COVER STORY : After the Gold Rush : Neil Young has struck gold several times since the ‘60s. But all that seems to matter to him is giving his vision fresh new sounds. That would explain the Pearl Jam thing.

Neil Young is upbeat as he rides his Harley into the backstage area at Golden Gate Park for a surprise concert appearance with the day’s headliners, Pearl Jam.

These lovely green acres at the western tip of the city are where some of the area’s legendary peace-and-love groups played in the ‘60s and where 50,000 fans are gathered today under a scorching sun to see the Seattle band.

Young gets much the same adrenaline rush from riding the Harley as playing guitar, which is why he rode it here from his 2,000-acre ranch an hour away in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

He wanted to be energized when he played some of the songs from “Mirror Ball,” the new album that he recorded with Pearl Jam in an unprecedented summit between leaders of two widely separated rock generations.

As he steps from his motorcycle, however, Young senses the tension backstage.

Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam’s charismatic lead singer, has the flu and may be too weak to perform. Young enters the Pearl Jam dressing room, where he finds Vedder lying face down on the floor, white as a sheet. The singer is so sick that he had gone to an emergency room at 3 a.m. that day.

Still, Vedder makes it to the stage and sings for half an hour with his usual captivating intensity.

But that’s it.

Young is sitting in a tour bus backstage as he hears Vedder tell the crowd that he can’t continue. Suddenly, instead of being a surprise extra in a Pearl Jam concert, Young becomes the focus of it.

It’s an enormous challenge. This is Pearl Jam’s first tour in nearly two years, and there was enough demand that promoters could have sold 250,000 tickets if space permitted. And when rock fans think of Pearl Jam, they think first of Vedder.

But when Young joins the other members of Pearl Jam onstage, they play an inspired set, mixing some old Young classics, including “Down by the River,” and new songs that carry the feel of future classics.

Slowly, the crowd’s energy--which vanished like the air out of a balloon when Vedder left the stage--begins to return. Eventually, the mosh pit is back in action.

It’s doubtful that any other rock veteran--much less one with roots in the ‘60s--could have stepped into Vedder’s place with Pearl Jam and held the audience’s attention and respect for nearly two hours.

At the same time that much of Young’s generation dismisses the new music of such alternative-based bands as Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and the late Nirvana as too negative and assaultive, today’s ‘90s crowd looks with disdain at how ‘60s musicians and fans--its parents’ generation--failed to live up to their lofty ideals. These younger musicians and fans say the negativity in the songs is a reflection of their world--the hypocrisy and corruption handed down to them.

Young, however, senses a link between ‘60s and ‘90s audiences.

“The thing I loved about the ‘60s was this feeling that the bands and the audiences were together--a living connection,” he says later, reflecting on the day. “They believed in each other and in the future. They shared a dream.

“That connection is back, though you don’t get that sense of optimism anymore. The kids think our generation let them down, and we did. That’s why bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana are so important. They speak to this generation’s fears and concerns.

“The quality and the soulfulness is there again, and if [older] people don’t listen to these bands, they are missing it. They may have gotten off, but the rock ‘n’ roll ride is still continuing.”

Who could have imagined a time in such a trendy, rebellious, youth-dominated art form when the hippest man in rock would be a 49-year-old?

Young laughs so hard at the thought that he almost tips over his chair on the deck of the Mountain House restaurant and bar, a few miles from his ranch. It’s as close to his personal sanctuary as he wants the outside world to come.

“You know there were times over the years when I wondered if I was still even in rock ‘n’ roll,” he says after recovering his balance. “Rock ‘n’ roll seemed to be going one way, and I seemed to be going another. I can’t tell you how many times I was told that I was killing my career by the things I was doing.

“I remember when punk came along [in the ‘70s] and I kept telling people that punk was the new rock ‘n’ roll, but they said it wasn’t going to last--that it was too noisy and crude. But I could see it was what mattered to kids. They were tired of how big rock ‘n’ roll had gotten, all the excesses.

“We’ve made such a mess of the way kids grow up that they really need this music today.”

For a man who has sometimes gone years between interviews, Young seems unusually relaxed talking about his music. He sometimes seems embarrassed by all the acclaim yet is clearly aware of his stamp on much of today’s most compelling music.

Young isn’t the only musician from the ‘60s who is admired by today’s brigade of young rock musicians and fans. Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, among others, are widely respected, but they don’t continue to deliver music as timely or as compelling.

After a decade in which his music seemed so aimless and quirky that he was written off by many critics, Young rebounded in 1989 with “Freedom,” an album that reintroduced the winning elements that made his music in the ‘70s such an influence today. He has followed it with four more equally acclaimed albums.

Reviewing “Mirror Ball” in England’s Melody Maker, David Fricke declares the album a pop mini-miracle.

“[It] is not a super session. And it is not a calculated exercise in cross-generational marketing,” suggests Fricke, who also writes for Rolling Stone. “In fact, given the toxic levels of cynicism and chart rationale choking the record business in the mid-’90s, ‘Mirror Ball’ is a most remarkable thing--a record made by simpatico spirits on the spur of the moment, for nothing more than the love of the doing. And it crackles with the roaring fires of mutual discovery, communal joy and common crisis.”

