Fred Neil

BEFORE READING FURTHER: Click  https://youtu.be/ukH6kFismKI to hear Fred Neil sing while you read ...

Bleecker & MacDougal - 1965: vagabond recluse Fred Neil

Fred Neil (1936-2001):

Recluse Without A Cause?

“It’s really true how nothin’ matters.
No mad mad world, no mad hatters.
No one’s pitchin’ ‘cause 
There ain’t no batters … in Coconut Grove“
-John Sebastian

by Jamie Jobb

Nobody epitomized the tumultuous musical gestalt of the 1960s more than fabled folk singer Fred Neil.  You could say he was famously anonymous in his day -- sometimes a vagabond, most times a recluse. Certainly many musicians of that expressive era considered him their reluctant mentor and go-to guru.  His tunes did not lead him to fame and fortune, but they did wonders for others who played and sang them.

Stephen Stills credits Fred Neil for inspiring the well-known guitar chops of Crosby Still Nash Etc.  Jefferson Airplane played Fred’s tunes in concert and dedicated album cuts to him. Harry Nilsson drove one Fred Neil song straight into the Top Ten after it gained massive popularity as the movie-theme for “Midnight Cowboy”.  

Indeed, Bob Dylan was Fred’s opening act, and while Dylan’s fame continues unabated, Fred Neil’s name is seldom recalled half a century later.

I recall Fred Neil because he was my introduction to folk songs and coffeehouses.  Hell, he was my introduction to coffee!  

We needed it to stay up late listening to Fred on stage in those days when I was a high school senior/community college student working nights in Miami.  He played at a coffeehouse right across the highway from where we worked, so we’d catch his last set after our shift. Little did we know how uniquely precious were those fleeting moments of our youthful musical good fortune.  

Fred Neil was one cool catfish who could drag his voice down among the lowest bottom feeders, not quite as deep as Paul Robeson -- but very deep. The uniquely talented “singer-songwriter's singer-songwriter,” as he was often called, crafted his lasting legacy as an original Greenwich Village folk-rock pioneer and mythic South Florida recluse.

He was prolific in all popular vernacular American musical styles -- blues, folk, jazz, gospel, pop, rock -- and he often fused them into tunes.  That was impressive enough but up close in performance, his audience stood in absolute awe of his effortless twelve-string guitar soaring above his haunting bottomless basso profundo.  Neil was an exceptional singer-songwriter but his songs were just his bread-and-butter.  His exquisitely enthused twelve-string riffs laid a perfect counterpoint to the dark gravy of his deep vocals.  

When I took Music Appreciation 101 in college, our professor (a serious cellist) asked us what kind of music we liked.  I said “Fred Neil”. She played in the University Orchestra, was a professor of music history. She knew who I was talking about; so did most of the students.  

Splitting time between The Village and The Grove, Fred Neil’s performing career lasted just nine years.  I was lucky enough to see him at the very beginning when he performed solo or partnered with Vince Martin.  They most often appeared at The Flick, a Coral Gables coffeehouse near the University of Miami. But they also sang at the Gaslight South in more bohemian Coconut Grove, where Neil would hide out when he chose to shun the demanding scene in Greenwich Village. 

Fred captured his ambivalence toward both The Village and The Grove in his classic tune “Other Side to This Life” (full lyrics below). Funny, the only way out that tune offered him was “Nashville way down in Tennessee” … Country music’s not his thang!

In those days, Coconut Grove was an idyllic subtropical suburban village of beaches, breezy palm trees, sailboats and “just a little bit of rain”.  Situated right on Biscayne Bay, it had its own bayfront park running the length of the main “commercial” area, basically a bunch of quaint, oddball shops.  The famous Coconut Grove Playhouse was still drawing New York actors to town, a kind of Florida Winter Stock to counter New England’s vibrant Summer Stock.

The Grove was also home of the huge Dinner Key Auditorium where Ray Charles frequently performed and The Doors’ Jim Morrison was once famously arrested for indecent exposure.  Fred Neil was built for close-up coffeehouse appreciation … Dinner Key was not his thang! 

Last used as a sound stage for the tv show “Burn Notice”, the huge structure recently was demolished as Coconut Grove continues to redevelop itself into a chic and internationally pricey enclave in the 21st Century.  Fred Neil is “Gone Again” and Bohemia left the neighborhood a long time ago.

