43cbefc3-777c-4d93-9915-92abd82876d2.jpg)
UR012: "The Young-plugged Saga, Part One" w/ Alex Coletti (Neil Young & MTV Unplugged) [1990, 1992, 1993]
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We’re pulling back the curtain on “The Young-plugged Saga” to discuss Neil Young’s three appearances on MTV Unplugged – a branded concert video in 1990, his unaired episode in 1992, and his broadcast/album in 1993. Part One features an interview with longtime MTV Unplugged producer/showrunner Alex Coletti.
If you dig the show, want to share your own Unplugged memories, ask a question, request a show topic, or connect with the pod for any reason, there are a couple ways you can get in touch:
- You can email me at unpluggedrevisited@gmail.com,
- You can reach out on Bluesky at @willhodge.bsky.social,
- You can leave a voicemail (that’ll maybe get played on the show) by dialing 234-REVISIT (234-738-4748)
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Transcript
Introduction to Young Plugged saga
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Unplugged.
00:00:14
Speaker
Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Unplugged Revisited, the podcast that celebrates, critiques, and dives deep and into the last three and a half decades of MTV Unplugged. I'm your host, music journalist, pop culture anthropologist, and Unplugged obsessive, Will
Neil Young's Unplugged Journey
00:00:29
Speaker
Hodge.
00:00:29
Speaker
Well, friends, after alluding to it in one way or another on quite a few episodes, the time has come to finally dig into what I'm calling the Young Plugged saga. The twisting, turning, often mythologized, and less often accurate story behind Neil Young's three appearances on MTV Unplugged.
00:00:47
Speaker
I'm talking about his anomalous early season one concert video masquerading as an Unplugged from 1990, his fabled and foibled unaired episode from 92, and his celebrated Third Times a Charm broadcast and album from 93. Oh, the lone mist of soul I've dropped by to kick off the reason
00:01:09
Speaker
Now, it kind of goes without saying that Neil Young is one of the most mythical and mercurial figures across all of popular music, so it should be no surprise that his connection to MTV Unplugged would come with its own messy collection of legit magical moments, embellished tales, misremembered half-truths, and a few complete fabrications.
00:01:29
Speaker
What I'd like to attempt over the next two episodes of Unplugged Revisited that's right, we've got our first official two-parter here, is to try and not only contextualize Neil's three Unplugged appearances within his career and in relation to each other, but to also try and corroborate some of what actually did happen and maybe clear up some of the rumors of what didn't happen by interviewing a couple boots-on-the-ground folks from the MTV Unplugged crew who were present at and worked on these storied shows.
00:01:58
Speaker
So for part one, what you're listening to right now, I'm going to be laying out the intersection where Neil was at in his career and where Unplugged was at in its run when they crossed. And my part one interview is with Alex Coletti, the longtime Unplugged producer, director, showrunner, and flamekeeper who shepherded the show throughout its entire culture-impacting run.
00:02:19
Speaker
Alex also helmed the 2.0 reboot of the early 2000s and worked on some other occasional unplugs across the 2010s and 2020s. For part 2, coming out in two weeks, I'll be digging into the nuts and bolts specifics of Neil's three unplugged
Upcoming Releases and Tributes
00:02:35
Speaker
episodes.
00:02:35
Speaker
The set list, location, players, show vibes, all of that. And my part two interview will be with John Vesey, who edited almost 50 Unplugged episodes during its 90s heyday, including both Neil's unaired 92 performance and also his 93 broadcast.
00:02:51
Speaker
Because Neil's connection to Unplugged goes beyond his own shows, I also thought it would be fun to sprinkle in a handful of Neil Young cover songs performed by other artists during their Unplugged episodes as well.
00:03:03
Speaker
Just a little extra sonic seasoning to spice up the whole dish even more. So that's the plan for the next two episodes covering the Young Plug saga. But before we fully get into part one, I've got two fun announcements.
00:03:15
Speaker
Announcement one. I always love to hear when an Unplugged album is getting a new vinyl pressing, and it was just recently announced that the next one out of the gate will be for Katy Perry's Unplugged from 2009. This was never the way I planned Not my intention The 7-track EP is being pressed on Lavender Vinyl. Its release date is April 25th and it's currently available for pre-sale on her site right now.
00:03:45
Speaker
While this isn't the first time it's been available on vinyl, it was originally pressed on Red Wax back in 2021, I believe as an Urban Outfitters exclusive. But this is a wider scale run and seems to possibly have Perry's backing more so than the 2021 pressing did.
00:04:00
Speaker
Either way, her fans seem to be super excited about it, and even if you don't count yourself among her audience, I think it's worth picking up if only for her stellar cover of Hackensack by Fountains of Wayne, which I consider one of the top 10 best unplugged cover songs ever.
00:04:14
Speaker
And if you ever get back to Hackensack, I'll be here for you.
00:04:26
Speaker
Announcement 2 There's an incredible Neil Young tribute album coming out next month that I wanted to make sure was on your radar. It's called Heart of Gold, The Songs of Neil Young. It's also releasing on April 25th.
00:04:37
Speaker
It's the first entry of a two-volume project, and its proceeds will be benefiting The Bridge School. The track listing is stacked with amazing artists, but the reason I'm mentioning it here on the show is because it features some truly amazing unplugged alumni, including Fiona Apple doing Heart of Gold, Eddie Vedder doing The Needle and the Damage Done, Brandi Carlile doing Philadelphia, Mumford & Sons doing Harvest, and the phenomenal Courtney Barnett doing Lotta Love.
00:05:03
Speaker
So if you look in my direction...
00:05:19
Speaker
Heart of Gold is being released by Kill Phonic, and they're doing a lovely-looking limited-edition Daisy White vinyl pressing that can be pre-ordered on their site right now at store.killphonicwrites.com.
00:05:32
Speaker
I'm also partnering with Kill Phonic to give away a free copy of the Daisy White vinyl to a lucky Unplugged Revisited listener, and all you have to do to enter is send me an email telling me one thing you like about Neil Young's Unplugged, your favorite song, a memory of watching it, whatever. And make sure to put the phrase Heart of Gold Vinyl Giveaway in the subject line.
00:05:51
Speaker
As a bonus, if you want to increase your odds of winning, you can also rate and review the podcast wherever you're streaming it and attach a screenshot of that to
Neil Young's Musical Evolution
00:06:00
Speaker
your email. That will double your chances by putting your name in the pot twice.
00:06:04
Speaker
So once again, to enter the Heart of Gold Vinyl Giveaway Contest, just send me an email at unpluggedrevisited at gmail.com telling me one thing, anything, you like about Neil Young's Unplugged.
00:06:15
Speaker
And you can choose to double your chances by rating and reviewing Unplugged Revisited wherever you stream the show and attaching a screenshot of that to your email. Alrighty, almost time to get into this week's intersection.
00:06:27
Speaker
But first, let's hear one of those Neil covers from another Artist's Unplugged episode. We'll start off with a fun little under-the-radar rarity. Here's multi-platinum Swedish pop rock duo Roxette doing Neil's chart-topping 1972 hit Heart of Gold during their 93 Unplugged that was filmed in Stockholm for MTV Europe, featuring the late Marie Fredrickson on vocals and Per Gessel on harmonica and guitar.
00:07:04
Speaker
Man, if you're only familiar with Roxette's big radio hits, The Look, Joyride, Dangerous, It Must Have Been Love, I recommend tracking down their Unplugged, which has only been released in full on DVD back in 2006, to experience their impressive full-band acoustic prowess, and to also hear them cover Aretha Franklin and The Birds.
00:07:24
Speaker
Alright, into the Young Plug Saga intersection we go.
00:07:29
Speaker
As I've said many times before, an artist's Unplugged moment is greatly informed by where they were at in their career whenever they played the show. For example, my last episode with Arrested Development, they played Unplugged before their debut album had even turned one year old, whereas acts like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, and Rod Stewart had been putting out albums for like 30 years straight before they hit the Unplugged stage.
00:07:53
Speaker
Of course, Neil Young more closely aligns with that latter category, and in this case, I feel like it makes sense for me to track his side of the intersection all the way back to his musical beginnings in hopes of roughly sketching out how multiple factors—his adventurously curious musical spirit, his prolific creativity, his finely tuned sense of when collaboration is and is not clicking, plus his unique dual wiring of tireless drive and perpetual dissatisfaction—can all be seen in his trio of unplugged experiences.
00:08:23
Speaker
So even though we're starting quite a ways back, I'll be moving through at a clip and with a very intentionally broad stroke brush. So please be a buddy and save the emails about how I didn't spend enough time talking about Crazy Horse or the shelved Hitchhiker and Chrome Dreams album or the handful of live shows he played with the Ducks in 1977 or whatever.
00:08:42
Speaker
I just want to make sure we're all up to speed on the big stuff while still moving through this pretty quickly. So strap in and please keep your arms and legs inside the podcast at all times. Ready? Let's dive in.
00:08:54
Speaker
The 1960s. In the early to mid-60s, while growing up in Canada, Neil Young quit high school to start a music career, played in a band called the Squires and also toured around Canada as a solo artist, crossed paths with fellow singer-songwriters and future collaborators like Joni Mitchell and Stephen Stills, and joined an ill-fated band called the MinaBirds, who was signed to Motown and whose frontman was Rick James. Yes, he of later Super Freak fame.
00:09:24
Speaker
However, the Mind of Birds didn't get to release their debut album because Rick was arrested for being AWOL from the Navy. So, allegedly, Neil and Mind of Birds bass player Bruce Palmer pawned the band's equipment, bought a hearse, and pulled up stakes for an international relocation from Ontario, Canada to Los Angeles, California.
00:09:43
Speaker
Very soon after hitting l L.A., Young serendipitously reconnected with Stephen Stills, in Sunset Boulevard traffic no less, and they formed a new band, Buffalo Springfield, which became one of the major pioneers of psych-tinged folk rock, and is most well known for their iconic Vietnam-era counterculture anthem, For What It's Worth.
00:10:02
Speaker
I think time we stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going on.
