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Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Memoir & Autobiography (2012)For the first time, legendary singer, songwriter, and guitarist Neil Young offers a kaleidoscopic view of his personal life and musical creativity. He tells of his childhood in Ontario, where his father instilled in him a love for the written word; his first brush with mortality when he contracted polio at the age of five; struggling to pay rent during his early days with the Squires; traveling the Canadian prairies in Mort, his 1948 Buick hearse; performing in a remote town as a polar bear prowled beneath the floorboards; leaving Canada on a whim in 1966 to pursue his musical dreams in the pot-filled boulevards and communal canyons of Los Angeles; the brief but influential life of Buffalo Springfield, which formed almost immediately after his arrival in California. He recounts their rapid rise to fame and ultimate break-up; going solo and overcoming his fear of singing alone; forming Crazy Horse and writing “Cinnamon Girl,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and “Down by the River” in one day while sick with the flu; joining Crosby, Stills & Nash, recording the landmark CSNY album, Déjà vu, and writing the song, “Ohio;” life at his secluded ranch in the redwoods of Northern California and the pot-filled jam sessions there; falling in love with his wife, Pegi, and the birth of his three children; and finally, finding the contemplative paradise of Hawaii. Astoundingly candid, witty, and as uncompromising and true as his music, Waging Heavy Peace is Neil Young’s journey as only he can tell it.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published September 25, 2012
About the author
Neil Young
176 books141 followersNeil Percival Young OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, pianist, and film director.
Young's work is characterized by deeply personal lyrics, distinctive guitar work, and signature nasal tenor (and frequently alto) singing voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments—including piano and harmonica—his style of hammer-on acoustic guitar and often idiosyncratic soloing on electric guitar are the linchpins of a sometimes ragged, sometimes polished sound. Although Young has experimented widely with differing music styles, including swing, jazz, rockabilly, blues, and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into either of two distinct styles: folk-esque acoustic rock (as heard in songs such as "Heart of Gold," "Harvest Moon" and "Old Man") and electric-charged hard rock (in songs like "Cinnamon Girl", "Rockin' in the Free World" and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"). In more recent years, Young has started to adopt elements from newer styles of music, such as industrial, alternative country and grunge, the latter of which was profoundly influenced by his own style of playing, often bringing him the title of "the godfather of grunge".
Young has directed (or co-directed) a number of films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), and Greendale (2003).
He is also an outspoken advocate for environmental issues and small farmers, having co-founded the benefit concert Farm Aid, and in 1986 helped found The Bridge School, and its annual supporting Bridge School Benefit concerts, together with his wife Pegi.
Although Young sings frequently about U.S. legends and myths (Pocahontas, space stations, and the settlement of the American West), he remains a Canadian citizen and has never wanted to relinquish his Canadian citizenship. He has lived in the U.S. for "so long" and has stated, about U.S. elections, that he has "got just as much right to vote in them as anybody else."
Young's work is characterized by deeply personal lyrics, distinctive guitar work, and signature nasal tenor (and frequently alto) singing voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments—including piano and harmonica—his style of hammer-on acoustic guitar and often idiosyncratic soloing on electric guitar are the linchpins of a sometimes ragged, sometimes polished sound. Although Young has experimented widely with differing music styles, including swing, jazz, rockabilly, blues, and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into either of two distinct styles: folk-esque acoustic rock (as heard in songs such as "Heart of Gold," "Harvest Moon" and "Old Man") and electric-charged hard rock (in songs like "Cinnamon Girl", "Rockin' in the Free World" and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"). In more recent years, Young has started to adopt elements from newer styles of music, such as industrial, alternative country and grunge, the latter of which was profoundly influenced by his own style of playing, often bringing him the title of "the godfather of grunge".
Young has directed (or co-directed) a number of films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), and Greendale (2003).
He is also an outspoken advocate for environmental issues and small farmers, having co-founded the benefit concert Farm Aid, and in 1986 helped found The Bridge School, and its annual supporting Bridge School Benefit concerts, together with his wife Pegi.
