Vampire Weekend interview

They stand accused of exploiting African music, of capitalising on economic oppression and of being over-hyped. In response they tell Karl McDonald “you can’t win with some people”.

How important is it really, in the après punk era that we live in, to pay your dues? Why is it that so many people need to see the false starts and battle-scars before they will admit to liking a band’s music? How easy is too easy?

Vampire Weekend adorned the cover of Spin Magazine before they had even released their debut. Nine months later, questions still abound about their bona fides. As Columbia University graduates, they are denounced as rich boys. The blog-based mega-hype monster that slung them into the public eye is derided as artificial. And the fact that these wealthy, upstart college kids could have the gall to incorporate the celebratory melodies and rhythms of African music into their sound has annoyed no small number of people, whether they be internet commentators or lead singers in indie rock bands.

Nick Thorburn, former Unicorn and frontman of Islands, was quick to separate his own African-influenced music from Vampire Weekend’s, which he denounced as “parroting the genre”. Stephen Malkmus was less critical of their music, but did feel that they “had it easy”. Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound pulled no punches, painting the band as the beneficiaries of economic oppression.
But politics, as is too easily forgotten, cannot play the guitar. And no matter how many people come out with criticisms of the band’s class or the legitimacy of their African influence, Vampire Weekend still made a clever, refreshing and addictive album. That is something that is too rarely factored into discussions on the matter.

This writer has been engaging in that discourse on the Analogue blog, in print and in the pub with his friends for as long as he has been aware of the band, and has found that there is no such thing as a neutral reading of Vampire Weekend. For this reason, and because the conversation was interesting enough to allow it, the interview will be left in mostly unedited question and answer format. To allow the band to speak for themselves, as it were.

So how’s touring going?

Chris Baio (bassist): It’s been good, we’re in the first week of the tour. It’s our last big tour for this album in Europe. We started in Iceland, in Reykjavik, which was really cool, and then we’ve been in the UK and the shows have been good.
Were you in Iceland before or after the collapse?

C: Yeah sure, the banking stuff. Well it’s hard to tell something like that when you’re just there for a day, but they were saying that the tickets were selling for the festival, and people seemed to be in good spirits.

Have you been playing any new stuff?

Ezra Koenig (singer and guitarist): Yeah, we’ve been playing a couple of new songs, but we’ll have a lot of work to do when we finally get home and start working on another album. We haven’t wanted to do too much stuff live.

One of my friends saw you play in Sweden, and he said that one of your new songs sounds like Animal Collective?

C: A little bit.

E: I could see that, yeah. Definitely more so than some of the older songs.

Is the rest of the stuff a lot different?

E: Well, we still have to work on it, because especially when you get into the studio, there are so many ways you could approach a song. Even if you have ideas for melodies, or little parts, you’ve yet to see how it’ll turn out. But I think the song that he’s probably talking about is fairly different in that it uses some electronic beats. But then, at the end of the day, the way the song is written has a lot in common with what we’ve already done.

Did a lot of the last album only come together in the process of recording it?

C: Some songs, yeah, I think it would depend on the song. We played Oxford Comma at our first show and it’s pretty much identical to how it’s recorded. But then there’s a song like “Kids (Don’t Stand A Chance)” where we didn’t really know where it was going to go until we started recording it. There was a lot of editing and Rostam added a string arrangement later on. The same with “M79”, Rostam finished writing it that morning and we recorded it. So it varies from song to song.

I was wondering, you get a thing with rappers where their first album is all about the struggle on the streets, and then their second album is just about money, because they’re not out there any more… if the first album is based in and around college then…

E: Our first album is kind of about money too. So I don’t know what the second album will be about. But you’re right, a lot of the first album was about college itself specifically, and being college-aged, and all sorts of the issues that surround that age. I mean, our lives have changed a lot since we made that album. That was reflective of what we were doing at the time, which was being students, and having all the time in the world. After that we had jobs, our first real jobs, and then we had this, starting out being a band, being on the road and travelling everywhere. So things have definitely changed. It’s still coming together so it’s hard to say exactly what it’ll be about, but hopefully it’ll still reflect the mental state that you’re in, a few years after the stuff that’s on the first album.

Do you have an opinion on the idea of hype and backlash in general?