00:10:11
Speaker
Between 66 and 68, Buffalo Springfield released the only three studio albums of its career and then called it quits. Neil went on to do some session work for the TV creation turned real band The Monkees, and you can hear his electric guitar work on their 68 album Head and their 69 album Instant Replay.
00:10:29
Speaker
Okay, deep breath listeners, because 1969 through 1970 is not only a monumentally huge double year in Neil's mythological chronology, but it's really where the mercurial musical majesty of quote-unquote Neil Young materializes and really takes flight.
00:10:45
Speaker
Plus, you really get to see, right off the bat, just how prolific, adventurous, and tireless he is as an artist, songwriter, band member, and collaborator. January 1969, Neil released his self-titled debut solo record, which features the incredible I've Been Waiting For You, which has spawned some awesome covers by the likes of Dinosaur Jr., David Bowie, and the Pixies.
00:11:08
Speaker
May 69, Neil released the massively influential record Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which was his second album, but the first to feature his legendary backing band Crazy Horse, who he would go on to record over 20 studio and live albums with.
00:11:22
Speaker
This raggedly electrified and monumentally impactful record may only feature seven tracks, but it generated at least four of Neil's most beloved and enduring songs. The title track, Cinnamon Girl, Cowgirl in the Sand, and Down by the River.
00:11:49
Speaker
August 69 Neil played his first live gig as a newly minted, equally billed member of folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. As a trio, David Crosby, formerly of the Byrds, Stephen Stills, formerly of Buffalo Springfield, and Graham Nash, formerly of the Hollies, had just released their top 10 self-titled debut record in May.
00:12:10
Speaker
The day after their first gig as a quartet, CSNY famously played Woodstock. though Young barely participated during the acoustic set and infamously wouldn't let the cameraman film him during the electric set.
00:12:22
Speaker
March 1970 The first CSNY record, Deja Vu, was released featuring their signature hits Teach Your Children, Our House, and Woodstock, as well as the Neil Penn standouts Country Girl and Helpless.
00:12:35
Speaker
June 70, CSNY Rush released the protest song Ohio as a standalone single, which was written by Neal as a critique against the shocking Kent State massacre that had just occurred the month prior, where 28 members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire during an anti-war rally on the Kent State campus, killing four students and wounding nine others. Ohio became one of the most identifiable counterculture protest songs of the Vietnam War era.
00:13:01
Speaker
and its universal anti-war sentiment has allowed it to be continually re-employed and sadly ever-relevant throughout the ensuing decades.
00:13:23
Speaker
August 70, Young released his third solo album, After the Gold Rush. At the time, Young had irons in a couple different fires. He was touring and recording with both Crazy Horse and CSNY, as well as occasionally doing solo gigs.
00:13:37
Speaker
So the album is really a unique amalgam of all the players and influences he was swimming in at the time. It's also the first album to feature his work with Niels Lofgren, who would go on to become a longtime collaborator in Niels' dynamically rotating Sonic Arsenal.
00:13:51
Speaker
The 1970s. Alrighty, I'ma try to speed run through Neil's 1970s, a fool's errand if ever there was one. But let's see how we do. February 72, Neil released what would become his signature record, the chart-topping, hit-making, mainstream coming-out party simply known as Harvest.
00:14:14
Speaker
The year prior, a fortuitous appearance on the Johnny Cash Show, where he played a new unreleased song called The Needle and the Damaged Dun, spurned a connection with producer Elliot Mazur and some incredible Nashville session players.
00:14:27
Speaker
caught you knocking at my cellar door I love you baby can I have some more Ooh, the damaged
00:14:43
Speaker
The fresh inspiration of these country-informed studio vets, mixed with the dynamic changes going on in his personal life, including a divorce, building a home on a sprawling ranch, new love, and a debilitating back injury that relegated him to almost exclusively playing only acoustic guitar in a seated position.
00:15:00
Speaker
all merged to create the mellowed-out, lyrically-vibrant, country-and-folk-inspired vibes of Harvest, which spent two weeks as a number one album, generated two top 40 hits, including the chart-topping Heart of Gold, and essentially cemented Young as a household name in the pop-cultural consciousness.
00:15:28
Speaker
However, the massive mainstream success of Harvest turned out to be an extremely unwelcome development for Neil. His uncomfortableness with mass popularity, along with the overdose death of his crazy horse guitarist and frequent collaborator Danny Witten in late 72, resulted in what has often been referred to as Young's Ditch Trilogy of Albums, a phrase inspired by the liner notes of his 1977 triple LP compilation Decade, where Neil writes of the song Heart of Gold,
00:15:56
Speaker
This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride, but I saw more interesting people there. The three intentionally uninvitational albums of Young's Ditch Trilogy are Time Fades Away, a live album of the Harvest Tour released in the fall of 73,
00:16:14
Speaker
On the Beach, a bleakly melancholic studio album released in the summer of 74, and Tonight's the Night, a grief-informed studio album recorded before On the Beach, but held back and eventually released a year after it in the summer of 75.
00:16:29
Speaker
Young's mid-70s period was marked by a series of renewed collaborations. In 74, he briefly got back together with Crosby, Stills, and Nash for a hugely successful tour, actually one of the first-ever stadium tours.
00:16:42
Speaker
In 75, he reunited with Crazy Horse, hiring Frank Poncho San Pedro to fill Witten's place, and released Zuma, best known for containing the double-drop D gorgeousness of Cortez the Killer.
00:16:54
Speaker
In 76, he and Stephen Stills recorded the only album credited to the Stills Young band. The record was titled Long May You Run, which ended up being a bit ironic considering this was not only the only Stills Young band record, but also that Neal actually dissolved the partnership halfway through the subsequent tour.
00:17:13
Speaker
Also in 76, Young appeared as a guest on The Last Waltz, the star-studded final concert of the band. which was filmed on Thanksgiving Day and released as a film by Martin Scorsese.
00:17:24
Speaker
Along with unbelievable musical performances from the band and a guest list that included Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, The Staple Singers, Neil Diamond, Emmylou Harris, and many, many more, Young sang an incredibly beautiful version of Helpless with Joni Mitchell and a giant chunk of cocaine clearly visible in his nose that had to be edited out of the final film print.
00:17:57
Speaker
Young's late 70s period found the unpredictable genius once again flirting, no matter how unwillingly, with mainstream success. In 77, he released the rowdy American Stars and Bars, which went all the way to number 21 on the Billboard 200 and contained one of his signature fan favorites, Like a Hurricane.
00:18:15
Speaker
In 78, he released Comes a Time, which feels like a bit of a sonic cousin to the folks he harvest and perhaps not so coincidentally placed Young back in the top 10 on the album charts. In 79, he and Crazy Horse released one of the most incendiary live studio hybrid albums of all time, Russ Never Sleeps.
00:18:34
Speaker
The album mimicked what Neil was doing on tour at the time, splitting his sets between solo acoustic numbers and furious electric rockers with Crazy Horse. The album itself peaked at number 8, it debuted some of his soon-to-be beloved live staples like Pocahontas and Powderfinger, and it generated the raucous radio staple Hey Hey My My into the black.
00:18:55
Speaker
Hey Hey My
00:19:07
Speaker
Less than six months later, Young and Crazy Horse released the companion live album, Live Rust, which also fared extremely well on the album charts, making it all the way into the top 20. The the nineteen eighty s Heading into the 1980s, Young once again refused to meet these new audience and industry expectations with any measure of placation or people-pleasing creative posture.
00:19:29
Speaker
He kicked off the new decade with a pair of solid yet underwhelming records, 1980's Hawks and Doves and 81's Reactor, which was with Crazy Horse. This ended up fulfilling his contract with Reprise, so he signed up with the newly launched Geffen Records and embarked on what turned out to be one of the most creatively experimental and commercially tumultuous periods of his entire career.
00:19:51
Speaker
In 83, Neal kicked off this dynamic era with the then-controversial, now-celebrated album Trans, Forgoing both his folksy acoustic touches and his ragged electric guitar work, Tranz was heavily inspired by electronic music and themes of navigating obstacles to connection and communication.
00:20:10
Speaker
Sonically, the album is entrancingly awash in synthesizers, vocoders, sequencers, and distorted vocal lines. I need a unit to sample a whole But knocking angry woman to design, to design There's a really beautiful backstory to this album involving his son, Ben, who was born with cerebral palsy, and the process of learning new methods of communication.
00:20:35
Speaker
But at the time, the larger story surrounding the album was just how most music critics and audience members were confused by the abrupt creative shift, while his new label was well past confused and firmly into aggressively enraged territory.
00:20:49
Speaker
But personal side note, this is genuinely one of my favorite Neil records, and I think it has both an exciting and uniquely singular sonic footprint, and also a brilliantly emotional heart beneath its synthesized
Resurgence and Influence in Late 80s
00:21:01
Speaker
exterior. You should totally give it a spin to see if you connect with any of it We've got a real life, baby.
00:21:08
Speaker
Neil quickly followed up the release of Trans, quickly as in like within six months, with the equally adventurous, but nonetheless commercially discombobulating, Everybody's Rockin', a 10-track collection of rockabilly covers and originals that didn't even hit 25-minute runtime.
00:21:33
Speaker
I've been walking all night long My footsteps made me crazy David Geffen was so incensed with the disparate directions of the two back-to-back projects that he cut the Everybody's Rockin' recording session short, released the album as-is, and then sued Young for making albums that were quote-unquote not commercial and musically uncharacteristic.
00:21:54
Speaker
While Neil countersued for breach of contract, as part of his deal with Geffen was that he would have complete creative control with zero label interference. Young's remaining time with Geffen yielded three more unconventional and underperforming albums. 1985's Old Ways, which was essentially a straight-up country album. I mean, it even has Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson on it. As well as Landing on Water and 1987's Life.
00:22:18
Speaker
and nineteen eighty seven s life which both had a somewhat more commercial, modernized 80s rock sonic sheen of synthesizers and processed drums. Fulfilling his contractual obligations with Geffen, Young re re-signed with Reprise and entered into one of the most creatively enriching and commercially successful phases of his career.
00:22:37
Speaker
Even with the label switch, Young continued his seemingly album-a-year cadence with 1988's This Notes For You, a charming, return-to-form rock record that featured a horn section.