Fred Neil became a working mentor for some of the most eclectic and inventive musical innovators of the sixties folk-rock era -- Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, John Sebastian, Gram Parsons, Paul Kantner, Jesse Colin Young … and a young midwesterner who often opened for Martin and Neil when they worked coffeehouses in Greenwich Village.  That opening act: Bob Dylan.

* * *

“Fred played a big dreadnought guitar, lot of percussion
in his playing, piercing driving rhythm – a one-man-band,
a kick-in-the-head singing voice. He did fierce versions 
of hybrid chain-gang songs and whomped the audience into 
a frenzy. I’d heard stuff about him, that he was an errant sailor, 
harbored a skiff in Florida, was an underground cop, 
had hooker friends and a shadowy past. He’d come up to Nashville,
drop off songs that he wrote and then head for New York
where he’d lay low, wait for something to blow over
and fill up his pockets with wampum.”
– Bob Dylan

* * *

More than a few rock groups -- the Byrds, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills Nash Young -- recorded Fred Neil tunes and acknowledged his influence.  David Crosby in classic understatement said: “He just didn’t fit into this commercial world.

How could he, with lyrics like these? “You waltz in here with a handful of gimme / mouthful of ‘much obliged’ / I go home feelin’ empty / from all your signifies” … 

Or these:  “Yonder come the blues / dressed in high-heeled shoes / yonder come the blues running after you” … 

Fred Neil’s long ride into reclusive obscurity was fueled not only by a disdain for fame, but also by cocaine, which ironically also turned into a gold mine tune for him.  You’ve probably heard more than a couple people cover “Cocaine” if you’re old enough to have encountered such things. 

Fred Neil preferred his life off stage outside the limelight, and that ascetic attitude forced him to shun the acclaim that was his simply for the taking.  Instead he retired to Summerland Key where he joined with marine biologist Richard O’Barry, who trained dolphins for the “Flipper” tv show, to establish a non-profit dolphin-rescue organization in 1970.  Finally, the guy who was a folk hero in The Village and The Grove, now had A Cause. 

Fred Neil sang that he was “searching for the dolphins in the sea … and sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me?”  Indeed, some of us do. 

Fred Neil and his trusty twelve-string at Montreaux Folk Festival

Fred’s Aimless Anthem: “Other Side to This Life”

“Would you like to know a secret just between you and me I don't know where I'm going next I don't know where I'm gonna be But that's the other side to this life I've been leadin’ But that's the other side of this life Well my whole world's in an uproar My own world's upside down  I don't know where I'm going  But I'm always bummin’ around And that's another side to this life I've been leadin’ And that's another side of this life Well, I don't know what I'm doin’ Half the time I don't know where I'll go I think I'll get me a sailin’ boat And sail the Gulf of Mexico

And that's another side to this life I've been leadin’ And that's another side of this life Well, I think I'll go to Nashville  Down to Tennessee The ten-cent life I been leadin’ here Gonna be the death of me  But that's the other side to this life I've been leadin’ And that's another side of this life Would you like to know a secret just between you and me I don't know where I'm going next I don't know where I'm gonna be But that's another side to this life I've been leadin’ But that's another side of this life …

Vince Martin and Fred Neil at The Flick, fabled Coral Gables coffeehouse

Fred Neil Links

Official Fred website with lots of great detail.  Fantastic resource for Fred’s memory:
http://www.fredneil.com/

Fred Neil’s wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Neil

“The Other Side of Greenwich Village”
http://www.furious.com/perfect/folkniks.html

An anthem in the 1960s: “Tear Down The Walls” by Vince Martin and Fred Neil:
https://youtu.be/317vwHcJwHM

Recent interviews with Vince Martin and Bob Ingram talking about “Tear Down The Walls” - “a precursor of what was to come”
https://youtu.be/8hvybXO705k

The very basso profundo Paul Robeson sings “Ol’ Man River” from Showboat (1936):
https://youtu.be/eh9WayN7R-s

John Sebastian interview about Fred’s influence on his career:
http://www.fredneil.com/john-sebastian/

Interview with Fred himself
http://www.fredneil.com/interview-with-fred-neil/

LA Times obituary:
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jul/10/local/me-20591