The singer has fire in his belly — with a film about his antiwar tour — but his passion is a hybrid car he thinks will save the planet
The scruffy-looking fellow hunched over a table in a roadside restaurant deep among the redwood forests south of San Francisco does not look like a rock superstar. He has a craggy face, like a weather-beaten farmer, unkempt hair swept back behind his ears, and grey mutton chops; he is wearing combat trousers, trainers and a baggy T-shirt over a modest paunch. Only the big wraparound shades and the legend on his T-shirt — a US patent-office application for the Gibson Flying V guitar — hint that this is one of the most influential musicians of the past 40 years, a figure with a body of work matched only by Bob Dylan.
Neil Young has never much cared for appearances; never needed to, and definitely doesn't now, at the age of 62. He probably looked a lot like this when he met his second wife, Pegi, here, in this same restaurant, more than 30 years ago. She was a waitress, he was a rock star, but she might be forgiven if she had taken him for a passing lumberjack. When he pulls on a huge plaid work shirt at the end of the interview, he looks as if he is about to go and fell some of the giant sequoias outside. Instead, he drives the short distance home in a cream-coloured vintage Mercedes running on biodiesel.
If Young had his way, we would all be driving on green fuel; indeed, he is developing a revolutionary motor vehicle that he hopes, one day soon, will "eliminate roadside refuelling". First, though, he must talk about another project. CSNY: Déjà Vu is the latest film from the director Bernard Shakey. Not to be confused with any of Young's other aliases: Joe Yankee, Joe Canuck, Phil Perspective, Clyde Coil, Dirigible Dan, Dr Shakes, Shakey Deal or plain old Shakey.
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