E: I think it’s almost become this concept that people are talking about too much. Like I saw this thing recently where people were talking about if there’s going to be a Tina Fey backlash. I don’t know if people follow that here, but her impersonation of Sarah Palin is like this huge thing in America, and she’s really at the top of her game. And people are like, uh oh, there’s going to be a Tina Fey backlash around the next season of 30 Rock [i.e. Fey’s US sitcom]. You get to that point where anything that becomes successful, people start plotting its backlash, it’s almost like a cliché that people repeat. I think it’s very true that some bands can get over-exposed before they’re ready to release an album, and I think if you have all sorts of people criticising you, and breathing down your neck, and you haven’t even released an EP yet, that’s a lot of pressure. And I think some bands have wilted under that pressure. For us, we’ve had people hyping us up as the band you need to hear, your new favourite band, and also saying we’re never going to be able to sell out a two-hundred person venue, since the beginning. So at that point it’s like you instantly have hype and backlash. And I have a feeling that people are going to be talking about hype and backlash with us forever. “Oh Vampire Weekend, they’re still over-hyped”… it’s like, you can’t win with some people.

Do you think it puts undue pressure on the next record?

C: I don’t think so. At the end of the day, it’s going to be us making the record. We didn’t get to where we’ve gotten by worrying about hype or backlash, so why would it matter now?

You get a lot of artists, in our magazine and elsewhere, expressing opinions about you, or about how you came to popularity. Some people say you got it easy, some people say they have no opinion on the matter. How do you react to that, if there’s an artist you listen to, and they’re complaining about Vampire Weekend?

E: I mean, I find it, I don’t know, a little bit pathetic when artists start talking shit about other artists. It’s okay to have an opinion about things in general, and we try to be positive, but when I’ve seen people get into this NME-style shit-talking and bringing that into the world of indie music or whatever you want to call it, it just seems so silly. I think it undermines what you’re trying to do as an artist if you’re just constantly being negative, it’s pointless.

What about Nick Thorburn’s comments?

E: People ask us about that guy, but the truth is, we’ve actually never had any interaction with him. None of us know him, we’re only vaguely aware of his music, and the only time we ever had any interaction with anyone connected to him was other people in his band coming up to us at a festival saying how much they liked us and saying he was an asshole. There are always going to be people who have to get their anger out and express themselves negatively, and usually if you just let them say their piece, it fades away.

I don’t want to keep going on about this, but I have a quote from Bradford Cox from an interview he gave with us a couple of months ago…

E: Sure, let’s hear it.

“Indie rock to me is safe, like college rock in the 80s. It has a lot to do with economic oppression. It has a lot to do with rich kids. When I think of indie rock I think of the sort of bands whose names I won’t mention, appropriating African music.”

E: Well, he’s someone that we’ve met…

C: He was nice in person.

E: Yeah, he was very nice in person. So the truth is, if you hear people pretending that they’re some sort of class warrior, and that they view us as indicative of some sort of economic oppression, and then when they meet us, instead of saying “hey, what’s your background, I’m interested in talking about this”, they just say “hey, you guys are really good”, I mean, that just goes to show how shallow their feelings are about these things. I found that people who are actually interested in understanding what they perceived to be our background, or problems with our band, whether they were journalists or musicians, ended up talking to us, and usually ended up understanding better. I don’t know why someone would want to make those assumptions based on the way we dress or our lyrics. I think as an artist, they need to give people a little more credit than that.

That’s just Bradford I think. He went after a lot of people in that interview.

E: Those people exist outside of music too. They usually have some insecurities, and they express it through demeaning other people, rather than making positive statements about what they want to do. The truth is, if you’re a musician and you think music is boring, all you have to do is make interesting music. And the people who talk about it so much are usually, I find, not the ones who are pushing things forward.

In the context of that comment about oppression, but even outside of it, I was wondering about the idea of taking music born in really harsh circumstances and relocating it to a metropolitan, wealthy situation. What do you think about doing that, should it attract criticism, or should it not be read into that much, to take African music and relocate it to Cape Cod or wherever?

