[music]

Automated: Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kerry Nolan: This is All Of It. I'm Kerry Nolan, filling in for Alison Stewart. We're going to kick off this hour with a little solo music from Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Nils Lofgren.

[MUSIC - Nils Lofgren: We Better Find It]

One, two, three,

What did we do with it,

Yeah, where did it go,

We better find it,

We better find it,

Smack dab in the middle of something hopeful,

We were stumbling into a whisper,

Of daring sanity,

Oh my, what a day,

What a gift that would be,

So don’t walk away sisters, brothers.

Kerry Nolan: That's a track called We Better Find It off Nils Lofgren's new solo record, Mountains, which a review in PopMatters said was full of glorious guitar playing, heartfelt songs and a soulful look at the human condition. It's also full of collaborators, including Ringo Starr plus two voices who haven't really had anything to do with each other for a long time. Neil Young, who Nils played with on Young's iconic 1970 album after the Gold Rush and the late David Crosby. The songs on Mountains are contemplative explorations taken from chapters in Nils Lofgren's life.

The 15 years between his first and second dates with his now wife, Amy, who also is a producer on this record, struggles with addiction and alcoholism, told through the difficult imagery of recovery without ever coming out and saying it. Then other stories like the dramatic initial track called Ain't the Truth Enough, which is told from the perspective of a wife and mother whose husband is just returning home from the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Joining me now to talk about the album, Mountains, please welcome Nils Lofgren. I am so excited to talk to you about this record.

Nils Lofgren: Hi, Kerry. Hopefully, I'll know all the answers. I was going to say, I couldn't believe the Better Find It track. That's a demo of me writing this song in my living room. I have no idea how you found that.

Kerry Nolan: We have our ways. [laughs]

Nils Lofgren: I would encourage you to use the album versions when you see fit. [laughs]

Kerry Nolan: Absolutely, we will.

Nils Lofgren: They're going to sound a lot better than me writing this song. Hey, you have to start somewhere. That was where that one began. It's great to be on NPR. Big fan of NPR.

Kerry Nolan: Thank you. We're big fans of you. My personal timeline with your music goes back to, gosh, I think when you opened for South Side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes in Boston back in the late '70s. You made me sit up and take notice.

Nils Lofgren: Good. I hit the road in '68, so I was lucky in that whole era. No internet, no cell phone. The whole thing was to learn to play in front of people, and the companies would give you tour support to open for everybody and anybody and just travel the country as an opening act, which we love to do.

Kerry Nolan: The recording process for this record, that was born out of the pandemic precautions, right?

Nils Lofgren: Yes. We, like everyone, had our own PTSD, like everyone on the planet, between that and then you mix in American politics. It was an awful time. I did love being home with Amy and our dogs and our son Dylan down the road. It's the first time in my life I never went and played and sang for people in three and a half years ever. That bothered me more than I thought. I got to the garage studio and put on BB King, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Albert King, and just plug in a guitar and jam along with their records.

After a while, that wasn't enough, and I felt like I had to do something professionally since I wasn't going to be able to tour safely.

I challenged myself to write an album, whatever came out, just to be honest about it and share it. That's Mountains.

Kerry Nolan: What was the hardest shift about writing and recording music under such isolated conditions?

Nils Lofgren: I'm used to being on the road and writing on the road, getting ideas, refining stuff. Because when you're on tour, you call home, "Doing okay, Amy? Our dog's okay? Our son's okay?" Then I cannot help. I have the day to myself, and I write, I create, I walk around, get a coffee, just feel the vibe of the town I'm in. I'm excited to play for people. It's my favorite part of my job by far. Whether it's a 400-seat club or a giant stadium with some of the other bands I'm in, I love to perform. Once I decided, I was excited like, "Hey, here's something you can do in a pandemic and you can do it safely."

