For the past 35 years with bands like Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse, Crosby Still Nash & Young, as well as throughout his solo career, Neil Young has given the world some of the purest music around. And his brand new album Silver and Gold is pure acoustic Neil.

Q: Neil, as the first song on Silver and Gold says, good to see you.

A: Thanks. Good to see you, too.

Q: The songs on Silver and Gold, they're as intense as any rock and roll that you've ever done, but they're in the style of albums like Harvest and Harvest Moon. When you were writing most of these songs, did you know you wanted to produce them this way or did you try various settings?

A: Most of these songs were written in the last couple of years, maybe the last three years. And I recorded them fairly soon after I wrote them. And the guys playing on them are the same guys playing on all of them, basically. They're just, you know, the right guys for the tunes. And I was into playing that way at the time and had the band come -- I'd write two or three tunes and then they'd come -- they'd fly in and we'd try to do those two or three tunes and the some other ones that I already had that I had tried to record before that didn't get or something. You know, I've got quite a few of them that's kind of hovering out there. So I add a couple of those into the mix so that we got a lot of songs to play. And then they'd come for three days and we'd just play all the songs and... that's it. And then try again when I write some more new ones.

Q: Does your personality have to change in some ways when you're playing with, say, Crazy Horse or Pearl Jam as opposed to when you're in the mode of Silver and Gold?

A: Well, I don't know if my personality changes, but maybe it does. What changes is the songs. The songs drive the whole thing. And I have no control over what the songs are going to be like. I just -- they're just a reflection of what's going on. And I have no control over what's going on (laughs)! So it keeps changing. You know, what can I do with it?

Q: The first song on Silver and Gold, Good to See You, it sounds so direct. It sounds like you had the feeling and you just sat down and wrote the song. Is it ever that simple?

A: Yeah, because that's how that one happened. I wrote that one in my bus in Florida somewhere. There was a thunderstorm and the HORDE tour was playing. And, you know, we had to shut down for half an hour or something. And so I went to my bus and I was in the back. And my voice was real low 'cause I'd been playing with Crazy Horse and screaming and yelling and carrying on. So my voice was real low. And I wrote these -- a couple of songs. Good to See You was one of them. And Without Rings, I think, was one -- the other one that I wrote, either that day or somewhere along in there -- on a big piece of newspaper. I remember I had a piece of newspaper with all this felt-tip marker pen stuff written over top of the other writing. I like to see the writing on top of pictures and other stuff, you know, so when you look at it it's not too imposing. It just looks like a big -- there's nothing there, really. It's just all jumbled looking. It's comfortable to leave it around like that. You don't have to hide it. Where if you write something on a piece of paper, it's like a note, you know. Anyway, that's probably more than you want to know about that (laughs).

Q: Neil, a couple of the songs on the new album date back to the early '80s. One is the title track, Silver and Gold. Why would a song like that go unrecorded all these years?

A: Well, Silver and Gold I think I wrote back in -- I don't know 1981 or '82. And I did record it several times. I tried it several ways. And it was such a nice -- it's just such a song, you know. It just kind of lives with the guitar. It's just there. And it's always a kind of song you do it the first time, it's fine, it sounds great. And then you do it the second time and it's like, you know, why are you doing it again? You just -- you've already done it. It's such a simple thing that either you -- I would get it right the first time and then by the time the band knew it, it sounded so contrived to me that I could never get it. So I really recorded, I think, a total of 11 times with different people in all kinds of different configurations. And we got 'em all... none of them are worth listening to. But this one here finally just got back to the roots of it and just sat down with my guitar and played it and said, "That's it." Because I love the song and I feel the song now and it means something to me now. And so I just did it. When I got back from the HORDE tour a couple of years ago, I went in the studio, sat down and did this one the second day after I was back, I think.

Q: Silver and Gold, it's a direct love song. It reminds me a little bit of something like Paul McCartney would have done on his very first solo album. And a little bit more than a year ago, you inducted Paul into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is it only fans who fanatasize that, you know, our heroes would collaborate or would you be open to working with someone like Paul?

A: Oh, I'd love to work with someone like Paul. I'd love to work with Paul. I mean, I love Paul's music. Paul's like -- his potential is great. I mean, he's right there, you know. He doesn't -- you know, he can do what -- basically whatever he wants to do. I'm available to play with Paul McCartney any time he wants to play. He knows it, too. I already told him. I said, "Listen, if you want to do something with me, I'm ready. So..."

Q: When you've written a love song like Silver and Gold is your wife, Peggy, the first one to hear it or is it easier to play it for other folks first?

A: I think she heard that one first.

Q: Silver and Gold is the title track of your brand new album. It's a song about the joys of love and family. And one thing that's a family affair for you and yours, Neil, is the Bridge School. Most music fans know about the annual concerts, but can you explain in a nutshell what the Bridge School's mission is?

A: Well, the Bridge School mission is to bring communication to children, young students that are -- that can't talk and have, you know, communication problems, have to use an interface, some sort of an interface to communicate. And we try to supply the interface so that they can -- so the kids can communicate and, you know, do the things they need to do go to school and get up to speed on being able to use their devices so they can navigate the world that we navigate. And it's a big challenge. And it's a great school. And it's a model for other schools. There is a program where we share our information that we've garnered over the last 15 years of existence in teaching kids how to use computers to communicate. It's a great idea that my wife had. And, you know, we had our son, Ben, is the inspiration for the school. And he's one of the first students. And so it's been a real family thing for us. And all the musicians who have come to help by playing at the concerts have all come away with a good feeling about it. And it's been a great thing. I think my wife has done a great thing there.