Although Young sings frequently about U.S. legends and myths (Pocahontas, space stations, and the settlement of the American West), he remains a Canadian citizen and has never wanted to relinquish his Canadian citizenship. He has lived in the U.S. for "so long" and has stated, about U.S. elections, that he has "got just as much right to vote in them as anybody else."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,237 reviews
December 18, 2012
Neil and I are neighbors, sort of. For 30-odd years. That is, we live on the same mountain and I pass by his gate all the time when I'm on the way to some job or other (I'm in construction). We've been in the same places, sometimes, but we've never talked. I'm fine with that, and I'm sure he is, too. He's a public person but a private soul. People should be left alone when they want to be left alone.
This book is all the conversations we never had. A lifetime of rambling chitchat, some of it silly, some of it boring, most of it straight from the heart. Neil is an amazing, funny, honest man. I already knew it from his music and his interviews, but this book fills in the blanks: his old cars, his Lionel trains, his family, his wonderful children. (His son Ben sells eggs, and I've bought them - it's all part of the neighborhood.)
It's a mess of a book, and I love it. Don't go methodically from page one to the end. You'll go nuts. I read it pretty much the way I read an encyclopedia: here and there, skipping around, following what interests me at that particular time. Like conversing (well, listening) with an old friend. Which Neil and I are. Only he doesn't know it.
This book is all the conversations we never had. A lifetime of rambling chitchat, some of it silly, some of it boring, most of it straight from the heart. Neil is an amazing, funny, honest man. I already knew it from his music and his interviews, but this book fills in the blanks: his old cars, his Lionel trains, his family, his wonderful children. (His son Ben sells eggs, and I've bought them - it's all part of the neighborhood.)
It's a mess of a book, and I love it. Don't go methodically from page one to the end. You'll go nuts. I read it pretty much the way I read an encyclopedia: here and there, skipping around, following what interests me at that particular time. Like conversing (well, listening) with an old friend. Which Neil and I are. Only he doesn't know it.
January 17, 2013
Not the best biography I have ever read. In fact, honestly, not really a biography at all. If you’re looking for a bio of Neil Young, this is not the book to read. I found it incoherent, in the sense that it did not stick together. I am not sure if this was the effect the author wanted to create, a lot of random mini-stories thrown together. If so, he succeeded. If he was going for a biography, he failed. He says at one point he didn’t want a ghost writer; I think it actually needed one, or perhaps a firm editorial hand. I also felt there was way too much about Puretone, Neil’s pet project to improve the quality of sound in distributed music (a project with which I have a lot of sympathy – I hate MP3 sound) – but he refers back to it in many separate chapters. We get it, Neil, OK? Now can we get to the biography part? So in terms of actual biography, we get a fair amount about his roots in Ontario, which is interesting, though fragmented. He spends time with other Canadian luminaries like Randy Bachman and Jodi Mitchell, but then when he comes to the USA, we hear almost nothing about Buffalo Springfield and even less about CSNY. We do hear a fair amount about his various illnesses / traumas – like early childhood polio, later onset of epilepsy, and even an aneurysm, which are all things I learned about him. We hear a lot about his hobbies; again very interesting, but can we hear about CSNY too? Then we hear a lot about his children’s various problems, for which he again deserves a lot of sympathy and respect. But again, I felt all these stories could have been organized and presented in a more coherent manner. So, I don’t recommend the book. Sorry, Neil. The music still great, though!
January 20, 2013
Three stars by any rational measure - but somehow I'm giving it four anyway. It rambles, repeats itself, bogs down in detail or flies over important stuff.
It's easy to say it needs an editor or a ghost writer - but it wouldn't have been the same and might not have been better.
Near the end Young reflects that he might have been a better person. But throughout the book it's clear that for all his clashes and snap decisions, he has also spent time being a good person. We see who he worked with and who influenced him; we get a feel for the things he obsesses about.
