Nils Lofgren stays busy juggling Springsteen, Neil Young and more
Longtime memberships in both Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and Neil Young’s Crazy Horse are certainly feathers in Nils Lofgren’s musical hat. But juggling the two, along with his own solo career, can lead to plenty of conflicts and collisions.
The multi-instrumentalist — who’s currently on the road with Springsteen — has a solution for that, however.
“My joke is to go to management of both bands and say, ‘Guys, I’ve spent 90 years here — more than 50 with Neil, 50 with Bruce and E Street. I’ve been a good boy and good musician. Can you just let me make the touring schedule for both of your artists for a couple of years?’” Lofgren, 71, says by phone from the E Street Band tour stop in Seattle.
“And the managers just laugh at me and say, ‘Get lost…’,” he adds with a laugh.
These have, however, been very busy times for Lofgren, even with the pandemic lockdowns keeping him, unusually, off the road.
Young has been the primary focus of that work, recording two studio albums — “Barn” in 2021 and “World Record” last year, with Crazy Horse. In addition Lofgren and Crazy Horse mates Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot have put together a compilation of their own material called “All Roads Lead Home” that comes out Friday, March 31. And Lofgren has finished a new solo album, “Mountains,” which he plans to release this summer.
“Yeah, arguably this is one of the business recording times I’ve had,” acknowledges Lofgren, a Chicago native raised in Bethesda, Md., who started his career in the band Grin before hooking up with Young for 1970’s seminal “After the Gold Rush” album. He began his solo career in 1975 while going in and out of Young’s bands, joining Springsteen and company in 1984 and also playing in Ringo Starr’s first two All-starr Bands and Foreigner frontman Lou Gramm’s solo group.
“The big difference has been the live stuff was gone,” notes Lofgren, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 with the E Street Band. “Usually I’m out on the road doing my solo shows in the nightclubs or out with the various bands, and that all went away because of the pandemic. So it did give me more time to stay at home, safe, and work on these different projects.
“I’m blessed to be part of two really great bands, and occasionally I’ve been lucky through the years to moonlight with Willie Nelson and Branford Marsalis and other great people. And it was probably a blessing I didn’t have a hit record when I was 18; it might have killed me and would certainly have precluded going out with other great bands.”
The 10-track “All Roads Lead Home” features three songs each by Lofgren (whose brother and Grin bandmate Tom appears on two), Molina and Talbot, with an acoustic version of “Song of the Seasons” from the “Barn” album by Young as a bonus track. Lofgren says there was some talk about doing a double album of their individual tracks until Young recommended “a kind of cream of the crop” from their respective material.
“I was recording one, ‘You Will Never Know,’” Lofgren recalls, “and all of a sudden Ralphie goes, ‘Nils, I need more than one. In fact, I need at least three,’ and I went, ‘Ralphie…!’ But I was in writing mode anyway, so it worked out.” Lofgren had already poked into his archives for “You Will Never Know” and also found “Fill My Cup,” which he says dates back to the early ‘80s, when he was working on his “Wonderland” album. He was assisted by longtime engineer Jamison Weddle, while regular bassist Kevin Mccormick contributed to the tracks.
“Me and Billy and Ralphie would exchange ideas,” Lofgren says of the process. “I’d send them roughs of what I was doing and just have some sonic suggestions and this and that, which we do all the time in Crazy Horse, anyway. We were really proud to be able to make something like this.”
Though Young was a long hold-out for returning to live performance, there has been some recent talk about Crazy Horse touring again. That’s a moot point for Lofgren, however; he’s committed to the E Street Band — on the road for the first time since early 2017 — for the balance of the year. But he’s hardly complaining about that.
“It’s magic, man,” says Lofgren, who despite maintaining tight personal protocols missed the group’s Houston show in February due to COVID — one of several band members who have been temporarily sidelined by the virus. “It’s easy to be honored and excited to be out touring again with Bruce and E Street. We’re feeling great about it. From my perspective the band and the audience is as inspiring as ever. It’s all great.”