Q: I'd imagine it takes up a lot of your time, maybe almost as much as the music sometimes, keeping up with the Bridge School?

A: Well, Peggy does that. She's the one. I can't keep track of stuff like that. I -- you know, I support it 100 percent. But if they relied on me for anything, they'd be in big trouble. She's the organized one.

Q: And it is like you said, the diversity of the musicians who have played the Bridge School benefits over the years, you've had everyone from Green Day to Brian Wilson to REM to Sheryl Crow. Has it made you feel closer with the music community at large?

A: Yes, I think it has. I've met a lot of people. And just the way they keep coming, you know. Every year we just get these amazing bills of people. And there's always -- you know, we're looking for new people, but we want to keep -- maintain our roots with the past with, you know, people like Brian Wilson. I mean, he was unbelievable at the show. I mean, he was just staggering. I couldn't -- you know, I couldn't believe my ears.

Q: The thing about the Bridge School and the Bridge School concerts is that it closes this great divide. And your new song The Great Divide, and Buffalo Springfield Again were a couple of the final songs that you wrote for Silver and Gold. It was my understanding that you wrote these new songs for Silver and Gold because you let your friends, Crosby Stills and Nash, cherry-pick some tunes for the latest CSNY disc, Looking Forward. And we're going to hear Buffalo Springfield Again in a moment. Was your reunion with CSN, was it sparked by putting together a Buffalo Springfield project that you were working on?

A: Well, the project was pretty well complete and I wanted Stephen to come up to the ranch and check it out, see what we'd put together and see how he felt about it and what perspective he could bring to it. And we also had Richie Furay come in and listen to it. And so it -- you know, we listened. It's a four-CD box set. And it's -- like all of my box sets I'm working on, it is in chronological order. So it doesn't go in the order that the records were released in. It goes in order of the recordings. So you have -- at the beginning, you have all these demos that we did when we first came to L.A. for the first Buffalo Springfield record. And then it goes into the -- I believe, the mono masters of the Buffalo Springfield record that we made -- that Stephen and Richie and I mixed. And then it -- and then there's a lot of -- you know, a fair amount of unreleased Buffalo Springfield things in there. But it's chronological. So the thing is, you hear us, you hear us as just, we're just kids. You hear us coming together and you can hear the sound growing. And then you can hear it kind of breaking up and falling apart. You know, it's kind of a sad thing. And then at the end, you know, the group -- they sound pretty watered down and it's pretty obvious that it's not the same group as it was in the beginning. And, you know, people come and go, changes and stuff. And so when Stephen and I listened to it, we realized, you know -- I mean, we're laughing and crying and carrying on, talking to each other while this thing's playing. And we realized that, you know, we really didn't reach our potential at all. So that was a dawn on us: that we both knew that we hadn't reached the potential of what we could do together. And so we -- you know, he played a song for me, a new song that was a great song and asked me if I wanted to play on it. So he -- you know, when I went down to L.A. a couple of -- oh, a month or so later, I played on the song and I played on a few other ones. And I just kept listening to the tapes and I played on them. And it was like, not really the way I like to do things. I like to play all at once and everything, so... But these songs that they had were done. And so I played on them. And then we played on some new ones where we played all at once. And that's more fun. But it's kind of like a process of coming back together again. I mean, working on each others' tapes and then creating new stuff and then, you know, finally we had what we thought was an album. But in the making of it, I -- I only worked on their songs at first. I played on about 12 or 13 of their songs before I played any of my own songs. And then I just played them the 14 songs or so that I'd recorded for Silver and Gold, which had no title at the time or anything. And I said, "Just go ahead, just take whatever ones you want. Just take however many. Just take 'em. We'll sing on 'em and we'll -- you know, we'll see what else they need, if anything, and then we'll put them on this record. They'll match everything... " 'cause that's the way we did this record, basically. So it'll work. So they chose the ones they chose.

Q: And then what happened in the meanwhile to the Buffalo Springfield box set?

A: We finished it and it's -- I believe it's coming out pretty soon.

Q: You know, it's good to hear you sing about playing with Buffalo Springfield again. So many of us, we think of Neil Young as being in the moment. And yet, this is kind of a nostalgic song. Could Buffalo Springfield really ever play together again?

A: Well, I'm sure they could, but I don't know if they will. I mean, I don't know if that'll ever happen. It's more like a musing of, you know, situation, just, you know, reflecting. Sunday afternoon philosophy.

Q: Neil, the live version of Looking Forward doesn't appear on the studio album Silver and Gold. But it's part of a digital video disc concert release that's also called Silver and Gold. It's recorded here at Austin's Bass Concert Hall. Isn't it a little confusing that the CD and DVD have the same title but they're two, they're two different projects?

A: Well, you know, it is kind of confusing, but look at the money we saved on artwork. I mean, we passed the savings on to the consumer (laughter).