Neil Young offers creative insight at SXSW

AUSTIN, Texas _ Neil Young provided South by Southwest attendees with rare insight into his songwriting genius during a touching, inspirational keynote conversation Thursday (March 16).
"The one constant is not to let yourself get distracted" when a song is trying to find you, he said. Once you have an idea with music, Young continued, nothing else matters but that idea. "Your responsibility to the muse is to follow it.... There's nothing more important ... Commitments are one of the worst things for music making _ they're annoying."
However, Young stressed that clearing the way for the song to come through should never be confused with laboring or forcing the issue: "I'm proudest of my work when it comes really fast [and] I don't edit it. It's the purest form of creativity... you just have to be there."
And, he pointed out, you can't worry about the result while you're in the midst of creating. Afterwards, he said, you can "scrap it, record it or dump it in the editing bin," but, he added, "When you're terrified, you know you're on the right track."
In a session moderated by Harp Magazine senior editor Jaan Uhelszki, Young talked about how his songwriting process has changed over the decades. "Now, there are big breaks and [then] it's just like a dam bursting," he noted. "I used to write a song every day."
Young was joined for the session by director Jonathan Demme, who helmed "Neil Young/Heart of Gold," a musical portrait filmed at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium last year. Demme, who first worked with Young for the music for the film "Philadelphia," had been very eager to collaborate again with one of his musical heroes.
"I started harrassing him about a year ago: `Anything you need filmed?,'" Demme recalled. The idea of the movie was to capture Young's ideal concert. From the start, "Neil would be a character," Demme says. "With the script, as it were, Neil would take us on a musical journey. It has a very strong narrative."
During the hour-long address, Young spoke movingly and passionately about how playing with rock outfit Crazy Horse inspires passion like no other project, but says he simply could never physically sustain touring with them on any regular basis. "I'd be dead," he said. During those performances, he says, "I'm almost passing out _ I'm hyperventilating. There's a chilling wind blowing even though the lights make it 110 degrees."
As for what's next musically for Young, he gave a few clues that after the relatively sedate "Prairie Wind," he may be ready to rock. "I'm waking up with this massive, distorted hideous noise [in my head] and it makes me feel like I'm going home," he said.