In early 1991, Sonic Youth spent three months touring with Neil Young, playing hockey arenas and open-air sheds across the United States and Canada. It was a big deal for us on many levels. We had signed to a major label in 1989, on the heels of our Daydream Nation album, and had left the world of independent records behind for a new adventure. In June 1990, we released Goo, our first album for DGC/Geffen, and spent the rest of the year touring our asses off behind it. Neil’s people had invited us to join his “Smell the Horse” tour. We jumped aboard, spending January to April 1991 playing almost 50 gigs with him and Crazy Horse. We were all fans of Neil’s work, and we saw this opportunity to play these huge venues as one of the new challenges that came with the major-label deal. We’d rarely played places so large, so it took some getting used to.

The coolest thing about that tour was that it opened up an ongoing relationship with Neil himself, which carries through to this day. Half a year after that tour ended, he invited SY to play his Bridge School Benefit, held at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif. These shows were “acoustic concerts” and, as such, we had to think twice about accepting. We didn’t want to say no to Neil. However, the only acoustic guitar that Sonic Youth had even come near to was the one I used purely for feedback purposes on our song “Ghost Bitch.” But, we dutifully set out to learn a short set of songs from our Goo album using various acoustic instruments we cobbled together. Such “wooden music” was foreign territory to us as a band, but we worked up some tunes and boarded a plane out to California.

The concert featured Willie Nelson, Don Henley, Nils Lofgren, Tracy Chapman, Larry Kegan and John Lee Hooker, as well as Neil and his Stray Gators band, which included the legends Ben Keith, Tim Drummond, Spooner Oldham, Kenny Buttrey and Lofgren. We got there early for the soundcheck and quickly noticed something strange. As each artist went up to test their microphones, we noticed they were also plugging in their acoustic instruments. Being crazed electric players, we didn’t even know that was possible! We felt we’d been duped! We struggled through a nerve-wracking soundcheck— we couldn’t hear each other and trying to get our sound up in the monitors was difficult since we were only using the microphones on the sound holes of our instruments. We must’ve really looked like rubes—noisicians who didn’t know you could plug in an acoustic guitar! We felt out of sorts and confused.

Neil opened the show with a single song to say hello, and then the proceedings began. One act after another came onstage, plugged in and did their thing. My memory is that we came on early in the afternoon—in broad daylight— but searching the web, it seems that Kegan, Hooker, Henley, Lofgren and Chapman were all on before us. I find it hard to believe that we’d have been on after all these “heavies,” but the internet doesn’t lie, does it? We didn’t have that long to play, so our plan was to each sing one song. We all knew we were going to go down in flames, so we made an additional contingency plan backstage: We’d recently recorded a cover of the New York Dolls “Personality Crisis” for a Sassy magazine giveaway single, on which we’d actually used acoustic guitars to cover the classic early NYC pre-punk gem. So we decided that if all hell broke loose and we were struggling, we would pull out “Personality”—which we didn’t think we could fuck up since it was much more straightforward than our own material. And, if even this didn’t work, Kim [Gordon] could smash the cheap acoustic she borrowed from our buddy Don Fleming, and we would all run for the hills.

Well, we opened with “Dirty Boots,” the leadoff track from Goo, and followed it with “Mote.” It was super strange onstage. Steve [Shelley] was playing bongos, and Thurston [Moore] and I, being on opposite sides of the stage, couldn’t hear each other at all and kept getting out of sync. The monitors were useless and the guitars kept feeding back. The natives up on the lawn were getting restless. This old hippie crowd probably didn’t even know who the fuck we were or why we were there, going on after Henley, Lofgren, Chapman, etc. They didn’t know we were P.O.N. (Pals of Neil).

Our third song, another one from Goo was “Cinderella’s Big Score,” with Kim singing. This song was especially twisty and complex, even for us, and it was nearly impossible to play under such conditions. We stopped playing, tried to explain about the sound and started the song again, only to stop and restart a second time. So we decided to abandon ship and pulled out “Personality Crisis.” Kimscreamed “fuck” at the top of her lungs into the PA, and we lurched into it. For some reason, the crowd got more and more vocal as the song went on, with a roar emanating from the back of the lawn. At the climax of the song, Kim took Don’s guitar and smashed the shit out of it, throwing the pieces into the crowd! All the hippies on the lawn did fully not dig this gesture! In fact, they hated it. There were a few grumblings earlier in the set but, now, they erupted in full-fledged boo-ing, screaming in a huge din, with calls for us to “get off the stage”—which we damn well did, as fast as possible, tails between our legs.

We were pretty embarrassed, especially that we’d let Neil down after he took another chance on us (after a big tour where we were also seen as oddballs by his audience). We exited stage right while the boos continued and Willie Nelson and his band were plugging in! Goddamn did we feel bad! And what happened next? We ran straight into Neil and his then-wife Peggi backstage! They’d seen the whole thing. We tried to apologize to Neil, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

“That was fuckin’ fantastic!” he guffawed. He loved that we got a rise out of the crowd. He’s always been into challenging his audience, which is probably why he had asked us out on tour to begin with. Opening for Crazy Horse was really the first time we heard boos while we played. Peggi was sympathetic and tried to help us shrug it off. Suddenly, the whole thing became a bit humorous—these noise-niks from New York City trying to play with acoustic guitars for the country-rock, hippie-patchouli crowd.

The rest of the day’s music was great. Willie was wonderful and Neil and the Stray Gators followed him with a fantastic set. To close off the night, he invited all the performers onstage to sing a reprise of Dylan’s “Forever Young.” I was the only one from SY who dared show their face—I wasn’t gonna miss the chance to be onstage with Neil—and I ended up singing harmony with Nicolette Larson, which was a thrill.

Many years later, in 2004, Neil invited us back to play another one of the Bridge School Benefits, which, by then, had expanded to two nights. This time, we came prepared, knew how to play the game and had two fine sets. Jim O’Rourke played his upright piano, and I got to use his old pump organ.

Neil was always a generous soul. His recognition that we were kindred spirits— and his stubborn attitude to always go his own way and never pander to his audiences’ tastes—meant the world to us. And it still does.

Guitarist Lee Ranaldo is a cofounding member of Sonic Youth. In February, he released Names of North End Women, his first full-length collaboration with Raül Refree, via Mute. The two previously worked together on Ranaldo’s 2017 album, Electric Trim.