Quotes from David Browne

That came from his tapes. We questioned everything we did. He instilled or reinforced in us quality consciousness. If you're going to do something, you have to absolutely achieve excellence and set your internal compass toward excellence and go for that, because nothing else matters." The process, though, could be rough.

AT LEAST FOR the immediate future, there would be no arenas in Young's life—just the opposite, in fact. Returning to California, he reached out to Mazzeo, who had moved onto a communal farm in Santa Cruz with his guitarist friend Jeff Blackburn. A beach town roughly seventy miles south of San Francisco, Santa Cruz had a population of just over thirty thousand—a size that would have fit into one of the venues on Crosby, Stills and Nash's reunion tour.

Young told Mazzeo he didn't want to be alone on his ranch. "There were still a lot of Carrie vibes there," says Mazzeo. Mazzeo invited him over, and Young made himself at home on the farm. Blackburn had been playing local clubs with his eponymous band, and Young was fascinated. "I said, 'Buck has