00:22:48
Speaker
The title track was a tongue-in-cheek takedown of the increasingly craven relationship between the music business, advertisers, and corporate sponsorships.
00:23:05
Speaker
The ensuing parody-rich, commercial-skewering music video was initially banned by MTV for fear of potentially losing major ad revenue. But the channel eventually relented, added the video into rotation, and even awarded it the best video of the year at the 1989 VMAs, where it quite surprisingly beat out such legendary music videos as Madonna's Like a Prayer, Michael Jackson's Leave Me Alone, and Fine Young Cannibals' She Drives Me Crazy.
00:23:31
Speaker
Take it away, Michael Hutchins. And the winner is... Are you ready out there? For the best video of the year. ah yeah Neil Young, this note's for you.
00:23:45
Speaker
Though, to the surprise of no one, Neil wasn't in attendance that night. Hey, Neil's not here. Funny that. He's a lady in New York and he's on the video somewhere.
00:23:56
Speaker
He says thank you. And MTV may have actually gotten the last laugh, as there was absolutely zero audio to coincide with the live video feed of Neil's quick acceptance speech.
00:24:07
Speaker
um Okay.
00:24:13
Speaker
There's nothing like a live show, huh? Speaking of 1989, this was another truly monumental year in Young's tireless career. In the fall of 89, he released the scathingly topical album Freedom, which ushered him into a new era of popularity and relevance with the back-to-back Billboard mainstream rock top 10 hits No More and Rockin' in the Free World.
Unplugged Performances: Challenges and Successes
00:24:43
Speaker
Two songs with which he delivered an explosively raucous and highly celebrated appearance on Saturday Night Live, just prior to the album's release. Take it away, Bruce Willis. Ladies and gentlemen, Neil Young.
00:24:54
Speaker
um are um While Neil was once again starting to amass a newer, younger audience segment to his growing fanbase, his artistic influence on the burgeoning alternative music scene could be readily felt in the 1989 tribute album The Bridge, a tribute to Neil Young, which featured gloriously rowdy covers from over a dozen alt-rock acts like Soul Asylum, Sonic Youth, Victoria Williams, Dinosaur Jr., Nick Cave, and The Pixies.
00:25:29
Speaker
The
00:25:44
Speaker
the nineteen ninety s Neil continued leading the distortion-drenched proto-grunge charge with 1990's Ragged Glory, an abrasively overdriven album he recorded with Crazy Horse and toured behind with younger-leaning amp-cranking bands like Social Distortion and Sonic Youth. 1990 was also the year of Neil's first intersection with MTV Unplugged.
00:26:06
Speaker
Well, kinda. hi welcome to MTV Unplugged. I'm Jules Shear. Tonight we have a very special performance by Neil Young, taped exclusively for our show. i hope you enjoy it.
00:26:18
Speaker
Here's Neil Young. By February of 1990, MTV had just recently launched its brand new little acoustic show, MTV Unplugged, and it was only a few episodes into its run when they found themselves with a Neil Young episode on their hands.
00:26:31
Speaker
Again, kinda. As I explained more in depth during the first episode of my podcast, Unplugged 101 1989-1993, if you want to go back and listen, instead of the acoustic performance filmed in a small television studio in front of an intimate audience, style Unplugged, the MTV had been casually capturing in previous episodes, this looked more like a highly produced concert video because...
00:26:55
Speaker
Well, it was. It was Neil playing on a big stage in front of a huge audience, which was filmed over two nights at the Palladium Concert Hall in New York City back in September of 89, with two of the songs being filmed outdoors at Jones Beach Theater in mid-June 89.
00:27:12
Speaker
To be sure, it was a fantastic acoustic Neil show, and I'll get more into the actual performance and the set list in my Part 2 episode in two weeks. But despite Unplugged host Jules Shear framing it as being taped exclusively for our show, the overall vibe certainly didn't match the other Unplugged episodes.
00:27:30
Speaker
It ended up being mostly forgotten about as the show continued to churn out new episodes week over week throughout the year. We're about to fast forward a couple years to 1992, so right here seems like a good pause point to catch our collective breath and hear another Unplugged Neil cover.
00:27:46
Speaker
How about a real early one, like show number four early, recorded in the very first batch of official Unplugged shows in December 89 and broadcast in mid-February 1990. Here's Joe Walsh.
00:27:58
Speaker
here's joe walsh Dr. John and Unplugged host Jewel Shear doing Neil's Cinnamon Girl from his legendary 69 sophomore album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. want to live with a cinnamon girl I could be happy the rest of my life with a cinnamon
00:28:22
Speaker
Alright, let's get into Neil's second and third intersections with MTV Unplugged. There was one more entry of distortion-blistered crazy horse-backed electric bombast in this late 80s, early 90s window.
00:28:34
Speaker
The 1991 double live album Weld, featuring 16 tracks culled from the Ragged Glory tour, including a Gulf War-informed air raid siren-laced cover of Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind, an almost 10-minute Rockin' in the Free World, and a gorgeously angry guitar tour de force version of Like a Hurricane that delivers countless sonic body blows throughout its 14-minute runtime.
00:28:58
Speaker
I wanna love you, but get blown away
00:29:11
Speaker
Surprisingly, or true to form unsurprisingly, Neil followed up this run of feedback-fueled electric guitar ferocity with one of his most invitational, chilled-out, folk-informed outings since 1972's Harvest.
00:29:25
Speaker
The album was called Harvest Moon, and along with being sonically simpatico to his mainstream classic from 20 years prior, he also brought back a variety of musicians and vocalists that had originally appeared on Harvest. including Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith, bassist Tim Drummond, and drummer Kenny Buttrey.
00:29:54
Speaker
The album ended up being incredibly well received, both critically and commercially, and even earned Young his first multi-platinum certification since the quadruple platinum Harvest. Harvest Moon was released in early November 92, and Young was scheduled to film his first quote-unquote proper MTV Unplugged the following month, December 16, 1992, at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City,
00:30:17
Speaker
which was one of the very last things filmed there before David Letterman famously took it over in early 93 and locked it down for his late show for the next 22 years. As was common for MTV Unplugged, from its 1989 inception all the way through the end of its first season-over-season run in 1997, Neil's taping was part of a multi-episode grouping where the Unplugged crew would set up shop and capture multiple artists within a single filming session,
00:30:44
Speaker
During this particular block, the Unplugged crew was scheduled to capture episodes with Neil, jazzy country cabaret powerhouse KD Lang, and the Southern Alternative Hip Hop group Arrested Development.
00:30:55
Speaker
As you will hear in my interviews with Unplugged crew members in this episode and the next, there were quite a few different elements crashing into each other that generated one of the most infamous Salty Neil performances in the already decades-long, storied lineage of Salty Neil performances.
00:31:11
Speaker
And again, I'll dig more into the nuts and bolts of the actual performance in the next episode. If you've read any of the long and winding retellings of this December 92 Unplugged taping and countless articles, books, and interviews from around that time or even up through the present day, there is a wildly interesting mix of both overlapping parts that corroborate and also singularly disparate story points that are unique to only one or two accounts.
00:31:37
Speaker
But even with all of the mysterious, mythologized, and often contradictory versions out there, the unimpeachable plot points are this. One, Neil was extremely unhappy with how his band was performing in rehearsals.
00:31:49
Speaker
Two, at some point prior to the actual taping, not during, he left the building without the unplugged crew or even his own team knowing when, or even if, he would return.
00:32:00
Speaker
Upon returning and starting the show, he took the band through multiple retakes of almost every song in the setlist. 4. Despite his best efforts to salvage a show that would meet his own internal standards, he eventually ended up refusing to let the show air and scheduled a quick reshoot.
00:32:18
Speaker
This pullback was certainly a surprise to many, and as I uncovered during one of my favorite pastimes of scouring old newspaper archives, the intended Unplugged episode was already showing up in printed TV listings during the first week of January, as I found multiple newspapers promoting a January 6, 1993, Season premiere of Unplugged that promised...
00:32:40
Speaker
Neil Young performs at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City in December 1992. Also, due to the chaotic nature of the night and its brewing aftermath, different crew members found out about Neil's desire to keep the show from airing at different points in the timeline.
00:32:55
Speaker
For example, a couple of years ago I got to interview legendary remote recording guru David Hewitt, and one of the things I asked him about was his experience capturing the audio for so many amazing unplugged episodes. Mariah Carey, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Babyface, and of course this mythologized Neil unplugged at the Ed Sullivan Theater.
00:33:15
Speaker
Hewitt told me this incredible story about being in his mobile recording truck outside the theater when someone from Neil's camp came busting through demanding, unsuccessfully, that he hand over the tapes almost immediately after Neil walked off stage.
00:33:29
Speaker
Whereas John Vesey, who edited together all of the tapes for broadcast, actually completed an edit of the show that was sent to Neil for review and didn't find out for a couple weeks that there was going to be a second taping.
00:33:41
Speaker
And just so we're clear, that does mean that there is not only the raw masters of this performance somewhere at MTV, but there's also an initial edit of it somewhere in Neil's own archives.
00:33:52
Speaker
And if you don't think I've repurposed a few of my Natalie Merchant prayer candles long ago for this to one day get a proper release... Neil's initial re-taping request was to go back to the Ed Sullivan Theater, which carried 0% chance of probability now that it had already been handed over to Letterman's crew.
00:34:09
Speaker
The compromise was to quickly, as in less than two months later, reschedule a multi-artist unplugged filming session at Universal Studios out in Los Angeles for early February 1993.
00:34:20
Speaker
This session actually captured a quartet of shows, Rod Stewart on day one, both the experimental Dennis Leary episode and the phenomenal Uptown Unplugged label review show with Mary J. Blige, Jodeci, Heavy D, and others on day two, and then Neil's redo on day three.
00:34:36
Speaker
Now, again, I'll outline the actual show details in part two, but for now, here's just a couple important high points. Neil tried to alleviate any repeat band issues by adding longtime collaborator Niels Lofgren into the fold to not only play guitar, accordion, and auto harp, but to also, most importantly, get the band into shape and function as the instrumental anchor that they could lock into while he locked into Neil.