We see a lot of evidence that Young has had a lot of money for a long time. If he sees something he likes, he buys it or funds it. Near the end he has eight houses on two properties. But he never once seems like a guy who was ever motivated by money. His laser focus on music is very clear. It's lost him friends, and made him friends, and brought in that money that lets him have hobbies.
And it's fascinating to see that the music focus perhaps spills over to his hobbies, in sort of a go-big-or-go-home way.
And we see a bit about his relationship with his two physically-challenged sons. It's clear that having money helped him deal with the challenges, but nevertheless it's quite remarkable that the boys appear as his friends who happen to need help doing things. A lot goes unsaid, but it's his choice.
And we gradually come to understand, now that he's clean and dry, the amazing extent to which Young spent decades marinading in drugs and alcohol, and managed to steer through when some close friends didn't.
Conclusion from book: he's really one of a kind, and interesting.
It's easy to say it needs an editor or a ghost writer - but it wouldn't have been the same and might not have been better.
Near the end Young reflects that he might have been a better person. But throughout the book it's clear that for all his clashes and snap decisions, he has also spent time being a good person. We see who he worked with and who influenced him; we get a feel for the things he obsesses about.
We see a lot of evidence that Young has had a lot of money for a long time. If he sees something he likes, he buys it or funds it. Near the end he has eight houses on two properties. But he never once seems like a guy who was ever motivated by money. His laser focus on music is very clear. It's lost him friends, and made him friends, and brought in that money that lets him have hobbies.
And it's fascinating to see that the music focus perhaps spills over to his hobbies, in sort of a go-big-or-go-home way.
And we see a bit about his relationship with his two physically-challenged sons. It's clear that having money helped him deal with the challenges, but nevertheless it's quite remarkable that the boys appear as his friends who happen to need help doing things. A lot goes unsaid, but it's his choice.
And we gradually come to understand, now that he's clean and dry, the amazing extent to which Young spent decades marinading in drugs and alcohol, and managed to steer through when some close friends didn't.
Conclusion from book: he's really one of a kind, and interesting.
October 28, 2012
Neil Young is one of my best friends. He, along with David Foster Wallace and Louis C K, are three people who I feel I can have a conversation with and be on the same page. I am starving for the stimulation of connection with like-minded souls. Wallace has said all he ever will, and I’ve read and listened to most of it. (I wonder if Neil Young will get around to reading him now that Young has moved into writing as a means of creative expression.) Louis C K continues to impress me with his ever-evolving insight and forthright take into the human condition via his comedic creativity. AND NOW, my oldest friend, the great singer/songwriter Mr. Neil Young surprises me with this memoir, which fills in some of mysteries of his music and life. He is 67 at the time of the writing and seven months sober – which he got into (being straight) for fear that he might lose his mind like his father did; AND, he has a lot more he wants to say via writing. (Neil Young was/is a fragile, shy soul, stricken by polio as a child, and suffered from seizers who self medicated with pot, tequila, and cocaine for most all of his life.) Young says he hasn’t written any music since given up weed & alcohol, that The Muse has left him for now and that you can’t force it.
This book is partly a recollection of his life (he acknowledges many mistakes and regrets) and music, a history of the times, and partly a real-time blog-like thing, and partly a “hippie dream.” My favorite part is Chapter Sixty-four (Some chapters have sub titles: “Life in LA,” “On the Road,” “Friends for Life,” “Meditations,” “Hawaii 2011,” and some only numbers, but they are in order –the numbers, but not the events.) Neil Young is driving his self-designed, battery powered 1961 Lincoln Convertible over a mountain pass in northern California:
“Boys from the South” [recording by the Pistol Annies] comes on and again I am taken by this music. It appears from nowhere as a new release on Rhapsody. No radio play. No hype announcement. Just real good country. I suddenly realize that things have changed so much that I might be getting lost. The old ways I know are losing ground. My way is fading. But I still feel. No one can take that away from me. It is a gift I still have and I want my own music to feel alive and vibrant as what I am hearing now. Will that happen? Will I just be reliving my glory days when I record again? Will anybody hear it? Doubt enters the picture as I slow to thirty and cruise by a horseshoe-shaped complex on the side of the road. RETIREMENT MOTEL, reads a neon sign. The vacancy light is there, but I can’t make out whether the sign is lit or not because the sun is hitting it.
