A Look Back at the Second Life Neil Young Archives

Circa 2007, the Second Life Neil Young Archives had a barn, a little stage, and a whole lot of info about the musician himself. Photo by Kat.

An old friend, of sorts, has been in the news this week. To be clear, Neil Young doesn't know me in any way conceivable. I one time briefly spoke to him on the phone at work, yanking the call away from a tech support rep at an audio equipment manufacturer, and another time sat near him at an awards banquet in the '90s, and listened and laughed while he railed mercilessly about the shitty audio quality of the Compact Disc directly in front of the Sony executives from Japan who were responsible for it. That's the extent of my personal contact with Neil. It's not much.

So no, all I am to Neil is one of millions of people from multiple generations who appreciate his music. And frankly, as a person who makes it a point not to idolize musicians or other famous folks, I don't put Neil up on some pedestal. He's a dude whose music I like and whose outlook -- politically, socially, and so on -- happens to align well with my own.

I really wouldn't have predicted that in 2022, this guy would be dominating the news cycle, but it's a strange world in which we live.

What's Going On with Old Neil?

A lot. In November, he turned 76 years old. In December, he released his 41st studio album. It's called Barn, and he's back with the current version of Crazy Horse, which is a whole lot of most other versions of the band, with Ralph Molina on drums, Billy Talbot on bass, and his old cohort Nils Lofgren taking the role of rhythm guitar, piano, occasional accordion and backing vocals. Just last week, he premiered a film about the making of the album. It was cool. His ladyfriend Daryl Hannah directed it. I watched the premiere on YouTube.

But the reason that Neil has been in the news in recent days has nothing to do with any of that. He chose to have his music pulled from the Spotify music streaming service because of their continued support of the Joe Rogan podcast and its continued misinformation campaign about COVID-19 vaccination. Interestingly, as a result, I'm seeing a ton of people discovering Neil's music, talking about Neil, and looking into alternatives to Spotify as a result. It's kind of unsurprising that Neil manages to benefit from something that would be detrimental to other artists with less integrity.

I've seen more talk about Neil Young in the past few days than in the past few years. I'm sure he's enjoying this as much as anyone.

Zak Claxton's SL Neil Young Archives: A Retrospective

This is what I really wanted to mention, because at the moment, there's no other record of it. Back in 2007, I wanted to create something unique in the online virtual world of Second Life. With the help of Kat Claxton, who was running a virtual design company at the time, we put up the Second Life Neil Young Archives. It actually got quite a bit of attention from both the early metaverse community and the world of Neil Young fandom; here's an article on the NY fan blog Thrasher's Wheat about it. 

The whole thing was contained in a two-story barn structure, with a pleasant little outdoor area that included a small stage and other accoutrements. We took a look at some of the buildings on Neil's ranch in Northern California to get inspiration for the virtual build. It used a lot of textures of wood and rust, appropriately. On the bottom level were walls covered with every album Neil had done to date, categorized between his time in Buffalo Springfield through CSNY through Crazy Horse and the rest of his solo work.

You could actually use a little rope swing to jump from the second story into a pile of hay that was down near the stage and the windmill. It was really cool, especially for 2007. Photo by Kat.

There were dozens and dozens of albums on display, arranged in time sequence through Neil's long career. Each album had the track listing and all credits. Photo by Kat.

More of the downstairs album zone. Photo by Kat.

Upstairs became an homage to the then newly-released NY Archives Vol. 1, along with a display on Neil's instruments and a chill zone straight from the cover of On The Beach. Photo by Kat.

The top level had representations of Neil's famous instruments, like his Martin D-45 acoustic guitar, his "Old Black" Gibson Les Paul, his Fender Tweed Deluxe amp, and even his Hohner Marine Band harmonica on a holder. In 2009, when Neil finally delivered his long-awaited Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 box set, I updated the upstairs area with graphics showing the full timeline information that was included with the package. There was even a little spot upstairs to chill, with the setup of beach chairs and umbrella from the On The Beach album cover, along with virtual beers to drink and virtual things to smoke. 

I have to say, we did a really great job on the whole thing, and we had a ton of people visiting the sim and even joining Second Life specifically for the purpose of hanging out there. I certainly didn't have any official authorization to give Neil a presence in the virtual world. I put it up because it was a subject I knew well and thought that people would enjoy. I was quite public about it and no one from Neil's camp or record label ever complained, so it stayed there in Second Life as a digital museum of sorts for about six years or more.

Where Did It Go?

Well, like many things in life, my Second Life Neil Young Archives required time, effort, and money. It was located on an island sim that was owned by Kat primarily for her virtual world development business. When she moved away from that business to spend time as a software developer for a bunch of entertainment companies (ironically including the label that Neil Young records for), she no longer had the time to do much building in SL. The end of the business meant the end of the costly island that she'd owned for that purpose.

We moved the SLNYA to a large parcel of a mainland sim for a couple of years, but then even that became more costly than it was worth, with Kat and I having less and less time to spend in Second Life for any purpose. Eventually we downsized our entire SL land parcel to a small space, and there was no room for the SLNYA.

And so, the Second Life Neil Young Archives is gone... sort of. It's actually not; the whole kit and caboodle is in a Zip file of sorts in Kat's SL inventory. An archive of an archive, if you will. And who knows; someday if I find myself with the luxury of time and the desire to do so, I could find a plot of virtual land and set the whole thing up again. But for now, I'm glad to have these memories of a little chunk of a world that's ephemeral by nature. I'm proud of the work we did on the SLNYA, and I can say it was a good use of time for a person worthy of the effort.