Wild Tales (40 page)

While
Columbia Records was working on the album, I got proofs of the cover back from their art department, with Joel’s double-rainbow image on it. And there at the end of the rainbow was … a bar code! I couldn’t believe it. I’d made the entire album on the strength of that photograph. I picked up the phone and called
Walter Yetnikoff, the president of Columbia at the time.

“Good record you made, kid,” he said.

“Thanks, but I have a problem, Walter.”

He grew impatient. “Oh, yeah? How can I help? What, what,
what
?”

“You know what’s supposed to be at the end of a rainbow?” I asked. “A pot of gold—
not a bar code.
Physically, I can’t look at this cover. Tell you what, for my next record, the whole fucking front cover can be a bar code, but I’d appreciate it if, this time, you’ll give me a break.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line while he thought about my request. Then he said, “Don’t give me that artsy-craftsy shit.”

That soulless little fucker. It was the worst possible response he could have made.

“Artsy-craftsy shit? Talk to you later, Walter.” I put the phone down, picked it up again, and called my lawyer, Greg Fischbach. “Get me off Columbia,” I instructed him. “I don’t care where I land. I know this sounds crazy, but I’m not going to record for any label that puts a bar code at the end of my rainbow.”

It didn’t take long before we got an offer from
Capitol Records. They were delighted to get a Graham Nash album that was already finished and ready for release. In addition, they were willing to forgo a bar code. Before making the deal, however, I had one more requirement.

I told Greg, “I’ll sign with Capitol if they let me listen to
Gene Vincent’s original two-track of ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula.’ ”

Now, as a record maker, I would be furious if anyone passed our master tapes over a playback head, because every time you do so, you lose clarity. It may not be evident until the twentieth time, but it breaks down. Take my word for it. In retrospect, I should not have asked Capitol to accommodate me, and they probably should have refused. But there it was, “Be-Bop-a-Lula” in the 1950s tape box, right at my fingertips. I listened to it at the Capitol Towers, in their beautiful studio, with giant speakers turned up
fucking loud.
I wanted to
hear
that song. And it sounded—fantastic! One of the greatest records ever made. Two-track,
live.
Are you kidding me! Brilliant stuff. So I signed with Capitol, put out
Earth & Sky
, and it didn’t have a bar code at the end of the rainbow.

Croz was having a more difficult time. He, too, had left his deal at Columbia and found a home, as I had, at Capitol Records. But David wasn’t in any condition to record. His voice was too ragged. It was impossible getting him to concentrate in the studio. He was too out of it. The engineers convinced him to sing next to them at the console to avoid the walk from the studio to the control room, otherwise he would detour into the bathroom to hit the pipe. He’d also negotiated a ridiculous deal. David desperately needed money for drugs, so the record company advanced him a large cash sum, using his house as security. In the end, everything fell apart. The band asked to have their names taken off the project, and Capitol eventually refused to put the record out.

I didn’t know what to do.
Jackson Browne tried to help him with meager results. He literally stood over David at Warren Zevon’s piano in Montecito, trying to coax Croz into finishing a new song called “Delta.” Jackson wouldn’t let him get up or hit the pipe until it was complete. Turns out it was the last song that David wrote—for years.

J
ACKSON AND
I
interacted in other meaningful ways. In 1979, he and
Bonnie Raitt called, wondering if I’d be interested
in assisting with a new cause of theirs. They were working with my old
Guacamole Fund friend,
Tom Campbell, putting together a coalition of musicians to bring awareness to people about the nuclear industry. The movement was called Musicians United for Safe Energy—MUSE.
James Taylor and
John Hall were already part of their artistic nucleus. They asked if I would join the board of the new organization and I immediately accepted.

It was time to get more serious about the state of the environment. Everything was deteriorating at such an alarming rate—the atmosphere, our oceans, wildlife, water supply. Everyone is aware of these issues today, but back then people were basically ignorant about the dangers and long-term consequences of nuclear power. Our goal was to bring them to the world’s attention. Musicians had clout. Kids would listen to us. Even if they only came out for the music, we knew our message would ultimately get through.

Jackson and I warmed up with our first collaborative effort at the Hollywood Bowl on June 14, 1979. It was called Survival Sunday and raised a ton of cash for grassroots antinuke groups across America.
Bruce Springsteen turned out, along with Bonnie, John
Sebastian, John Hall, and an appearance by Stephen, who only days before had done a benefit for
Greenpeace in San Francisco.

Then, at the end of June, we turned up the heat. There had been a partial nuclear meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island power plant in March, which released small amounts of radioactive gasses into the atmosphere. This was catastrophic, a call to arms. A core group of us met in my room at the Chateau Marmont and decided to stage a five-night benefit at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was an insane event to try to pull off, but we dreamed big. We wanted to make a huge impact. But to fill five nights, we needed some big names. Everyone at MUSE leaned on their pals, and we managed to attract a stellar lineup. By early September, we’d filled four nights with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Peter Tosh, Chaka Khan, Carly Simon, James Taylor,
Sweet Honey in the Rock, Nicolette Larson,
Poco, Gil Scott-Heron, Raydio, Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, and, of course, me.

A glaring absence was Crosby, Stills & Nash. Jackson asked me to get the group together, but it seemed like folly so I flat-out refused. I didn’t feel that we had anything to contribute, and there were plenty of unresolved feelings between us. So much of our music depended on how the three of us were relating, and if the bond wasn’t there it was useless to perform.