Young is a beautiful writer. He never went to college, and learned to write by reading and because his father was a writer. He did no editing or rewriting of the text – just tapped it out on his iPad. He wants to keep writing and eventually try fiction. There are many black & white pictures, mostly of the early days. I first heard him with Buffalo Springfield in 68, or 69. In the fall of 1970, when I was living with a pig and my three dogs in a garage in Laporte, Colorado, taking fifteen hours of upper-level Anthropology courses at CSU and smoking a lot of weed – I wrote a paper inspired by his album After the Gold Rush, sent off a mimeographed copy to President Richard Nixon, picked up a beautiful coed, dropped out, bought a 1954 Doge Panel truck, and headed east to New Hampshire to live off the land. Much later on, in 1982, I had my most violent explosion ever while coked-up and drunk on Grand Mariner while listening to “Like a Hurricane.” (No one was witness to it, it wasn’t aggressive, and no one got hurt – it was just sexual frustration and impatience) and Neil Young’s music provided the soundtrack, as it often did for the forty plus years I’ve been listening to him. Anyway (a favorite segue of Young’s, along with the closing ‘back in the day.’) the point is, reading this made me feel like I’m not alone. There is one dude left who’s been on the journey with me, who’s not an alcoholic, dead, or sold out, which feels mighty good.
Who should read this? Creatives and The Curious, as well as musicians (There’s a lot of technical stuff in here. One of Neil Young’s projects is to invent a new way of recording and transmitting music to capture the true sound of it – Pure Tone, he calls it.); and writers, too, and those interested in things “back in the day.”
Long may you run, my friend. Thanks for keeping me company. Peace out.
This book is partly a recollection of his life (he acknowledges many mistakes and regrets) and music, a history of the times, and partly a real-time blog-like thing, and partly a “hippie dream.” My favorite part is Chapter Sixty-four (Some chapters have sub titles: “Life in LA,” “On the Road,” “Friends for Life,” “Meditations,” “Hawaii 2011,” and some only numbers, but they are in order –the numbers, but not the events.) Neil Young is driving his self-designed, battery powered 1961 Lincoln Convertible over a mountain pass in northern California:
“Boys from the South” [recording by the Pistol Annies] comes on and again I am taken by this music. It appears from nowhere as a new release on Rhapsody. No radio play. No hype announcement. Just real good country. I suddenly realize that things have changed so much that I might be getting lost. The old ways I know are losing ground. My way is fading. But I still feel. No one can take that away from me. It is a gift I still have and I want my own music to feel alive and vibrant as what I am hearing now. Will that happen? Will I just be reliving my glory days when I record again? Will anybody hear it? Doubt enters the picture as I slow to thirty and cruise by a horseshoe-shaped complex on the side of the road. RETIREMENT MOTEL, reads a neon sign. The vacancy light is there, but I can’t make out whether the sign is lit or not because the sun is hitting it.
Young is a beautiful writer. He never went to college, and learned to write by reading and because his father was a writer. He did no editing or rewriting of the text – just tapped it out on his iPad. He wants to keep writing and eventually try fiction. There are many black & white pictures, mostly of the early days. I first heard him with Buffalo Springfield in 68, or 69. In the fall of 1970, when I was living with a pig and my three dogs in a garage in Laporte, Colorado, taking fifteen hours of upper-level Anthropology courses at CSU and smoking a lot of weed – I wrote a paper inspired by his album After the Gold Rush, sent off a mimeographed copy to President Richard Nixon, picked up a beautiful coed, dropped out, bought a 1954 Doge Panel truck, and headed east to New Hampshire to live off the land. Much later on, in 1982, I had my most violent explosion ever while coked-up and drunk on Grand Mariner while listening to “Like a Hurricane.” (No one was witness to it, it wasn’t aggressive, and no one got hurt – it was just sexual frustration and impatience) and Neil Young’s music provided the soundtrack, as it often did for the forty plus years I’ve been listening to him. Anyway (a favorite segue of Young’s, along with the closing ‘back in the day.’) the point is, reading this made me feel like I’m not alone. There is one dude left who’s been on the journey with me, who’s not an alcoholic, dead, or sold out, which feels mighty good.