00:35:02
Speaker
Needless to say, that move was wildly successful. And as a quick side note, there are some stories and online resources that erroneously placed Neils at the December 92 Ed Sullivan taping as well.
00:35:13
Speaker
But I reached out to clarify, and with 100% from the horse's mouth accuracy, Neils confirmed that he only appeared at the LA taping. Second note, Neil also surprisingly peppered the reworked setlist with some acoustic versions of songs from his uber-electro, vocoder-heavy trans record.
00:35:30
Speaker
In an extremely cool artist-on-artist interview in the April 93 edition of Musician Magazine, Neil relayed to REM's Peter Buck, who was in attendance for the LA Unplugged taping, I figured after 10 years that a couple of acoustic versions of those songs would have been cool, but they had to have that magic great groove. You can't make it work without that.
00:35:51
Speaker
Though, he also quickly tagged in his charmingly curt way. The band had it in rehearsals, but they didn't have it last night. I have to hardly disagree with you here, Shaky, as I think the trans tracks are some of the most transcendentally magical moments of the entire show.
00:36:12
Speaker
But more on that part two. As we all know, Neil's unplugged redo in l LA did not fall the way of his first outing in New York. The episode was broadcast as the unplugged season four opener in early March 93, just a month after filming.
00:36:26
Speaker
It was then released as an album in VHS that summer. And in my opinion, I honestly think him being able to deliver an incredibly cool unplugged performance during this specific era of younger, hipper acts like Mariah Carey, 10,000 Maniacs, Jodeci, Mary J. Blige, Pearl Jam, Arrested Development, and Soul Asylum... all bringing fresh-faced cool to the whole Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Paul Simon of it all, simultaneously worked as both an authentic bridge to Unplug's multi-genre, cross-generational creative reach, and also a natural, wheels-greasing precursor to all of the renewed interest and cultural cachet Neil was on the cusp of experiencing. with, among other things, playing a jaw-dropping performance of Rocking in the Free World with Pearl Jam at the 93 VMAs, releasing his quasi-Cobain-informed Sleeps with Angels album in 94, and then recording the collaborative Mirrorball album with Pearl Jam in 95. Downtown
00:37:35
Speaker
Which, by the way, this may just be the 15-year-old me talking, but can you imagine how insanely cool it would have been if Neil and Pearl Jam had done a joint unplugged that was anchored around Mirrorball, but also featured them jamming on each other's surprise rarities?
00:37:50
Speaker
Neil taking a turn at Yellow Leadbetter, Eddie singing Winterlong? Ugh, the mind boggles. Okay, the intersection for Neil's trio of Unplugged episodes has been laid out, so this feels like a good spot to transition into my interview with Unplugged producer-showrunner Alex Coletti to get his perspective on these three shows, since he was intimately involved with all of them.
00:38:12
Speaker
But first, let's hear one more unplugged cover of a Neil Young song. I'll give you a few clues, and let's see if you can guess it. One, it's a cover of Neil's 1989 classic, Rockin' in the Free World.
00:38:23
Speaker
Two, it was filmed in the spring of 1992. Three, it did not make the group's original unplugged broadcast. And four, it's by a chart-topping, multi-platinum-selling Pacific Northwest band from Washington State.
00:38:37
Speaker
Did I give you enough time? That's right. Here's heavy metal quintet Queensryche doing Neil's Rockin' in the Free World from their April 27, 1992 unplugged taping. begin it any way I can Keep on rockin' in the free world You know this
00:38:59
Speaker
And just in case you're curious as to why it didn't make air, well, it was one of those impromptu, do you got anything else covers that didn't exactly land the plane. Keep on rockin' in the free world.
00:39:11
Speaker
You got A there. Then we'll go to the beat. Ending. Chorus.
00:39:20
Speaker
Chorus.
Interview with Alex Coletti
00:39:27
Speaker
Now, if perhaps thinking of another band that precisely lined up with all four of those clues, well, just make sure to tune in to part two and I promise you'll hear that version from that band who just so happened to give us one of the best Unplugged performances of all time.
00:39:42
Speaker
But for right now, onto my Unplugged Revisited chat with Alex Coletti. I'm genuinely so excited for today's chat with legendary MTV Unplugged producer Alex Coletti, who's responsible for guiding the show from its humble pilot all the way through every single episode of its culture-impacting, Grammy-winning, platinum-selling 90s run.
00:40:02
Speaker
He also helmed the 2.0 reboot in the early 2000s and returned for a few shows here and there throughout the 2010s. He's got a million and a half Unplugged stories, and I should know because I grill him for a few extras every time we talk.
00:40:15
Speaker
And I feel so fortunate to be able to pick his brain today about all three Neil Young episodes. So, Alex, as ever, thank you so much for spending some time talking Unplugged with me today. um My pleasure, Will. Good to see you.
00:40:26
Speaker
Before we get too deep in Neil's three Unplugs, I'd like to set your bona fides a little bit for anyone who may not be familiar with your fabled Unplugged showrunner and flamekeeper awesomeness.
00:40:37
Speaker
Tell us how you first got to MTV and then how that developed into being handed Unplugged pretty much as soon as it came through the door. So i I'm a New Yorker, Brooklyn born and bred. i was interning at a radio station in New York, WNEW FM, which at the time was the number one rock station.
00:40:53
Speaker
And um i was on the i went from answering phones and making coffee to being kind of part of a morning show where sometimes I'd get mentioned or even named, you know, I'd even speak. um But um some of the MTV had heard me and they were looking for VJs, believe it or not. So Steve Leeds called ah my then boss, Dave, and said, hey, tell me about this Alex guy. And he's young. He's got, you know, believe it or not, I had long hair and skinny things that do no longer apply to me. but I went over to audition to be on camera. And I said, look, I don't know how to do this. I don't want to do this. I'd love to produce.
00:41:28
Speaker
So they said, okay, well, keep you in mind. And then a couple months later, I got a phone call saying, hey, we're trying out some people. um And it was great because I was on a morning show. So I was able to work from like 6 to 10 a.m., m run across town, and then do a full day at MTV. And after a few weeks, I said, look, I can't keep this pace up. You got to let me know.
00:41:45
Speaker
So they said, look, go away. we're going to try somebody else out, and then we'll let you know. And they ended up hiring both of us, so my my roommate came. Smith. And I both got hired. Because I came from live, I was put on spring break, because even though TV was different than radio, live is live. And so I got i got my hands dirty right away with that.
00:42:02
Speaker
And then it's just my passion for music. I mean, not that everyone at MTV at that point had that. But for whatever reason, I had a boss for a brief period named Linda Schaefer and the timing couldn't have been better. Someone brought a pitch into her. She said, you should go talk to Alex.
00:42:18
Speaker
And that was Bob Small and Jim Burns. And that's kind of how it all started. Yeah. oh my goodness. What a serendipitous ah meeting. bra I owe all three of those people my life. So, yeah. ah That's awesome. Well, I know originally Unplugged wasn't, you know, envisioned to be this new juggernaut must-see TV single artist showcase that it eventually transformed into.
00:42:39
Speaker
From your insider's perspective, what creative directions were driving those initial discussions and what were some of the important evolution points during those first couple seasons? so So this was based on something that Jules Shear, who was our host at the beginning, was doing already at places like the Knitting Factory.
00:42:56
Speaker
Right. Little hootenannies, little jam sessions with other singer songwriters playing on each other's songs and just, you know, in a stripped down format. So whether it was Jules or his manager or Bob and Jim, like everyone's claims a different version of it. But basically those people hit upon the idea that this is something we can sell to MTV.
00:43:14
Speaker
Hmm. it came in into Linda Schaefer. She put me with Bob and Jim. We instantly bonded. and And I love Jules. I was a fan of his songwriting and and ah thought, okay, great. And the idea was really like, this will air on Sunday mornings it like while you're having your coffee at home. It's acoustic.
00:43:29
Speaker
It's quiet. It's before MTV cranks up all the noise. And it was meant to just be that. you know A half hour show with a bunch of artists jamming. To show you how little we thought about you know this becoming more than that,
00:43:42
Speaker
we didn't multitrack the music, right? The audio got recorded straight onto the videotape. So it wasn't until like 10 episodes in when the Allman Brothers, episode 11, I think said, Hey, we want to remix this. Cause we need a single for a B side. We need a B side for something.
00:43:56
Speaker
And I said, Oh, we don't multitrack this. So let me bring in a multitrack for the, for your episode. And then all of a sudden we're like, why don't we do this all the time? and mean, I had a great sound mixer. Sorry, sorry. And,
00:44:08
Speaker
I had, I brought someone from WNEW with me, Dave Vander Hayden, to engineer these shows because he'd done a ton of live music on radio and and I had confidence in him. But we were doing things like, you know, acoustic guitars didn't have direct inputs then. So we were taking lav mics and taping them to the guitars.
00:44:25
Speaker
Like we it was all makeshift. um And we kind of evolved as the show evolved. But, but yeah, so I don't know where I was going with that story, but yeah, we never multitracked them. So we didn't think about records or,
00:44:37
Speaker
or or that or albums, you know single artist shows. It was meant to be this half hour, pull a few friends together, let them cover each other's songs, pick a cover to close on. And if you look at that pilot episode, you've got Chris and Glenn of Squeeze, you've got Jules Shear, you've got Sid Straw.
00:44:53
Speaker
Sid invited a drummer along who happened to be DJ Bonebreak from X and Elliot Easton from The Cars. um he's So mind-blowing, right? i You know, that my favorite memory of that show is being in the green room at Unitel and saying, OK, we got to pick a cover song to close with.
00:45:10
Speaker
And they were talking about Glenn was talking about the Golden Palominos and said, sure i was like oh, yeah. And it just somehow someone said Neil Diamond and that was it. Right. I'm a believer. So we go out, we do the show and we hadn't rehearsed it except in the dressing room.
00:45:24
Speaker
So as it's going on and on and it's time to end this, ah Chris Difford looks at me and I give him this kind of like fade out kind of, you know, which you can't really do in live music. But they all kind of started getting down on the floor like in in the the quiet bits of Shout and Animal House.