Jamie Weddle, my dear friend and great engineer, would come over. We test, we wear masks unless I was singing. We kept it as safe as possible. Then, of course, thanks to technology, I could send some tracks to friends around the country to add bass, drums, whatever, sing. Cindy Mizelle did come to our home for five, six days. A dear friend of ours, Amy, went and picked her up, actually, at a casino outside of LA at the end of her Billy Ocean tour. She sang great on 6 of the 10 tracks. It was great to have her around. A lot of the other stuff, I would send out and have friends play on it.

A great example was Ain't the Truth Enough, the opening track. I got the riff and the idea. I tuned the Martin G-35 down to open G tuning, took the low E down to a C, the 4 chord, came up with this cool riff and I had the title, but I wanted something deeper. My wife, Amy, has been on social media fighting with people that don't believe in women's rights, human rights, children's rights, civil rights, all of it. There's been a war on women my entire life, probably since the beginning of mankind, and it's getting worse, at least here in America. I got the idea of a mother, a fierce mom with a kid dealing with a husband just home from the January 6th insurrection.

It gave the song a lot more weight. Although it was a cool title and a good riff, the song has a lot more weight because of the subject matter.

Kerry Nolan: Let's listen to a little bit of it. This is Ain't the Truth Enough from Nils Lofgren's brand new record, Mountains.

[MUSIC - Nils Lofgren: Ain't the Truth Enough]

I wonder where you been,

The trouble you stepped in,

You come home drunk on wild,

Scaring your wife and child,

My God what did you do,

Ain’t the truth enough,

Ain’t the truth enough for you,

Me and the truth would always carry us through,

If not now what do we do,

If not now what say you.

Kerry Nolan: That's just a little snippet of Ain't the Truth Enough from Nils Lofgren's album Mountains. Nils was kind enough to join us here this afternoon. Nils, do you have any guiding questions or guardrails or I don't know, rules of thumb about approaching topics like not just politics, but depression, addiction, all those bluesy things that find their way into rock and roll?

Nils Lofgren: Actually, as the subject matter gets deeper like that, I tend to want to make sure I'm as brutally honest as possible and write about my experiences, not pretend other people to what they may know or feel. I think if I write honestly about my experiences, it'll be okay. I don't set out to write political stuff. Once in a while, it happens. It's like a happy accident like that song was. Now, are you playing the album or are you playing the home versions you found? For some reason, I'm not hearing the tracks from the Mountain album. Is that a design?

Kerry Nolan: No, I think they are all from the album. Yes.

Nils Lofgren: You're hearing a whole band and everything?

Kerry Nolan: Oh, I'm hearing great, wonderful guitar and great drums. I'm hearing all of it.

Nils Lofgren: Good. There's some diabolical thing that's sending me, sounds like me and a bad guitar in a home demo.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, no, no, no.

Nils Lofgren: As long as you're broadcasting the album, I'm happy.

Kerry Nolan: Absolutely, we're broadcasting the album. That's not even an issue.

Nils Lofgren: All right, good.

Kerry Nolan: When you were working on Ain't The Truth Enough, I guess the question is, what parts of your brain and your memories did you find yourself reaching for in order to get your head around the point of view that is expressed in this?

Nils Lofgren: Again, I'm married to a very fierce warrior woman that has been fighting for all rights a long time. It was nice to ignore my own experience other than the obvious, which is who knows why that men can't just see women as equals? I certainly do. In fact, if it was up to me, I think men have done a pretty poor job running the planet to date. We're in danger of destroying the planet. We've killed millions of species of animals. I'd be fine with letting women take over indefinitely and seeing how it goes.

Kerry Nolan: I like your attitude. [laughs]

Nils Lofgren: They're not letting me make those decisions, but it was nice to hook into. Look, I've got three brothers. They're fathers. They've got wives that are mothers. I've got nieces, nephews. I've watched Amy be a mom since I met her. Dylan was only 5 years old when we met about 27 years ago for the second time, actually. That's another story. It was easy to look at the worry, the sorrow, the rage and the cautious hope Amy would have dealing with people on social media, like-minded and not. It unburdened me from my own experience so much and wrote about someone that I've watched deal with being a mother for so long.

It wasn't hard to imagine how the story would go from a woman that's a mom that believes in the truth dealing with a husband that doesn't.