Who should read this? Creatives and The Curious, as well as musicians (There’s a lot of technical stuff in here. One of Neil Young’s projects is to invent a new way of recording and transmitting music to capture the true sound of it – Pure Tone, he calls it.); and writers, too, and those interested in things “back in the day.”
Long may you run, my friend. Thanks for keeping me company. Peace out.
October 26, 2012
A very interesting book by Neil Young. For one it is not really a memoir of sorts, but more of an open-ended series of short essays on the nature of getting old, some music, hardcore car culture, and an obsession with the sound quality of digital recordings and the nature of how music has been affected by technology. All of it is interesting to me, because he's .... Neil Young.
He repeats himself a tad much (the book could use some extra editing in this regard) but still, its nice to get inside his head and this is what the book is really about. And what concerns Young is the writing of the book itself - in many ways it reads like a private journal to himself, and he is sort of in a wonder how he can write a book. He is also doing this sober, which is totally new to him. He writes about not writing a song for a year due to what he thinks is the lack of drinking and smoking pot. But he's totally open to new possibilities, and one feels that this book is just another avenue for him to dwell in.
The various health issues that run through his life and his family's is quietly depressing to me. This is very much a book by a 65 year-old man. in many ways he's inventorying what's important in his life and he looks back not as a nostalgic trip, but more to see how things could have been different or changed if possible.
Also a large part of the book really goes into his obsession with car collecting – and he has a strong aesthetic with respect to a certain type of American cars from the 60's and 50's. Young, is without a doubt, is an otaku. Meaning that he collects things that are important to him, and can obsessively discuss or write on that subject forever. For him, each car has a certain narrative or history, and it sounds like if he does another book, that will be the subject matter. He also collects toy trains and he has a firm understanding of its history that is impressive.
I am not a fan of Neil's music, I like some of it, but it doesn't move me the way it moves other people. But still ,what I find interesting is his love of the sound of a guitar or amp. His writing style is very simple, but he waxes poetry when discussing sound in a certain type of environment. The beauty of the hum of an electric guitar or the sounds the amps make when turned on but not in use. All of this is important to Young's aesthetic and how he makes his music. Without a doubt he loathes the sound of CD's as well as the MP3. It seems he has invented a new version of the MP3, where the sound is recording studio quality. And this book is almost an info-commercial with respect to his company that he started for the purpose of making a better sound quality.
“Waging Heavy Peace” is not a major memoir by any means. But it is an interesting piece of work by an artist who is still thinking things out.
He repeats himself a tad much (the book could use some extra editing in this regard) but still, its nice to get inside his head and this is what the book is really about. And what concerns Young is the writing of the book itself - in many ways it reads like a private journal to himself, and he is sort of in a wonder how he can write a book. He is also doing this sober, which is totally new to him. He writes about not writing a song for a year due to what he thinks is the lack of drinking and smoking pot. But he's totally open to new possibilities, and one feels that this book is just another avenue for him to dwell in.
The various health issues that run through his life and his family's is quietly depressing to me. This is very much a book by a 65 year-old man. in many ways he's inventorying what's important in his life and he looks back not as a nostalgic trip, but more to see how things could have been different or changed if possible.