00:45:39
Speaker
and And it was just like, oh, yeah, this show is going to work. This is this is magic. sparks were flying from episode one. So yeah had a good feeling about it, which was why i really balked at that first Neil Young episode.
00:45:52
Speaker
Not that I had any power to stop it. and And it's probably good that it aired because it brought eyeballs and press to a show that really didn't have that yet. But yeah it wasn't produced for that. It was just kind of, hey, we have this thing. Would you slap your logo on it? It is acoustic, but it wasn't unplugged for, you know, if you know what I mean.
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's a good segue because I love um for anyone not familiar with the very first Neil Young that that we're kind of talking about. So this happened in 1990. It's a season one anomaly. There was a Joe Walsh and Dr. John episode, and then there was a Stevie Ray Vaughan and Joe Satriani episode, all in a small studio in the round.
00:46:29
Speaker
In between these two, you have Neil Young on a giant stage, to your point, playing acoustic, but it definitely didn't feel like the other unplugs. So that's Thinking about that one, tell us about how this not exactly unplugged Neil Young concert video even came to you guys to be aired as an unplugged episode.
00:46:47
Speaker
I'm going to have to make some leaps here and and try to remember. But Abby Conowich ran the music department at MTV, and he did two things that I think really helped Unplugged out, although I was not happy with either of them at this we were developing Unplugged that whole summer of 89, believe.
00:47:05
Speaker
ah The pitch came in in the spring. We were booking it. We had Halloween on hold and we were kind of going through set and stuff. But that September, John and Richie from Bon Jovi did that acoustic, Want to Get Her Alive on the VMAs.
00:47:17
Speaker
Abby very cleverly said, hey, that's a great idea for a series. We're going to call it Unplugged. And the press was Bon Jovi created a music series, right? So it got us instant attention. People heard about the show before it even aired.
00:47:30
Speaker
But that was not the truth, right? It came in, we were developing it, we had a budget, we were booking it. But I get why he did that. So similarly, I assume someone in Neil's camp said, Oh, you have an acoustic show.
00:47:41
Speaker
Timothy Hutton just shot a few shows of ours, we can pull the acoustic bits out and give it to you and you can call it unplugged. To me, ah you know, no, we want to control our product. We want it all to feel like this thing we're creating, right? This magic.
00:47:53
Speaker
And if we start just rubber stamping stuff that artists send in, that might be the end of this series. Again, Abby being smart and seeing the big picture, hey, it's Neil Young. We're not going to get a name like that for a while, if ever.
00:48:05
Speaker
So let's use that as a way to get attention and eyeballs on the stuff that we do do ourselves. yeah And so again, at the time, I didn't love the idea, but in retrospect, it was the absolute right thing to do.
00:48:17
Speaker
The one caveat was we were taping another show and I had Jules do an intro to it. So at least it was grounded in, hey, this is something that MTV Unplugged is presenting to you. We got this Neil Young. It was directed by Timothy Hutton. Enjoy it.
00:48:28
Speaker
And it was a few performances. One of them is at Jones Beach in the rain. you know It's just not lit like TV. The audience isn't in the round. It didn't have that magic. But now that it's available, I just rewatched it for the first time and you know, almost 30 years.
00:48:40
Speaker
It's a great performance. It's a great, it's a, it's a great set list, you know, and that's the thing Neil, there's the, that's a very different across the three shows. Yeah. So this does ah in retrospect hold up and it didn't, it didn't break the series. It didn't create a flood of artists mailing in VHSs and saying, Hey, that's my show deal with it.
00:49:01
Speaker
Right. But um so we survived it. We survived it. It is also notable for being um Neil's song, Rockin' in the Free World, has been played for Unplugged three times, but only got aired once. And that was Neil's original because when Pearl Jam tried it and when Queensryche tried it, they couldn't land the plane. so Yeah, Pearl Jam, you know, that famous guitar toss, you know. Right. My guitar, by the way. Oof.
00:49:25
Speaker
When I produced the Rocker Hall of Fame, the year Pearl Jam got inducted, they did that. that aired. I finally got a rock the world across the goal line, but it took a while. Oh, nice. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, cool. Well, moving into the ah you know second Neil Young Unplugged. So we're in late 92 now. So Clapton's masterfully legitimized the concept.
00:49:44
Speaker
Right. Carrie's made it. undeniably cool. It's starting to get mainstreamed onto radio and into record stores. At what point during this period do the discussions with Neil kind of start up for his eventual taping that occurred in ah mid-December of 92? Great question. i would I would say that, you know, you have to look at the label, right? So so Clapton was on Warner and John Bugue was the um the video rep at the time. Wonderful man who's since passed.
00:50:10
Speaker
And I think it was John that saw the opportunity because you'll notice that Rod Stewart, you know, there's a bunch of of legacy Warner artists that do unplugged and release records in rapid succession.
00:50:21
Speaker
So Warner saw the, you know, the beauty of, wait a minute, MTV is going to pay to record an album for us, but then they're going to play the TV show to sell the album for us.
00:50:32
Speaker
So we don't have to any advertising. And we don't have to lay out money for an album. And then they're going to put videos in rotation that are going to drive eyeballs to the TV show and and listeners to the record shop like this ecosystem. Just so John saw that was like, great. Who do you need? you know That's awesome.
00:50:49
Speaker
So Neil, you know, luckily we didn't say, well, Neil's already done his, you know, is his one. We can't do that again. um There were no rules about doing it twice at that point. We were super psyched.
00:51:00
Speaker
And I have to think, so we had worked at the Ed Sullivan. The first time I shot there was the day we did Crosby, Stills, Nash, Rat and Vixen and Aris all in one day.
00:51:12
Speaker
Wow. And at that time, the Ed Sullivan was there was ah a company called Captain of America, a high def video company that was housed there. So we shot those three episodes in high def very early on in the in the high debt, which is funny to think that Unplugged was breaking technical ground.
00:51:28
Speaker
Show that clearly did not need to be in high def, but we did. and And so I love that space. And I'm trying to remember if we did, because we always bundled these shows up, right? Once we were in production, we tried to do two or three in ah in a taping because you you spend the money bringing in the set and the lights and renting the space.
00:51:46
Speaker
So as you see, we were doing three in a day at at the beginning. Then that became like, that's crazy. But I don't remember who else we did with Neil. He might have been a standalone at the Sullivan. I can't. You would have to tell me if it's right or wrong. My research that I pulled was that it was Katie Lang and Arrested Development were. Oh, yes, exactly. We talked about Arrested Development and Katie were that. Yeah. Yep, but Neil had his own day. And in fact, the night before, um I remember a very small group of my senior leaders at MTV, my bosses, Judy McGrath, Van Toffler, maybe Doug Herzog and were in the balcony and and Neil was rehearsing with the band. And we'd always told artists like, the night before is your time, next day is our time. You gotta the camera, you gotta do it for the audience, but you know we give you a night in the room to kind of vibe out and and get the sound right and just get your stuff together.
00:52:34
Speaker
So Elliot, ah Neil's a longtime manager, right? Comes up and greets us all. And he, first he says to me, so um our drummer, um we can't show him on camera.
00:52:46
Speaker
And I'm like, come again? Right. Yeah. It's, I think what it was, was like a workman comp thing with the musicians union. He was on disability, so we couldn't see him. So I was like, wow. Okay. You know, this is a TV show. Yeah. A very popular one at that. I feel like we angled the cymbal a little bit and and tried to hide him that way.
00:53:05
Speaker
But you know that was a new one to me. It's like we can't show the drummer, who usually sits right behind the singer. And again, he's he's at this level as our Judy, as our van. He politely asks us to leave because this is Neil's rehearsal, and and I had never seen anyone.
00:53:19
Speaker
talk to Judy or Van or Doug that way. And i was like, whoa, and they're being very cool people, even though they're paying for this. They're like, all right, we're out of here. We'll see you tomorrow. like Very cool. But I remember that moment of being ah little bit of a nail biter.
00:53:32
Speaker
um they Everyone handled it well, but you know Neil was told he can have his time and he he took that at face value. So the next day is where a shit goes crazy. Yeah. So I always tell the artists, especially the artists that aren't comfortable. Obviously, Neil plays acoustic all the time, but we want to get it right.
00:53:50
Speaker
The audience does not mind if you're going to do a song over. They actually love that shit. If they go home and tell their friends, oh, my God, Paul McCartney forgot the words of something or so-and-so did this and I was there and that didn't air, but I saw it.
00:54:02
Speaker
Like, people love that. So I give every artist the same spiel of, like, don't leave unless you're happy with everything because you're not overdubbing, right? That's the one rule. We get it in the room, do a song again. And usually the first song, the audience is a bit tentative because they're super close to ah a megastar. And the artist is super weirded out because they really can see the audience for the first time in 100 years. There's no spotlights in their face.
00:54:26
Speaker
So usually, even if a taping goes smooth across the board, I'll say, do the first song over because everyone's loose now. And nine times out of 10, that version of the first song is what we open the show with. So I told Neil, I said, look, do songs until you're happy. If you got to do a couple songs over again, no one's in a rush to leave here. They're here for you.
00:54:46
Speaker
want it to be great. Sometimes that bites you in the ass. And Neil's band was maybe a little under rehearsed. And so he was not happy. i guess part of the reason now that I'm thinking about it, we were asked to leave the night before was because there was some tension on stage.
00:55:01
Speaker
The band wasn't delivering. Now that makes sense, right? So we come back the next day and we're doing camera blocking and soundcheck and Neil is not happy and he's getting antsy. And what happens is the way the day is structured is the audience is already lining up outside while we're inside rehearsing. Then we take a meal break. During that meal break, the audience comes in.
00:55:19
Speaker
I do a little warm up spiel. Camera guys eat. We come back down. We shoot the show. So as the audience is lining up and it's snowing out, it's a it's a wintery day. You probably know the date. I'm pretty sure it was December.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah. December seventeenth or 16th. Yeah. Yeah. And if you remember the old Letterman shows, you know, the stage door leads out onto the street. Dave is coming in and out of that door many times going to the deli and whatever.
00:55:44
Speaker
Yeah. So Neil's not happy and I'm standing on stage trying to like move things along and he puts on his jacket and he runs out the stage door into the street. Yeah.