Kerry Nolan: Let's hear a little bit of one of those personally tough songs that you've written for this record. This is a track called Only Ticket Out.

[MUSIC - Nils Lofgren: Only Ticket Out]

Shudder up ‘round midnight,

Dirty hammers in my head,

I’m sticky razed and shakin’,

Stinkin’ like the dead,

Five shots of gutter whiskey,

Gets me into the shower,

Dress for a cold night of menace,

I gotta score in an hour,

Still the clock keeps on tickin’,

And I begin to figure out.

Kerry Nolan: Those drums, the call and the response between the guitar and the vocals, it's a really powerful song on this record.

Nils Lofgren: Thank you. Again, I was thinking about Only Ticket Out. Personally, I loved alcohol. [chuckles] I guess I still do, but I got to a point almost 36 years ago where I realized I loved it so much that either I figured out how to live without it or I wasn't going to be around long. There's a lot of help out there for people that are struggling. Just ask for help. It's there, but you got to want it. I wasn't sure I was going to write this song, but again, Only Ticket Out, I started crafting it, writing words, then they just poured out of me. It became quite a lot of lyrics, but it was really colorful and brutal and quite autobiographical.

I thought it was cathartic for me to just rather than be cautious and change the words and soften the message, just say, "Look, this is honest. It is a brutal thing." It's sadly a rare thing. Most people don't ask for help. I was one of the lucky ones. I guess I got scared enough to ask for help and I got it. Hey, it's funny, when it comes to alcohol and drugs, you can talk it to death and everybody does. It can be a very complex issue for any individual but at the end of the day, I heard a great thing once at Father Martin's Havre de Grace rehab. It was a fundraiser. I was out there playing. He's a great guy that had a famous thing called Chalk Talk where he talks about alcoholism and how you deal with it.

Anyway, I heard a famous person get up, a country western singer, and he had a great line. He said, "You can talk it to death but at the end of the day, you get three choices. You get cleaned up, you get locked up, or you get covered up." Every day you're working on one of them. Which one are you working on today? Personally, today I'm pretty happy. I'm working on staying cleaned up. The whole point is not to white-knuckle it. Life needs to be fun. You have to find the joy. You have to find the love and the joy and the humor. Being in my business, of course, it's easy to find the humor about it because it's more prevalent than in some other businesses.

Anyway, it was very autobiographical. Part of this journey with Mountains was, don't edit yourself. If you feel it, just share it. Whatever people think came out better than I thought, Kerry, but I was going to share it, nonetheless. That was a real powerful semi-autobiographical tune. Got touring on my mind, sorry.

Kerry Nolan: No doubt you have touring on your mind. We got a text from a listener who said, "I heard Nils back in 1971 with his band, Grin, when he was playing junior high school dances in the suburbs of DC. Word was among us eighth graders that this was a guy to watch. When he turned out into the E Street Band many years later, it was a great validation of our 13-year-old musical taste. Congratulations and thanks for the great career."

Nils Lofgren: God bless you for saying that. Like any kid a lot in Middle America, Bethesda, Maryland, at 14, I started getting away from the classical accordion, which I've studied since I was 5. Thanks, Mom and Dad for paying for 10 years of lessons. Our folks danced in our home. They played music all the time. They understood the therapeutic healing qualities of it. When any of us, all three of my younger brothers play and sing quite well. Tommy was the other pro that was in Grin and still plays and writes and is great. I try to get him out on the road with me whenever I can.

When I discovered rock and roll, it was a hobby. We loved The Beatles, The Stones, Hendrix, on and on. None of us thought you could do that for a living. I think I was 16, I saw Jimi Hendrix's experience and I left Jimi's show possessed with the notion of trying it professionally. Here I am 55 years later.

Kerry Nolan: We're having a listening party today with Nils Lofgren, whose new album is called Mountains. We're going to take a quick break and come back, play a little more music, talk a little bit more with Nils. This is All Of It. Stay with us.