Also a large part of the book really goes into his obsession with car collecting – and he has a strong aesthetic with respect to a certain type of American cars from the 60's and 50's. Young, is without a doubt, is an otaku. Meaning that he collects things that are important to him, and can obsessively discuss or write on that subject forever. For him, each car has a certain narrative or history, and it sounds like if he does another book, that will be the subject matter. He also collects toy trains and he has a firm understanding of its history that is impressive.
I am not a fan of Neil's music, I like some of it, but it doesn't move me the way it moves other people. But still ,what I find interesting is his love of the sound of a guitar or amp. His writing style is very simple, but he waxes poetry when discussing sound in a certain type of environment. The beauty of the hum of an electric guitar or the sounds the amps make when turned on but not in use. All of this is important to Young's aesthetic and how he makes his music. Without a doubt he loathes the sound of CD's as well as the MP3. It seems he has invented a new version of the MP3, where the sound is recording studio quality. And this book is almost an info-commercial with respect to his company that he started for the purpose of making a better sound quality.
“Waging Heavy Peace” is not a major memoir by any means. But it is an interesting piece of work by an artist who is still thinking things out.
January 25, 2013
I was given this book for Christmas and although I have been a big Neil young fan for decades I wasn't really optimistic that I would enjoy it. But I really did. I know that some people will find it rambling but I think it's a gem. It's very personal and I got a real sense that Neil was trying to communicate something very complex, essential and yet dynamic in and everyday kind of way. This is not a book about celebrity. There are drug stories here and lots of little incidents about past mistakes, but it never gets self centred. This is a book that started as an idea that just emerged to fill a cyclic void of song writing. A normal and natural interruption to the muse. It's different.
Most autobiographies tend to be chronological, creating a sense that lives are lived as a series of events, developments, detours and re routings. But I like this version better. It's about the past, the present and what might be all at the same time.
Neil young has produced something that is a gift to an ethnographer. His writing style is informal, personal and appears barely edited. But that doesn't mean it's badly written or confusing. Quite the opposite. It gave me a real sense that I was understanding more about the man, the way he thinks, the creative drives, obsessions and ways of reasoning that are fundamentally Neil Young.
I know. I'm a fan of his music and his whole approach to making and creating music but I don't think you need to be a fan to appreciate this book. It is a real insight into one creative mind at work, everyday, all the time. Obsessive, driven, repetitive, ultimately mundane and intensely emotional. yes there is a lot of repetition, he keeps going back to his current energy and audio quality projects. But that's important because they are the things which are located in the present.
Like his music there is a lot of revisiting themes and ideas, a lot of improvisation. But it was never boring. And I am easily bored, especially when I am reading. Repetition is important when you are trying to crete something new. Like any kind of learning, you have to start with what you know, recognise the limits and then push the boundaries as far as they will go until you find yourself somewhere else.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the creative mind. You don't need to be a Neil Young fan but it's probably worth listening to at least some of his older and newer material to get an idea of what is going on in this man's mind.With that qualification in mind this is a book I would highly reccomend to anyone who wants to know about the passage of time, growing older but staying passionate, being driven and always a dreamer.
Thanks Neil I really enjoyed this.
Most autobiographies tend to be chronological, creating a sense that lives are lived as a series of events, developments, detours and re routings. But I like this version better. It's about the past, the present and what might be all at the same time.
Neil young has produced something that is a gift to an ethnographer. His writing style is informal, personal and appears barely edited. But that doesn't mean it's badly written or confusing. Quite the opposite. It gave me a real sense that I was understanding more about the man, the way he thinks, the creative drives, obsessions and ways of reasoning that are fundamentally Neil Young.
I know. I'm a fan of his music and his whole approach to making and creating music but I don't think you need to be a fan to appreciate this book. It is a real insight into one creative mind at work, everyday, all the time. Obsessive, driven, repetitive, ultimately mundane and intensely emotional. yes there is a lot of repetition, he keeps going back to his current energy and audio quality projects. But that's important because they are the things which are located in the present.
