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The Magician With the Heart of Gold
In the end, everything turned out just fine in the OR, and Young quickly returned to his New York hotel to recuperate. Two days later, headed for a local restaurant on his first trip out after the surgery, Young managed half a block before hearing his foot make a strange sucking sound with each step. He looked down to see his leg washed in blood. The point of entry for his aneurysm repair -- his femoral artery -- had suddenly reopened, a very rare condition that may not be preventable but is treatable.Elliot Roberts, Young's manager, called frantically for an ambulance on his cell phone. Back at his hotel and feeling like he was about to faint, Young lay on the floor to get his head low. His body shaking, he placed his fingers on the opening to stop the bleeding. "Now I know how people feel when they get shot," he says.
When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics put him on a stretcher. One of the EMS workers asked Young to cross his arms on his chest. "I don't like that position," he said, joking. "We're not going to lose you," the worker responded, even as Young's blood pressure plummeted and the paramedics worked to stabilize him.
At New York-Presbyterian, a member of Young's surgery team waited in the ER. He, too, promised the singer that they wouldn't lose him. Still, the doctor held the puncture site closed with his own hands for 30 minutes, and it eventually resealed itself without the need for additional procedures. Through it all, Young never lost consciousness.
When Young was finally moved to a room, he requested that someone from the hospital stay by his side. "I was kind of worried about what was going to happen next," he says. The hospital sent a volunteer, an elderly woman who assured him, "You came very close to leaving, but you're fine now. It's just going to get better." The two talked about religion, Young telling her his faith was based in nature, in the moon, the forest, trees and animals. The woman listened attentively, but reminded him not to forget to thank "the master."
"She shepherded me through, like an escort," Young says. The last song he wrote for his album was "When God Made Me," which harks back in tone to a 17th-century hymn. "All these words came flooding to me," he says. "I was thinking, Wow, I've never written anything like that before." Only later did Young learn that his Nashville recording studio had been a church in a prior incarnation.
Young wishes he'd never had his aneurysm, of course, but concedes that great things have come as a result. Time called Prairie Wind an "exceedingly personal album [that] contains some of the finest music of his legendary career." The Warner Bros. project was nominated for two Grammy Awards: for best rock album and best solo rock vocal performance. And Young's friend, Academy Award-winning movie director Jonathan Demme, who first worked with him on Philadelphia, filmed two Young shows at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium last August for a powerful documentary called Neil Young: Heart of Gold, just released in theaters, and on DVD in May. "He's really a magician," Demme says. "I think of him as someone who responds creatively and emotionally to everything he comes in contact with."
Young knows that his lasting image is that of a rock'n'roller, but hopes the album and the film will show another side of him. "It's not about rebellion, but about life, and not just my own," he says. "Everybody has had their trials, and they teach you something, make you a better person. Mine just happen to have been extreme."
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