[music]

Kerry Nolan: Thanks for joining us. It's All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kerry Nolan in for Allison Stewart. We are having a listening party with Nils Lofgren. He has a new album out. It's called Mountains. We've talked about songs, Nils, where you put yourself in someone else's head. Let's talk about, I Remember Her Name, which is about the 15 years between your first date with your now wife, Amy, a longtime Jersey girl, and your second date. Let's listen to a little bit. Listeners, I want to make sure that you hear David Crosby's backup vocals when we get to the chorus. This is, I remember Her Name.

[MUSIC - Nils Lofgren: I Remember Her Name]

In the dark wee hours,

At the Empress Motel,

Jersey surf crashin’,

Asbury sea smell,

She starts kissing me,

The universe moved,

A happy I know,

No heaven could improve,

Band bus off to Boston,

Sweet girl you must come,

She said "my Mom’d kill me,

I got a job needs done",

I say "gimme their numbers,

I’ll square it I swear,

Wherever I’m goin’ I know,

I’ll want you there",

20 no’s and 20 kisses she waved and smiled,

As the bus pulled out,

I felt lost felt wild lost and wild,

Lost and wild raging hope and fear,

I prayed I’d see her again,

Still, I remember her name,

I remember her name,

Her green eyes firing,

In a wavy sea of red,

Daydream of waking,

With her sleepin' in our bed,

Used to drive to Jersey,

Every month or so,

Played the same clubs too often,

Hopin’ she’d show,

15 hard years fell by,

A few lifetimes of hurt,

She never made it,

My broke heart was dirt.

Kerry Nolan: Nils, that's so great. What was it like to write the story of those 15 years?

Nils Lofgren: It was funny. We tell the story a lot. Very few people find somebody that special and then don't ever see them again, but 15 years later, get a second chance. That was very faithful and lucky, and we both know it. Now Amy will complain that that night I never asked her for her phone number. She's right, but I will counter with, I begged her 200 times at 6:00 AM. Get on the band bus with me to Boston so we can keep visiting and I'll send her home on a train or a plane the next day. For her to say, "I'm not going to Boston," made me feel like she wasn't that interested. She said her mom would kill her, her boss, she had a job. It was 4:30 in the morning, I was drinking. I said, "Give me their phone numbers. I'll call them right now and square it." There was a lot going on.

She decided waking her mom up and her boss at 4:30 AM wasn't in her best interest. I didn't get a chance to square it. Hey, 15 years later I'm playing because I'm on the road a lot. A great rock club in Scottsdale, the Rocking Horse, do a show with a roaring electric band, my brother's in the band. At the end of the night, she walks up and says, "Hi, remember me?" I remembered a lot more about that first night than she did, and of course, it was at the Stone Pony, a very historic landmark.

Kerry Nolan: It is.

Nils Lofgren: Of course, I have a lot of history, but when it comes to history at the Stone Pony, I think that's at the top of the list because I did get a second chance, thank God. We've been together 27 years now.

Kerry Nolan: Do you remember the first time you played the song for Amy, what did she think?

Nils Lofgren: You know what? She saw the lyrics on my writing table once and she got a kick out of them. Amy's very-- she doesn't go out of the way to hear what I'm doing. I can't tell you she's heard the whole song, but she did read the lyrics and did acknowledge that I was correct. [chuckles] The story was correct. Sometimes I'll bring her out, there are songs I've asked her to listen to and she gives me some great input as a fan of music that's not burdened with the recording process because sometimes she gets so close to it.

A great example was the song, Nothin’s Easy, which is about her.

It's just about Armageddon-type world and everything's blown up around you, getting to walk hand in hand with a soulmate. It could even be a sibling, a parent, an animal, whatever, but for me it was Amy and there's this tulip living and breathing coming out of the crack in the bombed-out road. It was a haunting song, and I knew I had to ask Neil Young to sing it, but when I played it for her in the studio, she said, "Hey, Neil's voice needs to be louder." What's that thing on the-- That swishing sound? That's the brushes on the snare drum. She said, "That's in the way of stuff."