Just as Elvis Presley fused country and blues, Young brought together the strongest qualities of his own heroes: the songwriting introspection and observation of Dylan and the guitar-driven assault of Jimi Hendrix. The mix served as a blueprint for today’s generation--music that balances unbridled sonic fury and wistful grace, all marked by a sense of naked confession and truth.

Equally important, Young defied conventional thinking in the record business. He was suspicious of mainstream acceptance long before Kurt Cobain, and he rejected tour sponsorship long before Eddie Vedder did. Young’s whimsical 1988 song “This Note’s for You” was a caustic slap at the growing trend of tour sponsorship.

Vedder may have had the song in mind, in fact, last year when he wrote “Not for You,” a defiant attack on commercial forces--from the music industry to the media--that he believes exploit youth culture.

In his induction speech for Young at the Rock Hall of Fame ceremony in January, when several other artists were inducted posthumously, Vedder said: “He taught us a lot as a band about dignity, commitment and playing in the moment, and when I hear speeches inducting Janis Joplin and Frank Zappa, I’m just glad he’s still here.”

Elliot Roberts, who has been Young’s manager for virtually his entire career, says Young’s great strength is his ability to focus on his art.

“He wants the freedom to create and not be asked 30 business questions a day,” Roberts says in a separate interview. “In fact, we rarely talk business. In 30 years, for instance, I don’t think he has ever asked me a question about the publishing company I run for him.”

About their unusually long relationship in a field in which egos can sever ties in an instant, Roberts adds: “Neil has never blamed me when a record fails commercially. That’s because a record is never a failure to him, because it is the record he wanted to make. It’s always a win for him. If anyone buys it, it’s a bonus.”

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Young was born Nov. 12, 1945, in Toronto, but he and his older brother, Bob, soon moved with their journalist father and homemaker mother to Omemee, Ontario, Canada, where he began his lifelong love for the calming rural life.

As a child, Young suffered a mild case of polio that required brief hospitalization. When he was 15, his parents separated and Young moved with his mother and brother to Winnipeg, where she encouraged his obsession with music. He loved the guitar and soon joined his first band, eventually branching into singing and songwriting.

In his songs, Young has frequently turned to his early years in Canada for images. In “Helpless,” one of his most haunting songs, he salutes Omemee: “There is a town in north Ontario. . . .” In “Don’t Be Denied,” an early-’70s reflection on youthful determination and drive, he writes about sitting on the school steps in Winnipeg and dreaming of being a music star.

Young’s first taste of that stardom came in 1966 when he moved to Los Angeles and joined Buffalo Springfield, one of the most original and gifted bands of the era.

Though the group was poised for superstardom, Young felt too limited because he had to share the creative vision with such other ambitious young talents as Stephen Stills and Richie Furay. So he sacrificed the potential of the Springfield for a solo career. Even after rejoining Stills briefly in the hugely successful Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in 1969, Young decided once again that his future lay as a solo artist.

His instincts proved right when his heralded album “After the Gold Rush” broke into the national Top 10 in 1970. The follow-up, “Harvest,” was an even bigger hit two years later. Yet Young was restless. He had seen too many artists let success lure them into repeating a formula in hopes of continuing the success.

Using the ever-changing Dylan as a model, Young gave his artistic impulses such free rein that he ended up making an album so dark and disillusioned that his record company warned him that it might severely damage his career. And sure enough, that album--”Tonight’s the Night” (1975)--sold disappointingly. Yet it was a landmark work that ranks with John Lennon’s equally stark “Plastic Ono Band” as one of the most powerfully confessional works ever in pop.

The album is one of Young’s personal favorites--and it gave him added confidence to follow his instincts.

Young’s aimlessness in the ‘80s caught the rock world by surprise because it followed a series of other acclaimed works.

Unknown to his fans at the time, Young was going through personal trials that seemed to sap his creative energy. His second son, Ben, was born in 1978 with cerebral palsy, and Young’s wife, Pegi, later had to undergo delicate brain surgery. (Zeke, a son born to actress Carrie Snodgress in 1972, also suffered from a milder case of cerebral palsy.)

It was a sobering period for Young, one that left his family an extremely tight unit. His wife’s surgery was successful, and the couple began devoting themselves to a program of education and therapy for young Ben.

Later, they helped organize a school in the Bay Area to teach severely handicapped, non-oral children to communicate. Asked his greatest source of inspiration, he cites, without hesitation, his family and, second, the ranch. He says that he sees movies only occasionally (“Star Wars” is one of his all-time favorites) and that he rarely watches TV.

In 1986, the couple began a series of annual concerts to benefit the school, named the Bridge. Indicative of the respect Young enjoys in the music industry, the artists who have joined him at the Bridge concerts through the years range from Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to Simon & Garfunkel and Pearl Jam.

About the albums of the ‘80s, Young says now: “I didn’t look at all those albums as somehow lesser works. You put the same amount of work into all of them musically. The difference is you draw upon different feelings inside. Sometimes you reach inside and you have a lot to say; sometimes you don’t have the desire or strength to do so. But the record is true to yourself at that moment.