E: I think it’s worth talking about. I think the idea that listening to African music from the perspective of someone who is fortunate enough to live in America and making music that reflects your interest in it is somehow negative, is this twisted, angry way of looking at the world. Again, I find that people who are genuinely interested in talking about class difference and the inequalities of the world economy, tend to look at things in a more positive way, about how you could change things. And one small step towards making the world even a tiny bit better is just to stop thinking about different parts of the world as off-limits or exotic. I think the idea that you can only appreciate African music by associating it somehow with poverty is just as ridiculous as saying you can only listen to African music if you’re some rich safari hunter. It really is nothing to do with it. I hope that people who listen to African music, just because they like the sound of it, would also take it upon themselves to be a moral, ethical person. But, you know, those are two separate things. I find that the people who get angry about an American band being interested in African music aren’t offering any alternative. They tend to be the people who exoticise African music, and ghettoise it, as something that can only be appreciated in this particular way. And that’s not how we talk about the Rolling Stones, it’s not how we talk about Bob Dylan.

So how do you guys relate to African music then? You get a lot of British ska bands in the late 70s, early 80s, talking about bringing something that is sort of ghettoised to other people. And people would complain that they were just white boys ripping off the music, but they considered that they were just bringing the music to people, rather than trying to parody it or whatever. Do you see anything like that in what you’re doing?

C: We’re always quick to acknowledge albums that have influenced us, whatever the genre is, so I think that’s part of bringing it to other people.

Did you form as a band to do African music, or did you just form and it happened to come out that way?

E: More the latter. I mean, we formed as a band with an interest in a lot of different types of music, and one of them was African music. Part of the connection with African music is as simple as playing electric guitar. I mean, if you grew up playing electric guitar, why shouldn’t you be interested in a guitar tradition? Besides British blues rock or something. Like, why not? Why should that be off-limits to your listening or to your influences?

Is there any other influence outside of that that you wished people would notice more?

E: I think on the album, classical and baroque music plays just as much a part as African music, and I think it’s indicative of the mindsets of journalists that people would rather only talk about African music, because for them it seems like this kind of juicy talking point; because they can make it a little controversial, or try to weave in some lightweight politics around it. But the truth is, there are songs on our album where if you listen to the string arrangements, you’d probably be thinking of Beethoven or Mozart.

Did Peter Gabriel ever do the “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” cover?

E: He did, and we’ve heard it, and we’re very excited for it to come out. It’s just been getting delayed as it’s being worked on, but we know it’s going to come out some time.

Did he say “Peter Gabriel” in the song in the end?

C: You’ll have to see.

New Yacht EP & Video

Portlands Yacht have just announced on their myspace blog that they’re releasing an Ep called Summer Song digitally via itunes and on 12″through DFA. Here’s the video for the title track. Don’t forget to check them out at Electric Picnic next week.

YACHT - Summer Song from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.

Dead Flags Single Launch Tonight

Dublin band ‘The Dead Flags‘, are launching their perversely rocking debut single ‘Oh my love! Oh my God!!’ tonight in Whelans. The track (video below) features the bands trademark screwed up lyrics, and rag tag rockabilly style. Tickies are 10 euro, or 8 with this concession.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTxlLtfgnbI]

Port O’Brien

“Port O’Brien is the name of the site of a port on Kodiak Island in Alaska. There used to be a salmon cannery there. It’s where my parents met in the late 60s. Since then, it’s been abandoned, bought out and boarded up probably never to be used again. I liked the image: a once-bustling community where people from all over the world would come, and now it’s been taken over by trees and it’s dissolving into the bay. Kind of beautiful.”

Van Pierszalowski has a knack for writing beautiful songs about the sea. The difference between Van and the myriad others who invoke nautical themes in indie rock, is that Van is actually a fisherman. Every summer, he goes to Kodiak Island to work on his father’s commercial salmon fishing boat. He brings his guitar. A couple of times over the course of the fishing season, he comes ashore and meets up with Cambria Goodwin, head baker at the cannery at Larsen Bay, where they put the musical fruits of their solitude together. This is largely how their album, All We Could Do Was Sing was written.

They’re both Californians by origin. The contrast is stark, but inspirational. “I think that just being so isolated up there all the time just makes you focus on feelings or emotions that you wouldn’t really focus on otherwise. The dichotomy between between being away from everything, and then being in the city the rest of the year is really interesting. I think most of the inspiration comes from that, the difference there. Not just being in Alaska or being at sea, but the transition periods.”

