Jimmy McDonough Quotes

People keep telling me that my music has helped them through periods of their life, and I've never understood how that happens, but it must happen because of THE WAY I do it. The way I do things is I give enough facts to make people get a feeling --- and then they can associate their own lives with these images that make it seem to apply directly to them. Like the song was written for them. They can't believe it's so directly and obviously about their life. That's because it's not so specific that it eliminates them. (Neil Young)

You really can't go through life wanting to be liked. It's the hardest lesson to learn. Once you say, "Fuck it, I don't care," once you've got that attitude, then it's easy to relax, to talk, laugh, cry, whatever.

Young has a personal relationship with electricity. In Europe, where the electrical current is sixty cycles, not fifty, he can pinpoint the fluctuation --- by degrees. It dumbfounded Cragg. "He'll say, 'Larry, there's a hundred volts coming out of the wall, isn't there?' I'll go measure it, and yeah, sure --- he can hear the difference."

Shakey's innovations are everywhere. Intent on controlling amp volume from his guitar instead of the amp, Young had a remote device designed called the Whizzer. Guitarists marvel at the stomp box that lies onstage at Young's feet: a byzantine gang of effects that can be utilized without any degradation to the original signal. Just constructing the box's angular red wooden housing to Young's extreme specifications had craftsmen pulling their hair out.

Cradled in a stand in front of the amps is the fuse for the dynamite, Young's trademark ax--Old Black, a '53 Gold Top Les Paul some knot-head daubed with black paint eons ago. Old Black's features include a Bigsby wang bar, which pulls strings and bends notes, and Firebird picking so sensitive you can talk through it. It's a demonic instrument. "Old black doesn't sound like any other guitar," said Cragg, shaking his head.

For Cragg, Old Black is a nightmare. Young won't permit the ancient frets to be changed, likes his strings old and used, and the Bigsby causes the guitar to go out of tune constantly. "At Sound check, everything will work great. Neil picks up th

-You don't like confrontation?
Sometimes I'm really down for confrontation. It's kind of like a changing thing. I don't know why.

Must be something that makes me differentiate between things I want to be straight-ahead about, and things that I DON'T want to be straight-ahead about. I think that most people have that mechanism. But some people handle it differently- they just go, "Well, this is something I don't wanna do that I gotta do." Some people think, "This is something I don't wanna do that I'm gonna do- but kinda half-assed." I think I fall into THAT category, heh heh heh.