“Take ‘Everybody’s Rockin’ ’ and ‘Tonight’s the Night.’ They aren’t very similar in any way, but they are two of my personal favorites. There’s despair in ‘Tonight’s the Night’ and there’s an innocence, not a care in the world, in ‘Everybody’s Rockin’. ‘ The guy in that record just wants to be rockin’ and out on the road. . . . The guy in ‘Tonight’s the Night’ wants to be left by himself in the darkness.

“You just follow where your emotions take you when you make an album. That’s the trick. Listen to your own voice, don’t try to listen to someone else’s--whether it is the guy on the radio, or the guy who writes in the paper or the guy at the record company.”

The Young-Pearl Jam connection began even before they shared the bill on some dates in Europe in 1993. Young had heard the band perform a couple of his songs on an earlier Lollapalooza tour, so he went out front one night to check them out.

“I liked them right away,” he says. “They had great energy and conviction.”

Although Young and Pearl Jam performed together on various occasions, the idea of an album didn’t come up until they collaborated at an abortion-rights concert in January of this year in Washington.

Young had played “Act of Love,” a song written for the benefit, with his longtime band Crazy Horse at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner a couple of days before.

But the song took on such added power with Pearl Jam that he and Vedder began talking backstage about how much fun it would be to record it together.

Musicians often have “let’s get together sometime” conversations, but few ever materialize, because the complications of major rock acts teaming up are enormous. But Young and Pearl Jam did follow through, gathering in Seattle two weeks later to record the song. They had set aside two days to do the track, but things went so well that they also recorded three other new Young songs.

Excited by working together, Young and the band returned to the studio in February for two more days of music. The album then went to Young’s label, Reprise, rather than Pearl Jam’s, Epic, because they were all Young songs. Pearl Jam isn’t mentioned by name in the album packaging, but the band members are cited individually in the credits.

In the heart of “Mirror Ball,” Young re-examines the old ‘60s ideals through the hardened social perspective of the ‘90s.

The most intimate moment is “What Happened Yesterday,” in which Young looks back at the goals with uneasy resolve:

Can’t forget what happened yesterday

Though my friends say don’t look back

I can feel it coming through me

Like an echo, like a photograph.

“To me, the way to live has always been to move forward . . . to keep searching for whatever it is that interests you,” he says of the song. “It’s not healthy to sit around and focus on the past, but that doesn’t mean you have to cut yourself off from the past and your old beliefs.

“Sure, a lot of the ‘60s ideals got lost in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and the world is a pretty screwed-up place, but that doesn’t mean some of those ideals can’t be useful today.”

Perhaps it’s because many of the ‘90s musicians Young admires are young enough to be his children, or maybe because he simply identifies with the pressures on them, but he seems especially protective of young artists.

That’s why he was deeply troubled last year when Kurt Cobain quoted a line from Young’s song “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” in the late singer’s anguished suicide note: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

Young, who has frequently denied that the song was designed as a live-hard, die-young anthem, even included a tender salute to Cobain on last year’s “Sleeps With Angels” album.

Because the album also contained a song about a friend’s daughter who was killed in a drive-by shooting, Young, in his typically independent way, would not do interviews to promote the album. He said some of the themes were too personal to discuss.

Young does open up slightly when it comes to Vedder, whose songs of alienation and anger reflect both a troubled childhood and a difficulty adjusting to the pressures of rock stardom.

“Eddie has such an intense relationship with his audience,” Young says softly. “They believe in him, but we should remember that Pearl Jam is a band, not just Eddie. Sure, he’s got a special talent, a special spirit and all that, but the other guys are also intelligent, highly developed musicians. We shouldn’t single him out so much, because that puts an unfair pressure on him.

“People respond to a performer because we identify with what they say, we feel a human connection. But then we often put superhuman demands on them. It’s a delicate balance.”

So is Young getting ready to retire?

He laughs so hard that he almost topples the wooden chair a second time.

“I used to think about how long I could keep going, but it was always like I was thinking about the future,” he says, rising to stretch his legs during the closing minutes of the interview.

“When I was 30, I used to wonder what I’d be doing at 40, then it was wondering about 50, and now, I guess, I’ll be wondering about 60. You always keep pushing it back--sort of like a bank loan.”

As Young walks through the rustic old restaurant to the parking lot, the question of the future lingers.

“There’s a brief European tour [in August] and then it’s wide open,” he says offhandedly. “Maybe it’s time to go back in the studio and do another album.

“You know, it has been a strange year for me. I did so many things that I never did before. I went to the Academy Awards [his “Philadelphia” was nominated for best song] and the Grammys . . . and it was great.

“It’s wonderful to get recognized, but it’s a real surface thing. It’s based on what other people think of your work. And you can’t be concerned with that, because sometimes people might be right in what they think and other times they may be wrong.”

On the way to his vintage ’57 Eldorado, rock’s hippest man pauses and flashes a big grin.

“You know the bottom line of those award shows? It’s a nice chance to see your wife dress up.”*