neil young

neil young was pissed. he wanted only to write songs with us, but he had somehow been elected to run the royalty committee and his focus was too split to do both. 7 of us sat in a small room each holding our instruments and tried a couple of times to get something going, but just as a groove was about to fall into place the door would burst open and some business type would bark out fragmented details about a fiscal urgency. neil tried to get me to take the post, but i threw it back to him like a hot potato. 'i'm not interested in numbers.', i told him. 'neither am i!!' he yelled back. 'goddammit!' he said to no one. he started shuffling the piles of paper in front of him trying to make some sense of them. the rest of us exchanged stealthy looks. it was so typical of neil to allow himself to get roped into helping outside of his area of expertise and then be pissed about it later. it wasn't the first time a writing session had to be scrubbed. we all just sat there waiting for it to become obvious to neil.

the door opened again and someone brought in flyers about a kidnapped child. i knew in my gut that the keyboard player had done it. i feigned disinterest and said something funny and cruel to make him think it didn't matter to me. he perked up instantly and gave me a fleshy grin. i decided i would follow him back to his house and rescue the child. i made small talk with him until we all started to pack up. it didn't matter to me if i killed him.