The feeling of being torn between Oakland and Alaska is something that comes across strongly on All We Could Do Was Sing. ‘Fisherman’s Son’ in particular deals with Van’s interior monologue telling him to quit fishing and find a regular job where he doesn’t have to deal with the sea. Being a fisherman’s son is more than just a job, though. You can’t just quit. It can be hard to digest this sort of earnestness when you’re used to heavily ironic or at least distanced nautical metaphors in your indie rock. Using the sea to stand in for everyday tribulations is a level of insulation for a lot of songwriters. There is no insulation with Port O’Brien. There is no literary aspect. It is basically one man’s fears in solitude.

“I understand it definitely, because the sea and the ocean and ships and sailing are pretty easy metaphors to use. And have been used probably more than anything in the history of literature and music and films. I think how we’re different is maybe that we’ve actually been on boats, and been out at sea, and know how to tie knots and navigate with charts. Not saying that we’re better than them or anything, it’s just a different way, writing songs from a more literal standpoint.”

But are they bothered by how affected it can be, in the sense of using it as an image? “It’s kind of annoying, I can’t really lie. So many bands, especially where we’re from, their press photos are them on a boat,” Van says, before Cambria contributes in a dismissive tone: “In sailor costumes.” “Yeah, what the fuck.” “The sea-faring thing is so trendy. If you go into Urban Outfitters, everything has anchors on it, and all kinds of sea-faring things. It’s just funny when you come from the authentic Alaskan bullshit. It’s like… that’s not really what it’s about”. “It’s a bunch of fat, macho, sexist, drunk people on boats. That’s the real situation”.

What about a favourite sea-themed song? “Oh I can think of it. ‘Madeleine-Mary’, by Bonnie Prince Billy. That song is so beautiful. It’s the most haunting thing…” Cambria drifts off. The dynamics between the two, even in conversation, are interesting. They finish each others sentences all the time, but they are different. She tends to speak elusively, with a grain of feeling and three dots at the end of every sentence. Van, on the other hand, deals in definites. “‘Riders On The Storm’ by The Doors. That song kicks ass.”

Chances are, if you’ve heard one Port O’Brien song, it was ‘I Woke Up Today’. It featured on their debut album, as well as All We Could Do Was Sing, and they performed it as part of a Takeaway Show in a karaoke bar in Chinatown a few months ago. It is one of those songs, brimming with the same sort of communal energy as Funeral was a few years ago, and catchier than anything bubblegum pop could throw up. There doesn’t seem to be any secret recipe, however. “It just happened to be the one we wrote that had the most potential to be that way. In the future, maybe there’ll be more like that. That song was like two chords, and so is ‘Pigeonhold’, and ‘Rooftop Song’ is three chords. We like to keep it simple.”

That song’s adoption by the blogging community, along with the strength of their live show, has led to a Port O’Brien’s reputation snowballing. Playing to a fairly empty Tripod as first support for Tapes ‘n’ Tapes made it difficult to imbue their usual bustling energy. “We usually rely pretty heavily on audience participation, teaching people the lyrics to the songs and having them sing with us. This kind of separation between the audience and the band is kinda hard to do. At home we have big crowds all across the West Coast, but in the middle of the country it’s alway like this. It’s fun though.”

One result of their reputation as a live band was their UK tour supporting Modest Mouse last year. “Most of the shows we played in England it seemed like most of the people were just there for Johnny Marr and they didn’t really care that much about the music. But in the US they’re like the top band.” “I kind of fell in love with him”, Cambria adds. “Yeah, I totally fell in love with him. He fell a little bit in love with Cambria too, I didn’t like that too much. We smoked his wife’s pot though, that was amazing.”

That’s a pretty good rock star story. “That’s like our only rock star story. The rest of the time is just reading Star Wars books and listening to Mariah Carey in the van.” “One day on tour, we had a Mariah Carey day, and Van made us listen to E=MC2 on repeat all day.” “It was the longest drive, from San Francisco to Portland, like 13 hours. It was awesome.”

Vampire Weekend’s video for ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’

The video is to coincide with the release of the single on the 18th of August. The start kind of reminds me of one of my favourite 80s movie - ‘the Breakfast club’.

