Watching Jimi Hendrix turned a teenage accordion prodigy into a rock’n’roll lifer, solo star and Swiss Army sideman to Bruce and Neil (and Lou). “I’ve kept waiting for the possession to leave me,” says Nils Lofgren, “and it still hasn’t.”

Interview by BOB MEHR • Portrait by ROB DeMARTIN

‘‘I’M FEELING PLEASANTLY BEAT UP,” SAYS Nils Lofgren, groggy but grinning from beneath a knit cap.

It’s an early June morning and the diminutive Lofgren is spread out on a couch in his Scottsdale, Arizona home, where he’s back for a rare week off in between legs of the current Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band world tour – roadwork that began in January and will carry through to the end of 2023. “I’m a little jet-lagged and punch drunk from all the experience and travel,” says Lofgren, as he makes tea for his wife Amy and cuddles his dogs. “But it’s better than being stuck the way we were a few years ago.”

Born in Chicago and raised just outside Washington DC, the 72-year-old Lofgren has been on the road and in the music business since he was a teenager. A childhood accordion prodigy turned on to rock’n’roll by The Beatles, he found career direction after seeing Jimi Hendrix, and has become an indispensable multi-instrumentalist and creative foil for two of America’s most iconic and enduring musical figures in Springsteen and Neil Young.

His work with Young stretches across some six decades – dating back to After The Gold Rush and his early membership in Crazy Horse. Having joined the E Street Band during the Born In The USA tour, next year will mark Lofgren’s 40th anniversary as part of Springsteen’s crew. All that has run parallel with his own career as a name artist, which began with his ’70s combo Grin, and then later as a solo act over the course of 21 soulful albums, including the current Mountains.

Written during a reflective moment amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the new album recounts Lofgren’s loves and losses. I Remember Her Name chronicles the meetings, 15 years apart, that led to his marriage to Amy. Nothing’s Easy – which features Young on vocals – quotes a line from Tonight’s The Night’s Tired Eyes, as the spectre of late Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten haunts the chilling reckonings of Only Ticket Out and Dream Killer. There are fond farewells to Charlie Watts, on Won’t Cry No More, and to David Crosby, who adds his final harmonies to the record.

Mountains emerges from what’s been a decidedly busy period for Lofgren. Since 2019, he’s made four new records with Crazy Horse, including this year’s All Roads Lead Home, released under the Molina, Talbot, Lofgren & Young moniker.

As he settles in for several hours of chat, Lofgren is happy to look back on what’s been a long and musically charmed journey. “It’s been a lot of years,” he says. “It’s worth taking stock of everything that’s happened.”

What was the first music you recall hearing?

My mom and dad were big dancers, so there was a lot of big band, swing band, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett around. They were tuned into the healing and inspiring properties of music – they loved it, but they didn’t force it on us. For some reason a lot of the kids on our block, couple of the older kids, played accordion. When I was five, I asked my parents if I could take accordion lessons and I just fell in love with the study of music. After waltzes and polkas, my teachers moved me into classical, and I won some contests. My parents – bless ’em – they paid for, like, 10 years of lessons.

As a trained musician, did you relate to rock’n’roll early on?

When I’m 10 or 11, and somebody plays a Jerry Lee Lewis record, I’m too young emotionally to understand it beyond the fact that it’s three chords: C, F, G. I didn’t get it. But a few years later, when I’m 13, The Beatles come out and with the extra chords, the melodies, the raw visceral soul they had, it exploded on me. It was through The Beatles and Stones, the British Invasion and their American counterparts, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, that I went and discovered Stax-Volt, Little Richard and Muddy Waters and my whole life changed. I was playing Beatles medleys at my 9th grade talent show on accordion. But then I put down the accordion and just got infatuated with the guitar. I started playing in little bands in teen clubs. But back then nobody in Bethesda, Maryland thought you could make a living playing in a band, including me. I just played for fun. My whole thing was to get Bs in school for my dad and mom so I could play sports all the time: football, basketball, soccer.