00:55:55
Speaker
And he just takes off and he runs by the people in line that are waiting to see Neil Young. it's like, Hey, wasn't that Neil Young that just ran away from the venue? So we are like, what the actual fuck just happened?
00:56:09
Speaker
Okay. Well, what do we have to do? We take, ah take our break. We load the audience in and I'm looking at the crew and they're, you know, looking at me like, I don't know if he's coming back. Yeah. Yeah. um I heard years later that I think it was Johnny Cash was performing at NBC for something.
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah. ah Maybe a Christmas thing, tree lighting, whatever it was. And he was always going to go to see that. But our perspective in that moment, Neil just took off and we don't know if he's coming back. He went running off into the night, you know, down Broadway.
00:56:40
Speaker
So now we've got an audience full of people and I'm lying to their face. Hey, we've got a great show. Neil Young, this is to be awesome. get some applause, get them warmed up. And I'm looking over my, I'm looking stage right.
00:56:52
Speaker
And I'm getting, you know, in my mind now, people are like betting on his return. I don't think that actually happened, but he had that feeling of like, and then Neil comes in with his jacket on, grabs a guitar, sits down and does the show.
00:57:07
Speaker
Doesn't even take his coat off. if you He had his bomber on. yeah Straight from the street, 10 steps in, got a guitar, sat on a stool, and proceeds to do the show. And now, again, the band wasn't in the best form. There were some rough moments. you know Also, let's remember the difference between this show and the re-taping of it, because ultimately that's where we end up. Neil's not happy we have to do it again. He brought in Neil Slofgren to kind of whip the band in a shade.
00:57:34
Speaker
yeah Also, we got great stories. Neil was on fire. And this was at a time when we knew Letterman. In fact, this might have been the last thing shot before Letterman moved in. Wow. Okay. so Neil told Letterman stories.
00:57:46
Speaker
And one of the stories he told was he said, you know, I got asked to do Letterman, but you have to play with Paul in the band. You can't bring your own band. So I said I would do it if Paul would play scrub board and Dave would play the jug.
00:58:02
Speaker
And I believe this story to be true. In all the years that I've i've worked with Paul Schaefer, I've never asked him, but it sounded legit at the time. And it was funny as hell. Neil was in rare form and it was a great show.
00:58:14
Speaker
It had retakes. It definitely in the beginning, songs were not, but when it gelled and when it caught fire, it was pretty special. So what I think happens is Neil takes the audio tapes back to the to the ranch, puts them up and instantly says, no, this can't, this can't.
00:58:30
Speaker
And I don't think he sat through the whole thing because I think if you sit through it, it gets there. And with some editing and picking of takes, I think there was a really good show in there.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You know, John Bugue called and said, look, we will buy the tapes. We will pay for the taping. Come do it in LA. We're going to get Nils in to run the band. We're going to be spot on.
00:58:52
Speaker
Obviously, it's Warner Brothers. They're our partners. And it's Neil Young. We're not going to say no. Yeah. Right. Bury the tapes and let's go out and do this in in January or February. And it's a trip to L.A. And we booked another couple shows around it.
00:59:06
Speaker
And then we went out. and And so this is the one that gets released. This is the one that becomes a big selling album. This is the one with Harvest Moon and the broom that we all remember. But God, I'm of the mind now to reach out to Neil and say maybe it's time we revisit.
00:59:20
Speaker
Ooh. Oh, yeah. The missing episode, because I know there's a show in there. I know it. I know. I mean, that that's my hope, especially, you know, he's one of the artists like Dylan who have their parallel archive release type things where they're like, OK, we're admitting this is not like full brand new album stuff, but this is stuff people have been asking about for years. Yeah.
00:59:39
Speaker
Dude, please. Like there are so many people that want to hear this so bad. The only thing I've ever heard is like an audience recording of of some of the tracks. but I have the tape somewhere. I'm going to reach out. This is going to come from this conversation, but I'm going to reach out.
00:59:54
Speaker
I think his legacy and his career will survive this show it coming out. I'm going to make it an effort. 2025 goals. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. But I do love hearing you tell these stories because, you know, as someone who not only reads every unplugged account and story that I can come across from people, i really do kind of try to research and check things out. Mm hmm.
01:00:16
Speaker
There are two things that that are actually have been in conflict in my mind, which is I'm glad hearing and you clear it up. I've heard some people say that he left in the middle of the show, not the rehearsal. So I'm glad to get that cleared up. And then I've also heard some people conflate that Niels was there for both.
01:00:32
Speaker
But you're saying he was actually just brought in for the L.A. redo because of what happened. Yeah, exactly. But but it it is in look, I embellish in my my memory. ah You better fact check everything said.
01:00:46
Speaker
But remember, half the audience always we we would do a really good job of getting fan club in. Right. But you're going to get record company folks and you're going to get MTV folks that are begging to come in. So I knew on any given show, at least in New York, I knew half the audience.
01:01:00
Speaker
And they can all recount Neil running by them online in the snow and going, what is going on? That's awesome. Even when I'm doing that speech on stage and I'm telling these people we have this great show, they're all going, yeah, but we saw him leave. It wasn't going to the Hello Deli, you know, it wasn't. It was not to say hi to
Unplugged's Impact and Legacy
01:01:18
Speaker
Rupert.
01:01:18
Speaker
That's amazing. One thing that I have been able to at least find online is a little bit of a look at what the set list was for that New York show. And of course, while most of it was anchored around Harvest Moon, since that was his brand new album that had just come out in November, he naturally threw in some really cool surprises. So what was it like, especially as you as a producer looking for those special moments, to hear him play like Love is a Rose on Banjo or After the Gold Rush on Pump Organ? How did how did those come across?
01:01:46
Speaker
That pump organ is amazing. That's his, you know how McCartney has his painted piano. Like yeah there are certain people that have that, you know, with guitars, it's, it's, it's easier because you could carry them. But when an artist ships a piano or an organ, you know, it means something. And that pump organ was everything. Oh my God.
01:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so glad he brought it back for the L.A. show, too, to do like a hurricane, because that's just one of the best unplugged moments of all time. But yeah but I'm really hoping to hear after the goal rush one day. But also, those are really hard to shoot because their faces, you can't get a front shot like you can on a piano, right? Because they're tall. oh those Those organs are difficult from a visual standpoint.
01:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's so interesting you say that. When I was watching the DVD of the 93 performance and when he's playing like a hurricane, the camera is like right up in his face. And it's like, oh, that would make sense because there is a gigantic part of the instrument blocking camera angles.
01:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, blocking cameras, which is is tough. ah You know, last time I saw Dylan, he he sat behind a very tall organ a lot of the night. It might actually like that at some point. Give him give him a little bit of cover. Yeah.
01:02:48
Speaker
ah Okay, so I am seeing that Nicolette was also on. Yeah, she was on the 93. Yeah. just didn't do Down by the River. Right. That's the difference. That song, she stole. them She was on fire on that song. That performance was one of my favorite Unplugged memories ever. And we did not get a repeat of that song in hell. Yeah.
01:03:08
Speaker
Okay. He was on both. Nils was not in New York. He was not in New York. Okay, good. Yeah. So that was actually one of the things I was going to ask you is if Neil does, you know, never release the whole thing, but you could maybe squeeze a single out of him. Do you think that is the shining star of the New York shows? Oh yeah. That's the one that turned in my memory for sure. Do you have the whole set list? I'm curious because I Yeah, yeah, I do. In fact, just because it's fun to be a nerd, even how many, which ones were taking double takes and all that. So like, it looks like literally almost every track he did more than one take on there. There were a couple, but like you're saying, Down by the River is just one take.
01:03:41
Speaker
After the Gold Rush on Pump Organ, that looks like one take. But there are even some songs that it says here that there were like three takes. That's why he freaked out. It it became a rehearsal of more than a show.
01:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But the stories were the thing, right? The dialogue was worth, I think, even if the songs weren't great, the stories were better. yeah He was much more behaved in l LA. And I will say, as a postscript to it all, so normally the way we we do these shows is the artist will take the audio to remix it. I'll edit the video.
01:04:13
Speaker
Then we'll go to an audio sweetening session, lay in the new mixes, do dialogue, do crowd swells. So you're done with video at this point, the show's to time. And I must have sent Neil something to look at. And he asked for a shot to be changed, one close up.
01:04:29
Speaker
and it' like, well, the show airs like tomorrow and I'm supposed to deliver it, but but I'll figure it out. And he actually called me the next day and said thanks after the show aired, which has only happened twice in my life. Wow.
01:04:40
Speaker
um Not that artists aren't grateful, but to get that phone, to have someone go out of their way to say, hey, what's that guy's name? What's his phone number? Let me call him and say thanks. It was really meaningful after three rounds. you know Right, right. Yeah. Especially an artist like Neil, not only at his stature, but he also seems like an artist that is like three steps ahead of whatever's happening in the present moment. Like he's already on to the next thing. I never expect to be remembered. There's there's one of me at every day of their life. You know you go Muse, you go to Most Music, view wherever you go, going to run into another producer that for that day has your ah has has a hand in your and your work and then is gone.
01:05:16
Speaker
And I get that. So when when you get that call, it's really special. That's sweet. yeah Well, um after that New York performance ends, when exactly did you know that something was amiss enough, like that he was unhappy enough to actually scrap the whole thing? We just started the edit. It was days. It was they got back in LA. We didn't get very far. We had loaded the footage um because, you know, the LA taping is in February of the next year, February 7th. So it's less than two months.
01:05:41
Speaker
So and, you know, we took the break for the holidays, came back, planned it out and Warners to their word paid for it all. yeah I think I got the money back. I think ended up doing all right in the end there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Very cool.
01:05:53
Speaker
All right. Well, moving into that, you know, speedy re-taping, like you're saying is less than two months later, this time out in Los Angeles. um For this shoot, you guys captured Rod Stewart on the first day. Yeah.
01:06:04
Speaker
A comedian, Dennis Leary on the second day, another unplugged anomaly. Super cool. And then Neil on day three, which I'm assuming that was an intentionally cautious choice to slot him by himself on the last day. But what were your thoughts going into this take two filming session? Were you kind of tight and nervous or were you like, hey, let's imagine it going well?