Stephen Malkmus

Stephen Malkmus is in Dublin to play Tripod with his band The Jicks, and we show up mid-afternoon to try to scavenge an interview. After a period of uncertainty and a lengthy discussion, a tattooed motorcycle enthusiast/sound engineer agrees to do us a favour and leads us in. We follow him through a surprisingly elaborate labyrinth of corridors, stairs and lifts to the backstage area where Stephen Malkmus awaits. The quixotic build-up does not help to disperse the mythic aura he has developed in my imagination. Mostly because of this aura, I am too preoccupied with deciding whether it is okay to ask him questions about Pavement to notice him emerging from his dressing room. He is soaked in sweat and wearing a gaudily-coloured hoodie zipped halfway down with no t-shirt underneath. He could still easily pass for a burnt out skater or a hippie in his late twenties. He is in fact forty-two, and one of the most-revered figures in indie rock. You’d never guess, by looking at him. “Are you here for the chat?”

“Show me a word that rhymes with Pavement/And I won’t kill your parents, and roast them on a spit.”
Harness Your Hopes (2000)

“Back then, you feel sort of indestructible and you have all the time in the world. And also there was a feeling of anticipation, that there wasn’t much out there. People were really interested in what we were going to do next on a wide level. I also knew already after we made Slanted + Enchanted, which had a lot more success than what we’d already did, that I had this idea to make this completely different kind of album. So I felt pretty confident.”
“Maybe some groups do that, and they don’t even have any new songs. They’re just sort of blown away that it even happened. And Slanted + Enchanted was kind of like that for me. But I already knew that we were gonna use bass on the next album, and that it was going to sound big and melodic, and have a different colour and a different feeling. Now, it’s more like we have every two years to do this. And we feel often like we’re yelling into a cavern. People are still listening and connecting, but it’s not the same feeling.”
Stephen Malkmus reflects on the difference between making Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and new album Real Emotional Trash. It’s striking how at ease he is with talking about Pavement’s legacy. Chances are, he’s heard every question imaginable about Pavement in the ten or so years since they became defunct. And there are always going to be people shouting for ‘Here’ or ‘Gold Soundz’ at his solo gigs. You’d imagine he’d be tired of it by now. But there is no sense of reluctance whatsoever discernible in his face when I ask him about his old band. He’s aware that The Jicks are never going to make the best-of-all-time lists in music magazines. He’s comfortable with that fact. There is no “let’s talk about what I’m doing now”. In fact, there is a definite air of pride in the way he talks about Pavement.
“There was also less riding on it, in a certain way. Not in the fact that there was less people listening, but now the older you get, time gets a little more precious. It feels like everybody’s got a big life. Everyone in the band’s busy, so you have to say, oh we’ll practice this day. Whereas when you’re 24 or 5 with your friends and you’re all living in the same house, there’s nothing to do except watch TV and go to work and drink beer or whatever. I think that benefits the younger man”


“Of all my stoned digressions, some have mutated into the truth.”
Dragonfly Pie (2008)

Since turning solo, the focus of Malkmus’ expression has shifted away from his lyrics and into the long instrumental parts that characterise Real Emotional Trash. However, despite proggy time-signatures and non-standard tunings, the music still falls slightly short of being fully straight-faced. He is a master of being serious and tongue-in-cheek at the same time with his words, but it is important to recognise that he is witty with his fingers too. Even the devotees amongst the indie rock critics have had some difficulty with the aesthetic, but at this point in his career, he admits that he is really doing it for himself. I ask why he has adopted soloing.
“I like a lot of crazy guitar music from the 70s and the 80s too generally. I generally know my way around the 90s and I didn’t really want to know my way around the 80s. I feel like I know what I like from that time. So the 70s and the late 60s are still a point of discovery for me as a fan of music. There were a lot of records in the wake of albums by the Beatles and Hendrix and Cream and these big bands you never need to hear again, little guys getting it wrong and releasing albums that sank like a stone. I listen to that music more, and that’s led, for better or for worse, to more instrumental parts and more solos. That was kind of the name of the game back then.”
When I try to talk about his lyrics, he becomes almost imperceptibly uncomfortable. Is it worth trying to read deeper meanings into the words he sings? “I don’t know. Yeah, it’s alright. I try to leave it not so narratively… like my friend David Berman in the Silver Jews, his songs are kind of airtight in a certain way. I’m just not capable of that.”
“You can only do what you do, and I’m just kind of a California kid, you know, just a little bit hang loose. I’d like to be in that vague, but more than the sum of its parts sort of area. But sometimes I’ll just be funny. I just wanted to be original I guess. I don’t really care about the meaning. If no-one else is doing it, that’s a good start. Within reason.”