I went to New York City early in September in an effort to lay down some organizational groundwork. In addition to the five-night concert at the Garden, we planned a rally in Battery Park City for Sunday morning, September 23. A number of us would be on hand to perform, interspersed with speakers to enlighten the crowd. I’d done my own research on the nuclear industry, but
Tom Campbell made sure we were all up to speed. None of us wanted to go into something so important without having all the facts at our fingertips.

A few days before the first concert, I stopped in to visit Jackson in his hotel room. “I hate to tell you this,” he informed me, “but we’re going to have to cancel the fifth night. We just don’t have a headline act.”

I thought this spelled disaster for MUSE. The first three nights would only cover our expenses. Nights four and five were when we’d raise money for the cause. It would be tragic to let that slip away.

“I know things look a little bleak between you, David, and Stephen,” he continued, “but would you reconsider and have CSN take over the fifth night?”

Damn it!

I’d been trying to insulate myself from just such a request. Everything in my life had returned to normal. I was happy with my latest solo album. My marriage was wonderful, I loved being a father, and Susan was pregnant again with our second son, Will. I hadn’t been in touch with Stephen and David for a while. Did I want to set off that time bomb again?

Good Lord!

I thought over what I’d learned in the last few weeks, how the Three Mile Island incident was far worse than what we’d been told. Inevitably, what came out was not the whole truth. The media reported that no one died at Three Mile Island, which is complete bullshit. Independent research revealed horror stories about birth deformities and actual deaths, but they were covered up to avoid panic. The problems we were facing with the nuclear industry were far greater than my differences with Stephen and David.

“Let me give it a try,” I told Jackson.

I called Croz first—he agreed right away—and once I had him, Stephen came on board. They were on the next plane to New York. It was that easy. I had no idea what condition they were in, but they sounded good on the phone, very positive. Plus, they understood all of our kids and families were in danger and wanted to do anything they could to help out.

Now we had the fifth night intact. I hadn’t performed with David and Stephen in a long time, but it was pretty good—not the best, a little ragged around the edges. We didn’t have time to work on recent material, so we stuck with the hits:
“Teach Your Children,”
“Long Time Gone,”
“You Don’t Have to Cry,” and the rest. I also did a solo set earlier in the week.

The concerts, promoted by
Ron Delsener and
Tom Campbell, were incredibly successful. The production team and enormous crew were outstanding. Jackson, Bonnie, James, John, and I did a half dozen press conferences about what we expected, how to spread awareness. Because a benefit of this type was new and unprecedented, we got extraordinary press coverage and turned out the crowds. The rally in Battery Park drew a quarter of a million people. As a result, the nuclear problem became an important social issue. I’d like to say “Mission accomplished,” but lately that phrase gives me the creeps.

The No Nukes concerts, as they were called, were all filmed and recorded. But we didn’t have the kind of funds it would take to
make a movie. Joe Smith convinced Warner Bros. to lend the board of MUSE a half million dollars to make a feature from the footage. Then, at the end of August, Smith cashed in his chit. He said, “You remember that favor I did for you with the money for the movie? Do you think there’s any chance you could get the album out for Christmas?”

Now, I know damn well it takes about three months to prepare an album for release. And that’s a standard album: one artist with an identifiable sound. This was slated to showcase twenty groups with twenty different identities. The request came in a few days before September. I did the calculations: basically an impossibility. To get it out for Christmas, somebody was going to have to work like a fucking maniac. Jackson and I decided that to repay Joe’s kindness we would give it a shot. We brought all the tapes to my studio at
Rudy Records and started to produce a three-record set.

Jackson,
Stanley Johnston, Don Gooch, and I worked our asses off in an around-the-clock marathon. The last week, in an effort to finish, we stayed at it for the entire seven days. I may have had two short naps; otherwise we never went to sleep. It was unlike any drill I’d ever been through. On the last day, heading back to the studio, I was hallucinating like mad and saw a giant blue flash streak across the road. God bless Jackson Browne. At six thirty every morning, he would go home, shower, and take his kid to school before coming right back to the studio, often without eating. And Stephen dropped by for the last three days to help with the mix.

Somehow, we managed to make the right decisions and get the album finished. We had the album cover designed, and delivered it, got all the names on there—twenty major artists who signed off on the project—and got it out on time for Christmas. Needless to say, our efforts paid off. It gave the rock community—meaning all of us—a sense of how powerful our voices could be. And you’ll notice that there hasn’t been a nuclear power plant built since. I’m not saying the No Nukes concerts pulled that off, but we certainly made things difficult for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

I’
D GOTTEN
a taste of that power and liked how it went down. Without wasting time, I got involved with another benefit after No Nukes. A man who worked at the United Nations, Irv Sarnoff, showed up at my studio with a proposal to do something to support people less fortunate than we were. He felt it would be more efficient to funnel money to those in need through local churches, and I agreed. I went away from the meeting committed and enthused, and that night, on the edge of sleep, I mapped out the entire event: who to invite to perform, which people to speak, what organizations to include, the staging, the name. We’d hold it at the Rose Bowl, which held one hundred thousand people, and call it
Peace Sunday. I wanted the pope involved, and I plotted to have every church bell in the world go off at a certain time. Most of the religious leaders backed us immediately, although I remember a bizarre conversation with the Reverend
Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Afterward, he pulled me aside and asked, “What’s Jesus’s cut?”

What’s Jesus’s cut?
Did I just hear him right?

I said, “We’re going to give as much money as we can to all the local churches. I think
that’s
Jesus’s cut.” End of story.