01:06:25
Speaker
No, i knew i knew they wouldn't they wouldn't have another bad day, right? knew that that was going to be fine. I do miss that he would you know he was a little prickly at the Ed Sullivan because things weren't going well. And I think that acerbic wit is missing from, the the you know if anything, the LA one's too good. Yeah, yeah.
01:06:45
Speaker
We like an unruly Neil. One of the things I really love about this one, even watching it more than just listening to it, is something that always kind of makes me also think about the 10,000 Maniacs episode that was filmed just a couple months later.
01:06:57
Speaker
i love the way he starts off by playing some songs by himself, but visually the stage is already full with other instruments and empty chairs. So there's this immediate, it establishes this like cool drama of there being more to come, even though you don't know what it's going to be yet.
01:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, so not by design, by the way. That's just because once you sit people in a circle around an artist, you can't bring gear on enough. So it really is set it and forget it. You don't want to mess with instruments once they're under the lights and once they're tuned and everyone's. But but yes, it does tell a story and it foreshadows.
01:07:30
Speaker
It's more out of necessity than than anything else. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Well, that that that makes sense. Do you feel like though, like sometimes I find myself, you know, I've got pretty much every Unplugged album that that's been put out and and even like I feverishly search for like B-sides and stuff like that. But I still finding myself wanting to watch as much as listen to things. And I was curious if you feel like Unplugged is remembered that way as a television show first and the albums kind of coming second? Or do you think its legacy sometimes gets a little too overshadowed with the albums?
01:08:04
Speaker
It's hard for me to answer because I spent infinitely more time editing video than audio on these shows. Oh, yeah. oh I've watched them a thousand times before they've aired. So for me, it's always married.
01:08:15
Speaker
But then it's great to hear it divorced a video, you know, to hear Nirvana in a store, in a mall or in a car. I was on just on a road trip with a friend of mine, and for whatever reason, we were in the desert and there was no internet. and The only thing he had downloaded was Alice in Chains and their entire catalog, including the unplugged. whenever a song came out, i'd be like, oh, yeah, it lifted a little flash of memory. So for me, it's always the visual um is tied to the music, but I think it's great.
01:08:40
Speaker
In fact, last night, do you know the show Paradise on... um Hulu is it? Oh, my wife just asked me about that yesterday. That's so funny you mentioned that, but I have not seen anything about it. but I don't want to give any spoilers, but it's a cool show.
01:08:52
Speaker
And James Marsden plays the president of the United States. And he clearly loves eighty s and 90s music. And he's making a mixtape for his son. And he goes over to a pile of CDs. And the one on top of all of the ones you could have picked was the Springsteen Plugged.
01:09:08
Speaker
the top and I was like, I haven't seen that in a while. That is amazing. That's so funny that the Springsteen album actually just came up in a conversation.
01:09:18
Speaker
i was interviewing Speech and I was asking him if there were any issues with them having a plugged turntable because just a few months prior was when Springsteen did his very, very electric unplugged.
01:09:30
Speaker
To Speech's credit, he was like, yeah, no, nothing happened. But ah it was funny. We talked about the Springsteen quote unquote unplugged for a while because it's a great Bruce springsteen show but like man i think he only had the acoustic for like what two songs my heart that that went down the two nights before taping he land on call my boss joel gallen and said you know i think it was in no disrespect to to eric but i think bruce didn't want to be seen as the guy sitting in a chair playing an acoustic guitar when he just put out these two rock records with a new band remember this is post yeah that's the other band yeah
01:10:03
Speaker
Lucky, you know, Human Touch and Lucky Town. Yeah. um So um so I think he just realized, like, this is not the time to do this. And I was so we get to the venue the next day and I'm moping around.
01:10:19
Speaker
And very nicely, Lando and Bruce walk over to me and say, here's the set list. And I look at it and I don't know why Bruce cared what I thought, but he said, what do you think? And I stopped. I said, I've been so thinking about the unplugged set list. I'm sure this is great, but I've had in my head a very different show.
01:10:37
Speaker
And he looked at me and he said, what were you thinking? And I mentioned, I think, ah Fade Away, a couple of others. And he looked at me and said, we'll do that someday.
01:10:48
Speaker
And that was nice of him. But but yeah, that what that pivot was, I think, right for him, not great for us. But we, you know, we called it plugged in and look, that's you get some art director and screenwriter decided to put on top of the president's piles of CDs and parallels the other night. Exactly. Yeah.
01:11:09
Speaker
It lives on its legacy. That's so cool. Well, cool. um Well, going back to the the the Neil Young, the actual ah the set list for you know his his l LA show, The Redo, um much like the previous taping, this set list you know still has a lot of new tracks from Harvest Moon, but he still threw in you know some rarities. You have Stringman that it was previously unreleased, again, like a hurricane on Pumporgan.
01:11:33
Speaker
Um, and the ones that I really loved, which were the acoustic versions of the trans songs, like transformer man sample and hold, and even, you know, the cover of Mr. Soul, you had to be freaking out when he's pulling this sort of stuff out. Did you have a favorite moment or two from, from that night, from the second recording?
01:11:49
Speaker
I will say of all, like, we don't have a ton of, you know, sometimes I've had input into a set list and artists will ask an opinion or take a suggestion, but this was handed and was like, oh, wow, this is something.
01:12:02
Speaker
And I didn't know all the songs because ah because of the Transformers album wasn't something I was really big on at the time. So I trusted the artist and just learned the acoustic versions first and then went and listened to them and realized how crazy it was that he made those those arrangements.
01:12:18
Speaker
Very cool. Okay. Well, I have a last question for you, but is there anything with the with the Neil Young stuff that that we haven't covered that kind of um sticks out in your mind? Because I you know always attach words like saga and mythos to the Neil Young unplugged stuff, just because it seems like there's so many stories layered in there.
01:12:36
Speaker
We've got the Jones Beach Timothy Hutton. We've got the drummer who's on the run from the law. We've got the... Neil, who's on the run from the show. We've got the Nils Laughlin retape and we've got the thank you phone. That that checks all my stories.
01:12:51
Speaker
I'm good. Yeah. And I will say just as a little Easter egg, um I've always been curious because, you know, sometimes there's people are like, man, I haven't even seen like one shot of the New York show. But I remember there was a kind of documentary you guys did one season. I think it was like 94 And there's a shot of y'all in the control room and Neil's got, you know, the, uh, the red plaid shirt and you're like, Oh, that's not the l LA show. So, so there is technically footage that was aired in an unplugged product of this night, but you know, it's only one second long and there's no audio but it's at least there.
01:13:27
Speaker
Oh, wow. I forgot about that. I, I do love the album cover shot of Neil on the one that eventually came out that really super close shot with the sunglasses and the harmonic. I thought that was bad-ass.
01:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, it really is. He, ah those sunglasses are kind of, it's interesting because they're kind of traveling. He wears them for only a couple songs. And then there's one song, I forget which one it is, but his sister Astrid, who's singing background vocals. yeah It looks like she's wearing the exact same sunglasses. So you're like, Oh, okay.
01:13:54
Speaker
Hopefully nobody got pink eye or anything from passing those around. only unplugged to feature a broom solo. So that's. Oh my goodness. Is that the first time you've ever had to figure out how to, how to mic a broom or how to shoot a broom? Yeah. Yeah.
01:14:08
Speaker
Yeah. Sounded great. Really. yeah Oh, wow. Surprisingly with everything else going on stage, you're like, oh wow. No, like visually and audio wise, like it gets there. But that broom made me realize that Letterman blew it because the scrub board and the jug would have sounded great.
01:14:23
Speaker
Right. There's a method to Neil's madness. Just trust Follow him. following All right. Well, last question for you, um just to circle back around to your extended unplugged timeline. um Always get such a kick out of the fact that I can mention any artist or episode to you and you seem to always have these fun little memory or anecdote locked and loaded. So I wanted to close out with just a super quick lightning round style check in where I give you an artist name and you free associate any unplugged related memory.
01:14:49
Speaker
And I've not given you these names beforehand. So yeah. all right. So first up, possibly my favorite episode to have never gotten an album release was something you remember about Fiona Apple. Oh, man.
01:15:00
Speaker
Loved her. Loved that band. I remember we were at BAM and I gave her that spiel I talked to you about earlier about like, don't leave until you're happy. So I said, look, we're here for you.
01:15:11
Speaker
Do songs over. Don't leave until you're happy. And she looked at me and said, you don't know me very well, do you? I'll never forget that. Oh my gosh, that is perfect. That is quintessential. Okay, very cool.
Memorable Unplugged Moments
01:15:23
Speaker
Cover of Angel by Hendrix is top. Right? ah but Oh my goodness. I love the way she introduced it by saying, if you're Jimi Hendrix fan, you're either going to love me or hate me after this. So you're like, all right, fair enough.
01:15:35
Speaker
um Next, how about the Yo Unplugged episode? What's something from that one? that That was one that was brought to, was not my idea, but so happy that I think Moses from Yo and Sherry Howell from the talent department.
01:15:48
Speaker
Sherry had introduced me to Pops Cool Love, the band. Sure, the deodorant is memorable. The taken off the shirt is memorable, but I'll never forget being in rehearsal at SIR with Pops Cool Love and LL and Light and everybody. And LL gets up for the first time with a live band.
01:16:04
Speaker
And they're running through the song and he has an idea and he goes, stop, stop, stop, rewind that. And we all looked at him and laughed. I'm like, they're people play it again. Right. And that's when he had the idea to throw in the, do, do, do, do the piano riff. So that I've watched from Otis Redding. Okay.
01:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. The Otis Wedding via Black Crows at that riff. Him saying rewind it always when I think when I think El. That's perfect. All right. An early unplug season one. Just absolute stunner, in my opinion. Give me something on Elton John.
01:16:37
Speaker
I got to sit on the piano bench with him during sound, like unreal. You know, the outfit was not what we had anticipated. He had a pink tracksuit with the bogeys of Chicago hat.