“After the glow, the scene, the stage, the set/Talk becomes slow, but there’s one thing I’ll never forget/Hey, you’ve gotta pay your dues before you pay the rent.”
Range Life (1994)

We get to talking about bands reforming. On My Bloody Valentine: “That’d be fun to see. One of Pavement’s first big shows was with My Bloody Valentine, at this thing called the New Music Seminar in New York, which still goes on. They were great. They were famous for being real loud, of course. And they were. But you had ear-plugs in, of course, which you should at 90% of shows if you’re going to be up the front. So it wasn’t too bad.” He wouldn’t mind seeing the Sex Pistols either. “I think I would go, just because I don’t mind a certain kind of nostalgia. And from reading about it in Mojo, it seems like a genuine thing compared to some reunions. I mean, they genuinely want the money, but they also genuinely love the band and want to play the songs.”
Would a Pavement reunion be good in a nostalgic sense then? “Yeah, I think it would if we did it right. I think if I was going to do something like that, I would just do hit after hit. Whatever a hit is for Pavement. Because you’re going to be playing at some festival with today’s chart-topper, or somebody with at least four hits. So I would just want to play songs that people liked.”
His approach to reforming is not exactly hard-line, and he has no problem conceptualising for conversational purposes, but there is probably no need to start saving for the tickets yet. “I don’t really see it happening for Pavement any time soon. There’s gotta be somebody who doesn’t do it. Besides us, and The Smiths.” I propose that Morrissey is much more fundamentally opposed to the idea than him. “People would love it, but even though it’s a hard ass approach, you gotta hand it to him for sticking to his guns and saying “no amount of money is going to turn me around”. He’s inherited so many Smiths fans, he’s got enough fans for his own thing. He’s not at want for love and attention. ”

“Nine times out of ten, I’m not the guidance type/I’ve been sitting on a fencepost for the brunt of my life”
It Kills (2005)

It doesn’t take very long talking to Stephen Malkmus to notice his encyclopaedic knowledge of music. He loves to talk about it, new bands and forgotten scenes from the 60s alike. He has two or three examples of bands for every point he makes in general conversation. For example, discussing his 2005 album Face The Truth, which is credited just to ‘Stephen Malkmus’, with no mention of the Jicks: “I was hoping that it would have a different feel to it, hopefully a good feel, sort of an improvisational, temporal thing, like a DIY record from the 80s, bands like the Desperate Bicycles or the Homosexuals. These are British bands that were kinda on the outside of punk rock and post-punk, they just said ‘we’ll do everything ourselves, we’ll record ourselves, we’ll do it really cheap and make a 7″ with a black and white cover. Everyone can do it.’ So that was kind of the spirit of that record, not to make it too perfect, and I really didn’t think anyone else deserved to have their name on it.”

Prompted to name some recent favourites, he takes a second to think, and then lists a ream of them. Sebadoh, Polvo, Pissed Jeans, The Cows, Devo, The Cribs (!), Blitzentrapper. He read about Fleet Foxes on Pitchfork, which seems a little weird but makes sense. When pressed as to whether he is ever surprised to find that bands he’s into are citing his music as their biggest influence, he is dismissive. “Generally not. It seems to be with guitar bands, there’s a divide. There’s the angular, Gang of Four ‘dance-punk is cool’ thing. And then there are more song-based guitar bands, who still like it loud, but sing melodically and aren’t too retro. And they like Pavement.”

“It’s surprising with how well known we are that we’ve never had one superstar say they like us. Like Pete Townshend, or like how David Bowie is always coming out for bands, saying the Arcade Fire is great. I guess Radiohead. But they’re like our age. They said they liked it. But not these old geezers. I don’t know why. It’s probably a good thing really. Those geezers, they’re not gonna go out to a gig really unless they’re especially asked and they have a nice air-conditioned place to sit, and it’s private. That’s kinda disappointing. Well, it wouldn’t really make me feel that much better if Neil Young came out and said ‘that’s alright’.”