Issues had been a wrestle round Washington D.C. within the early Seventies. The house of go-go music wasn’t precisely a music mecca in America, and with hardcore punk nonetheless a decade away, D.C. didn’t have a lot in the best way of a musical id. Nils Lofgren felt that stifling feeling. The younger guitarist had his personal band, Grin, however was languishing within the comparatively modest music scene across the Nation’s Capital.
In got here Neil Younger, the long-lasting singer-songwriter who was proper in the midst of becoming a member of Crosby, Stills, and Nash as a fourth member. When Younger got here to city, Lofgren made positive that he met the legendary guitar participant and singer. The connection ultimately led a 19-year-old Lofgren to look on After the Gold Rush, amongst many future Younger releases.
“I met Neil once I Was 17, on the Cellar Door (in Washington, D.C.),” Lofgren shares. “Shortly after I met him on Loopy Horse’s first tour, I used to be out in California. I appeared Neil up. True to his phrase, he took me below his wing. He launched me to David Briggs, his producer. Lengthy story brief, after quite a lot of Hollywood misadventure, I moved in with David in Topanga Canyon. So, I noticed quite a lot of Neil.”
Lofgren remembers the pair as being very variety but additionally stern with Lofgren once they wanted to be. One instance got here when the 2 had been brutally candid with the younger guitarist. “They had been my large brother mentors at a really younger age,” Lofgren provides. “They had been very encouraging and really sincere. I keep in mind my band, Grin, grew to become the home band on the Topanga Canyon Corral. Neil got here down and jammed with us one evening, and we actually hit it off and had been enjoying nice.”
Including: “So, the following day, I used to be at his home with David Briggs. And we had been feeling fairly good, you realize? Neil and David had been telling us how good the drummer was and the way a lot Neil loved enjoying with us. Being the hard-ass, show-biz, music-biz associates they had been, they mentioned, ‘The band’s fairly good, however you want a greater bass participant.’”
“I used to be crestfallen as a result of we had been a staff — a household. However I used to be solely 17, and I had Neil Younger and David Briggs — who had moved me into his dwelling with the plan of getting me a file deal and producing us — what are you going to say to that? ‘Oh, you guys don’t know what you’re speaking about?’ So, we obtained our bass participant, Bob Gordon,” Lofgren concludes. “Sadly, we misplaced Bob quite a few years in the past.”
After Grin did not take off, Lofgren renewed his reference to Younger on 1975’s Tonight’s the Evening as part of Younger’s new offshoot of Loopy Horse, The Monica Metropolis Flyers. After a protracted interval with Bruce Springsteen as a member of the E Avenue Band, Lofgren rejoined Loopy Horse for good in 2018.
