About Mazz

James Mazzeo – also known as Sandy Castle, Sandy Mazzeo, and Mazz – established an enduring legacy through the creation of innovative visual art across multiple platforms. He was an under-appreciated genius, highly regarded by his peers, with his pioneering psychedelic light shows, his wondrous paintings, and his striking pen-and-ink sketches touching people everywhere. While close encounters with Sixties icons such as Margot St. James, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were mutually influential, Mazzeo is best known for his work with Neil Young, a friend and creative ally for more than 50 years. Mazzeo engaged in numerous projects with the musician, including the striking cover artwork displayed on such albums as Zuma and Greendale.

After Mazzeo passed on August 2, 2022, due to complications from a stroke, Young shared a statement that included these words: “Always the artist, Mazz was dedicated, continuing to paint throughout his time on Earth. He was wonderful in how he approached his art and life!”

Drawing inspiration from dreams, people, fantasies, and the natural world around him, Mazzeo was incredibly prolific, painting during all hours of the day and night, spawning a menagerie of shapes, colors and themes, across many decades, right up until the time of his passing. Even when he wasn’t hatching art on canvas, his mind was actively envisioning new works and ways to alter current pieces in progress. He was forever tweaking his paintings, using a unique brush stroke style all his own. With the advent of social media, Mazzeo became a regular presence on Facebook, often posting scans of paintings he was working on, welcoming feedback.

Going back to where it all began … Mazzeo was born on April 30, 1944 in Oakland, California, and raised in the central coast community of Hollister. By the age of 8, he knew he wanted to be an artist, experimenting in art classes and on his own. In 1953, his family moved to the San Jose area. While attending Campbell High School from 1958 to 1962, Mazzeo was inspired by his art teacher, John Quigley, who encouraged him to concentrate on cubism. He won several awards at amateur art contests. During his senior year, Mazzeo’s first published artwork – a pen-and-ink drawing of a surfer with his board – was featured on the cover of the program for the senior class production of the play “Gidget,” in which Mazzeo played the part of Malibu Mac.

While serving four years in the U.S. Coast Guard, Mazzeo was stationed in San Francisco and lived in North Beach, where he became friends with activist Margo St. James. She introduced Mazzeo as “my favorite artist” to such people as Lenny Bruce, Alan Watts, and Ken Kesey, who encouraged him to pursue “environmental art.”

After leaving the Coast Guard in 1966, Mazzeo became one of the first one-man psychedelic light show operators. He did light shows for the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band as well as emerging rock groups, including Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield, who performed at Sausalito’s the Ark, where Mazzeo met Neil Young for the first time. Another friend was 1960s San Francisco counterculture painter Roger Sommers, who Mazzeo introduced to Young, with Sommers designing Young’s first custom bus, a 1970 Continental Trailway called Pocahontas.

Mazzeo toured all over the Midwest with the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and his American Dream Light Show (which became California Spectrum) during the first half of 1967. After moving to Boston, Mazzeo helped design a psychedelic nightclub called the Crosstown Bus, where he met artist James “Mac” McCracken, Jr., and worked with Andy Warhol, teaming up to create montages for the Velvet Underground and Nico. Mazzeo staged light shows for more groups, including the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, and the Moody Blues. He also forged friendships with members of the Rolling Stones as well as Jim Morrison, Mazzeo reportedly influencing the singer’s decision to form the Doors.

His collegiate studies included stints at the California College of Arts, and Redwood City’s Canada College, where he pursued art, poetry, and public speaking.

In the summer of 1968, Mazzeo and McCracken – whose works are now in the U.S. National Gallery of Art – started the Star Hill Academy for Anything, an artist commune based on land above Woodside in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was then, during his “poetry period,” Mazzeo started to sometimes use the name “Sandy Castle.” By the fall of 1970, Neil Young had bought a neighboring spread of property, dubbing it Broken Arrow Ranch. This proximity brought Mazzeo and Young together, with Mazzeo eventually moving to Broken Arrow, where he turned an old blacksmith shack into a welding and metallurgy studio. Mazzeo created stoves, chandeliers and wildly eclectic metal art pieces before doing set design and construction during the making of Young’s first film, Journey Through the Past.

On Young’s 1973 Time Fades Away tour with the Stray Gators, Mazzeo was the drum technician. He worked as a roadie throughout Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1974 summer tour, travelling between shows with Young in a 1974 GMC Sequoia 24-foot motorhome.

After a brief time in Spain, in 1975 Mazzeo relocated to Malibu, where Young was recording his album, Zuma, with Crazy Horse. In need of cover art, Young discussed some of the song themes with Mazzeo, who then did pen-and-ink sketches featuring an angry-looking bird perched on the back of a nude woman flying over a desert, pyramid, and cactus. One of the illustrations became Zuma’s cover, alternate images used in the Zuma songbook, and on the cover of a Neil Young Archives recording, Dume (featuring Zuma-era tracks).

While living in Malibu, Mazzeo reconnected with Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and other members of the Band that he had met when they opened for CSNY during the 1974 summer tour. They hired him to be the road manager for their Last Waltz tour, which culminated in a star-studded, Martin Scorsese-filmed performance on Thanksgiving, November 26, 1976, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. His gig with the Band complete, Mazzeo headed to Florida to help Young refurbish his boat the Ragland while living on an old houseboat called the Evening Coconut.

Next stop, Santa Cruz. In the summer of 1977, Young paid Mazzeo a visit and stayed on, subsequently joining a local band, The Ducks, led by Jeff Blackburn, an old friend of Young’s from the Buffalo Springfield days. Mazzeo managed the group until Young departed in September. Santa Cruz would remain Mazzeo’s primary home base for the rest of his life, as his affinity with sand, surf and the sea rolled on.

When Young got together with Crazy Horse in 1986 for the “In a Rusted-Out Garage” road shows, Mazzeo was recruited to handle staging and visual projections as well as contribute artwork emblazoned on tour t-shirts. Then Mazzeo illustrated the songbook for Young and Crazy Horse’s 1987 Life album. Fast forward to 1989, when Mazzeo rekindled his light show skills for Young’s Lost Dogs tour across Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

During the production of Young’s Greendale album, film and concerts in 2003, Mazzeo was a key presence. In addition to the album cover art, he crafted stage sets for the film and live shows. He also played the character Earl Green (a painter in the mold of Mazzeo himself) in the film and was the inspiration for Young’s song, “Bandit.” In addition, Mazzeo’s illustrations were featured in the Greendale songbook, and the Greendale companion book – with a limited-edition Greendale United States Series of 51, specially created for all 50 U.S. states as well as one for Washington, D.C. Each title was personally signed by Mazzeo and Young.

More of Mazzeo’s paintings were exhibited at venues on Young’s 2023 Coastal Tour and on his 2024 Love Earth tour with Crazy Horse.

Perpetually creative, Mazzeo once described himself as “Head Artist at THE CALLINGS OF THE MUSE.” A working title for his never-completed memoir was “Confessions of a 1960s Psychedelic Light Show Operator.”

-David Zimmer/Bill Bentley