Rick Rosas, who plays Buster opposite Oscar winner Meryl Streep’s rocker character Ricki in the new movie “Ricki and the Flash” lost his battle with cancer in November (14), shortly after filming wrapped on the Jonathan Demme project and there’s a special tribute to him in the credits at the end of the movie.
Born in Los Angeles in 1949, Rosas also worked with Demme on 2006’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold documentary.
One of California’s most in-demand session musicians, he also worked with Joe Walsh, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ron Wood and Etta James.
He was the only bassist to have played in three of Neil Young’s bands – Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Crazy Horse.
The new film has other ties to Neil Young – the rocker taught Streep how to play guitar for the project.
Here is more about the guitar lessons from Entertainment:
Meryl Streep appeared on The Tonight Show Aug. 3 to promote her new movie Ricki and the Flash.
The actress, who plays a struggling musician trying to reconnect with her family in the movie, revealed to host Jimmy Fallon that she did not know how to play guitar prior to filming so director Jonathan Demme set up a meeting for her to meet Neil Young.
“My first lesson was 45 minutes with Neil,” Streep said. “He is amazing, it’s cool.”
When asked if she learned anything from the legendary rocker, Streep said Young told her: “’You see all the amplifiers and all the wires and you go ‘what is all this s–t?’” Young then told her to “crank it up to 11. You’ve got to turn it up, turn it up loud.”
The end of the year issue of Uncut contains Michael Bonner’s long-version interview with Frank “Poncho” Sampedro.
Bonner writes: “I thought it might be nice to share the full transcript – it’s over 6,000 words long, and covers a lot of ground. We started off talking about the current state of Billy Talbot’s health, the Crazy Horse bassist who’d suffered a minor stroke earlier in the year. For the record, our interview took place on November 3, 2014; a few days before the death of bassist Rick Rosas, who’d deputised for Talbot during the band’s 2014 tour dates.”
Poncho’s favorite memory of Neil from this year?
“That’s hard to think of right at this moment. I could tell you a couple from the year before if I had time to think about it. When we played the Bridge School the last time, we were doing the encore where everybody comes out and sings, we were playing “Rockin’ In The Free World” all acoustic. For some reason, Neil took off his guitar and gave it to Lukas Nelson. He was having a great time playing it. And Neil was trying to give us hand signals of where to go and I was just laughing, “What the hell is going on?” But anyway, months and months after that, we were on the road, we were just getting ready and I said to Neil, “I have a question, it’s really been bothering me, I want to ask you.” He said, “Go ahead.” I said, “Why did you give Lukas your guitar? Did he ask for it, or something?” Neil said, “No, we were just up there playing and singing and he was playing air guitar and I kept looking at him, I thought, ‘Wow, he needs a guitar.’ So I just gave him mine.” I think that’s really cool. It was just like this thing that happened. That was a great moment with Neil. On this last tour, when he started giving away the t-shirts, ‘Protect The Earth’ and everything, he was just so overly sincere about the whole thing. It did bring a good feeling to me. And at the same time, it stresses me out because I just don’t know how to reach everybody and hw to make a change in this world. It’s really frustrating.”
“You gotta keep changing. Shirts, old ladies, whatever, I\\\'d rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way. If that\\\'s the price, I\\\'ll pay it. I don\\\'t give a shit if my audience is a hundred or a hundred million. It doesn\\\'t make any difference to me. I\\\'m convinced that what sells and what I do are two completely different things. If they meet, it\\\'s coincidence. ” by NY, from the Cameron Crowe Rolling Stone interview, Aug 14, 1975.
Neil Young on Tour
Sugar Mountain setlists
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.
Rick Rosas, who plays Buster opposite Oscar winner Meryl Streep’s rocker character Ricki in the new movie “Ricki and the Flash” lost his battle with cancer in November (14), shortly after filming wrapped on the Jonathan Demme project and there’s a special tribute to him in the credits at the end of the movie.
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Albert Stromann on 
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