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Pegi Young Takes Her Turn |
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Written by Jaan Uhelszki
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Tuesday, 15 January 2008 |
Neil did help me with my album, but then it was my turn," laughs Pegi
Young, but really meaning it. Perched on a grey industrial chair, her
black legging-clad legs are tucked under her slender body, while an
oversized black mohair sweater keeps out the Bay Area chill. Young
still retains that same open friendliness of your favorite barkeep—she
met her future husband in 1974 when she was bartending at his favorite
watering hole near Santa Cruz, California—but there's a canniness mixed
in with the coyness.
What she is referring to is when Neil suffered his aneurysm— they were
on their way to Nashville in February of 2005 to work on her album. "I
had planned to do it then and when the aneurysm business all happened,
the next thing you know we're in Nashville making a record, and it's
his record. I had to wait my turn again to work with the band and
obviously the priority was to get him back."
And luckily he did come back from the brink, and within a few
months she began the process of recording her album, first going in the
studio in Northern California three different times,then flying down to
Los Angeles for a single day to finish it up. On the record she turns
lyrical poetry into candid autobiographical missives of great insight
and pain (think Janis Joplin tempered with the sensitivity of Joni
Mitchell, with the songcraft of Carly Simon).
"He ended up sticking his head in the door and staying," she
says of her deliberate tact to not make any uncomfortable,
familial-based requests for work. "He sings backgrounds on a couple of
my songs. 'Sometimes Like a River,' that's just him. I didn't know he
was going to do that. He was just going in to put a harp part on it and
he ended up singing alongside me with that 'loving you is the sweetest
thing that I know.' Isn't that so beautiful? I just love that."
And while he never signed on to actually play on the disc, her
famous husband did offer advice—albeit in his dry-humored way—on the
day she was to begin recording: "I was in bed with the sheets pulled
over my head going, 'I can't do this, I can't do this.' And Neil is
like, 'What are you worried about? It's just world-class musicians all
over the place.' Yeah, well God, thanks a lot for reminding me."
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 15 January 2008 )
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