01:16:49
Speaker
Right. But it worked. No, he was, I mean, I ended up working for Elton years later on Spectacle. He was the exec producer. Oh, yeah. Elvis Costello. um He almost didn't make it. He was coming from Atlantic City, I believe, oh and um was meant to take a helicopter in, but there was fog. So we weren't sure because that was like an afternoon taping. It wasn't an evening. I think we were stacking them still at that point. yeah Yeah. There was a point where we were scared he wasn't going to make it.
01:17:15
Speaker
So that's what I remember about. that but also um he's one of those artists that was commented like i haven't seen an audience's face this clearly in a long time i play very big rooms with very bright lights this is a bit like so so to think that an artist could have that little butterfly in their stomach after all these years was was my right how about the vibey erica badu episode from 97 i think that's another kind of under the radar jim I think what I loved about that, i loved every, I love the setting. You know, we were at band in her neighborhood. It's in Fort green.
01:17:46
Speaker
So what I loved and what I remember is Erica walked to the show, which I thought was great. Wow. Yeah. Just came in the side door and was like Hey, come on in, man. Is that such a good episode? I'm so glad you picked that out.
01:17:57
Speaker
Um, I thought we really nailed the set. I had talked to Tom McPhillips. I said, you know, we're in a theater, make it, give it like, let's turn some flats around and make it look like we just did ah a production that wrapped and, you know, referenced Porgy and and the clothesline things.
01:18:12
Speaker
And it just felt really, it felt nice. It felt right. and I love Bam. I love that room. Yeah, yeah. Unplugged Alice in Chains, obviously Jewel a bunch. But Erica walking ah to the show was great.
01:18:24
Speaker
That's fantastic. Last one, fair warning. This one may be a little too specific, but since I have you, going ask you. So a narrowly specific ask, I want a story about Tony Bennett, but try to make it one that involves one of his unaired duets with either Evan Dando or Jay Maskis.
01:18:41
Speaker
Well, you know, the whole Tony Genesis, I'll take some credit for it because I was home watching Tony on Letterman and he had done, you know, MTV had put him on the VMAs and so much of that was Tony's son, Danny, making him hit with a younger audience, right? Being smart.
01:18:57
Speaker
presented, I think, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the VMAs that year. right. yeah Yeah, yeah. And Letterman made a comment about Tony being hip with the kids. And Tony just said, you know, I've been unplugged my whole life.
01:19:07
Speaker
And I jumped out of bed. i was like, holy shit, we have to do this. I ran into Doug Herzog's office the next day. And he's like yeah, let's do it. So we went and saw Donnie Einer, and we saw Danny Bennett, and everyone was in.
01:19:20
Speaker
But at first, the thinking was, come up with a list of songs that Tony could cover. Chili Peppers, um And it just didn't, like, you know, you you go through the exercise and it's like, this isn't going to work, right? This isn't, let let's let him do what he does and find some artists that can do.
01:19:36
Speaker
and And I think there was a real split because on one side, you've got Katie Lang, Elvis Costello, right? People right in his wheelhouse, people he's worked with and has a relationship with. And then we said, well, how about something a little more edgy and alternative?
01:19:49
Speaker
And it was Evan Dandau and Jay Mascus. Yeah. And it didn't all sit well together is all could say. Tony was more comfortable with the other two. The other two were more comfortable with Tony, right? Elvis and Kate. I think Evan and Jay, not so much.
01:20:05
Speaker
And we had too many songs. So at the end of the day, let's not make someone not look their best. yeah It was nerve wracking, I think. Yeah. So we just decided to go with the show that made the most sense. It was it was too too wide a kind of shift from all these American Songbook standards, A.D. Lang or K.D. Lang, and all this.
01:20:26
Speaker
And then, you know, it it felt it felt like we were trying too hard. Yeah, yeah. I apologize to the artists. We should have seen that that was kind of a roll of the dice that maybe didn't didn't work.
01:20:38
Speaker
this Tony turned his back to camera a lot because he's he's going to play to the people sitting behind him. We always, you know, they're props to us, right? They're in the background and the camera is the home audience.
01:20:48
Speaker
But Tony kept turning around and Beth McCarthy Miller was directing and she said, we should call the show Tony's Back. Yeah. It's really funny. Right. Exactly. Double up. That's very good. That's so funny. Yeah. I will say his duet with Jay Maskis finally showed up like, yeah, St. James Infirmary Blues. It finally showed up like in one of Tony's like huge, like 80 disc box sets on on like a bonus thing.
01:21:11
Speaker
But he still never released the Evan Dandoen. I think that one is just lost to the sands of time. I'm trying to remember what he what he did with Evan. um ah Solitude. In My Solitude. My solitude. yeah Yeah. Yeah. I think it was really hard to get there.
01:21:25
Speaker
Yeah. We struggled with that. and And Evan was cool about it when we told him, you know, he got to sing with Tony Bennett and he was, he was jazzed and he got that experience. Right. And to his credit was cool when we made that hard decision.
01:21:36
Speaker
And it's not like anything's missing from the Tony Bennett episode. I mean, we're talking fantastic episode from beginning to end album of the year Grammy, you know, it it was doing all right. It wasn't missing anything. Oh my God.
01:21:47
Speaker
Right. Ralph Sharon. Oh. And for those of you who ah don't follow Alex's incredible CV, you actually worked on Tony Bennett's last show as well, right? With Lady Gaga. we got i got yeah i had i had worked with Lady Gaga in the interims.
01:22:02
Speaker
There was a long time between Tony's Unplugged and that show. But yeah, I had done a few shows with Gaga. So Bobby, her manager, ah when when Tony and Gaga decided to try to do, you it was in the middle of COVID said, hey, we want to want to get Tony while he still can sing. And and they called me individually.
01:22:18
Speaker
Bobby called me and and I was at The Tonight Show at the time. I just taken on directing Jimmy's show for a minute. And I said, I don't think they're going to let me do this because you're so you're going to sell it to MTV, CBS, right? It's a CBS special.
01:22:31
Speaker
But, you know, called my agent and they said, look, you're on hiatus that week. It's I think it was Olympics or something. And it's it's not a late night show. It's not a conflict. So it's like, oh, my God. And it's right across the street from Fallon. So i was able to walk you know back and forth for meetings.
01:22:45
Speaker
and um and it was great but it but covid came roaring back that week and we almost didn't we did we shot two shows we almost didn't make it but it was such an honor to be there and weirdly i was involved with the show so finishing the thought it was such an honor to film tony's last ever performance ah beyond anything um yeah that My top of my resume. um But um there's an event in New York called Robin Hood. It's a charity. It's the biggest charity in New York.
01:23:15
Speaker
They do an amazing job ah in New York and they raise tons of money every year at the Javits Center. They have their annual event. And for a while I produced that event and it was there that Tony met Gaga. She was our...
01:23:29
Speaker
a headliner one year and Tony was in the audience. like He might've done a song at the beginning of the night. It's a dinner. It's a charity event. you know yeah Tony was there. And apparently at the end of the night, he called her. I didn't witness any of this. She's she's told the story on air years later.
01:23:43
Speaker
He called her into the dressing room and said, you're a jazz singer. And she said, do an album with me. So that the fact that that seed was planted on something I was witness to. oh And when Gaga did her last shows at Roseland, we closed Roseland and we did live stream.
01:23:57
Speaker
She climbed up in the balcony to just say hi to Tony, who was sitting in the in a table, and then to be with them when they did their final performance together. It's such an honor to have seen all those moments from Tony's Unplugged, through Gaga, through that. Wow.
01:24:14
Speaker
wow Yeah. What a a, what a lineage, what a legacy that is, that is incredible. Well, Alex, again, thank you so much for talking with me today, letting me pick your brain about not only these three Neil Young stories, but also just having a little fun with all the extra unplugged stories as well. So thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it so, so much.
01:24:33
Speaker
Thanks. Thanks for doing this. It's, it's surreal to listen to. and it' You know so much more about this show than I do. It's scary. Awesome. Well, I take that as the literal highest compliment. So thank you so much.
01:24:46
Speaker
Oh, man, what an incredibly fun and enlightening conversation about Neil's three Unplugged episodes and how cool to hear Alex get inspired to start the ball rolling on Neil maybe changing his tune and finally releasing the 92 Unplugged performance from the Ed Sullivan.
01:25:01
Speaker
Come on, shaky. Give us the goods. All right. That'll do it for this episode.
Contests and Closing Remarks
01:25:05
Speaker
Don't forget about our Heart of Gold Vinyl giveaway contest with our friends over at Killphonic. To enter, just send me an email at unpluggedrevisited at gmail.com telling me one thing you like about Neil Young's Unplugged.
01:25:17
Speaker
And you can double your chances by rating and reviewing Unplugged Revisited wherever you stream the show and attaching a screenshot of that to your email. If you want to connect with the show for any questions, corrections, or anything else, you can email me at unpluggedrevisited at gmail.com or leave a voicemail by calling 234-REVISIT or reach out on social media.
01:25:38
Speaker
And hey, if you've got any questions about any Unplugged stories you've heard over the years or just have a burning inquiry about your own favorite episode that you'd love to get Alex's insight on, I mean, he was essentially running the show for the entire glorious 90s run.
01:25:53
Speaker
Send those over to me, and who knows? If we get enough of them, maybe we'll have Alex back on soon enough and do a listener Q&A type of thing. I'm sure he won't mind me volunteering him for that type of thing. As always, please take a moment to follow the pod on your platform of choice so that it'll pop into your feed when it goes live.
01:26:10
Speaker
And join me here again in two weeks for part two of the Young Plugs saga as we dig even deeper into the songs and stories behind Neil's odd trio of spectacular Unplugged episodes.
01:26:21
Speaker
Until then, my friends, be kind to yourself and look out for each other. Unplugged Revisited is a son of a butch production. The show is written and hosted by me, Will Hodge.
01:26:31
Speaker
The show is edited by Amanda Hodge and myself. Podcast artwork is by Jordan Ullam, and you can find more of their incredible work at jordanulam.design. That's J-O-R-D-A-N-U-L-L-O-M.design.
01:26:45
Speaker
That is the beauty of Unplugged.