I'm so close to it, and I don't hear it that way, but I went back, I lowered the snares, brought Neil up a bit. It was really useful to get her opinions on stuff because they're very honest and they're not burdened with me and Jamie hearing these things eight hours a day. As you get so deep down in it, sometimes you lose your perspective.

Kerry Nolan: Let's hear a little bit from the album Mountains. This is Nothin's Easy.

[MUSIC - Nils Lofgren: Nothin's Easy]

I saw every bomb explode,

She’s the tulip left in the road,

She’s the sky high over the dark,

A warrior always hits her mark,

And I love how her love always burns,

As I walk the hurt in this world,

People searchin’ with no clue,

I take comfort in one truth,

Nothin’s easy ‘cept you,

Nothin’s easy ‘cept you.

Kerry Nolan: From the album Mountains, that is Nothin's Easy from Nils Lofgren. Nils joining us this afternoon for a bit of a listening party, and you can hear Neil Young singing back up there. I also loved the brush on the drums. I thought that was such a lovely little bit of punctuation.

Nils Lofgren: Yes, and when everything's in its right place, then it works great. Another thing, I'm a beginning pedal steel player, but I put this pedal steel part on and it's another thing Amy said, "That pedal steel should be louder." We turned it up so you could hear it. It's really interesting because even if you have a lot of good parts, if you don't mix them correctly, you miss them.

Kerry Nolan: Yes, that's it.

Nils Lofgren: I was glad to get the feedback and it really helped that final mix be what it is and work.

Kerry Nolan: Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that you have been on the road for over a year now with Bruce Springsteen, the E Street Band. You've been with them for a gazillion years. You're still in the midst of working on this album when you got the invite to head back out on the road. In the minute or so that we have left, what were you thinking? Did that change the production schedule or did you just gently put it aside?

Nils Lofgren: No, I've been working on the record all last year and I started writing it before that. I wanted to have all the songs written and sing and play them live in the studio, which I did. Because if you get the core performance, then it's golden to me. I can work on, and it's fun to craft little other touches if the core performance is live but Bruce gave us the word, we were touring and I don't know, maybe it was in the fall. I knew that as long as I got the record done by last Christmas, I'd be good, and I did. I got it done. January 6th, I left home for rehearsals and of course, there's a lot going on to get the record out.

Getting the hard work of recording it and mixing it and being happy with it, we got that done before I even headed to rehearsals, which was the goal. When Bruce said we're going out, it made me want to work a little harder and get more excited about getting it complete because once I'm out on the road with a great band, that's all I want to do. When I have time off, I want to go home. I want to be with Amy and the dogs, see Dylan. I don't want to, "Oh, let me rush out and play a couple of shows on my own." I embrace being in a great band. It's nice not to be the band leader every day of your life, and I embrace it.

Kerry Nolan: I want to thank you so much for taking time out this afternoon to talk to us on All Of It. The album is called Mountains from singer, songwriter, guitarist, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Nils Lofgren. Thank you so much once again.

Nils Lofgren: Thank you so much for spreading the word on Mountains. This is a lot of fun. I could have done it for an hour and a half.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, next time it's--

Nils Lofgren: Maybe next time.

Kerry Nolan: Absolutely. I would love that. [chuckles]

Nils Lofgren: Thank you so much.

Kerry Nolan: We're going to go out on a cover of a Bruce Springsteen song. It's called Back in Your Arms, as done by Nils Lofgren.

[MUSIC - Nils Lofgren: Back in Your Arms]

Oh, in my dream our love was lost,

I lived by luck and fate,

I carried you inside of me,

Prayed it wouldn’t be too late,

Now I’m standing on this empty road,

Where nothing moves but the wind,

And honey I just wanna be,

Back in your arms,

Back in your arms again,

Back in your arms,

Back in your arms again,

Oh, once I was your treasure, your treasure,

And I saw your face in every star,

But these promises we make at night, promise,

Oh, that’s all they are,

Unless we fill them with faith and love,

Empty as the howling wind,

And honey I just wanna be,

Back in your arms.

 

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