Like his music there is a lot of revisiting themes and ideas, a lot of improvisation. But it was never boring. And I am easily bored, especially when I am reading. Repetition is important when you are trying to crete something new. Like any kind of learning, you have to start with what you know, recognise the limits and then push the boundaries as far as they will go until you find yourself somewhere else.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the creative mind. You don't need to be a Neil Young fan but it's probably worth listening to at least some of his older and newer material to get an idea of what is going on in this man's mind.With that qualification in mind this is a book I would highly reccomend to anyone who wants to know about the passage of time, growing older but staying passionate, being driven and always a dreamer.
Thanks Neil I really enjoyed this.
October 21, 2012
Disappointing. Rambling and repetitive. Too much car talk and not enough music talk. It's too bad more chapters weren't like Ch. 67 where Neil finally gives the reader an interesting glimpse into his songwriting process. Unfortunately, this occurs at the end of the book.
October 10, 2012
You know that feeling of scurrying away to a secret place with someone’s diaries in your hot little paws? (Err, okay maybe you don’t.) This is how it felt to read through the wonderfully thick Waging Heavy Peace. This is not a chronology of Neil Young in the way one might expect a rock memoir to be – this is a collection of his musing on life, on his past, on his family, on his loves, and his relationship with drugs. This is everything you want it to be. I think I smiled while I read it – literally, smiled. Because he’s just so honest, and he’s the Neil Young you’ve hoped him to be. He’s unpolished, and yet his writing is so beautiful at times that you instantly remember why he’s one of the greatest songwriters of our time. Particularly unexpected for me was his perspectives on his family, and his son Ben Young (always said with the first and last name together – never just Ben). I like Neil as a rocker, and a legend, and an icon…but I love him as a dad. A great read.
- Ashley Audrain, Director of Publicity
- Ashley Audrain, Director of Publicity
July 14, 2016
HOMERUN!
December 25, 2012
I love the man's music and I don't regret reading this, but it's a bit of a head scratcher. Have you heard of Chris Ware's Building Stories? The book is actually a box of independent pieces, meant to be picked up and read in any order, but to form a cohesive whole in whatever order you read them in. Young's book is like that as well: more of a collection of thoughts than a journey, told in whatever order they occurred to him, without any regard for linearity or theme. Some of it comes across as a bit of an advertisement for his current projects: the Lincvolt electric car, and his crusade to restore musical fidelity (called PureTone through most of the book and then Pono in the last hundred pages). There's surprisingly little about the music itself, or songwriting. What there is of songwriting is mostly about his fear that he won't be able to write now that he's sober. Beyond that there's little introspection: most of the book is composed of tributes to friends and musicians, and tributes to well-loved vehicles. I'm pretty sure there are far more words devoted to his hearse than his guitar. Shakey: Neil Young's Biography goes into more depth in general.
But why do we read a musician's biography or autobiography? Is it for the name-dropping? For his recollections of his glory days? Salacious stories or salvation stories? If it's to get a glimpse into a mind that wrote some of my favorite songs, then this book is it, in all its rambling, ragged glory. We're used to linearity, but he's spent his whole life composing in cycles of chorus and verse. I think this book is just another song. Probably a Crazy Horse song, with meandering instrumental passages and occasional returns to theme.
But why do we read a musician's biography or autobiography? Is it for the name-dropping? For his recollections of his glory days? Salacious stories or salvation stories? If it's to get a glimpse into a mind that wrote some of my favorite songs, then this book is it, in all its rambling, ragged glory. We're used to linearity, but he's spent his whole life composing in cycles of chorus and verse. I think this book is just another song. Probably a Crazy Horse song, with meandering instrumental passages and occasional returns to theme.
January 5, 2013
NEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!
This shit is classically exasperating, pure Neil Young. Like a lot of his albums over the past 15 years one gets the feeling that it might have been more powerful with a little reflection and editing in the process but that's not Neil's thing and the diamonds are still scattered around in a lot of rough here. As some critics have noted it is interesting to see the writing and flow get better as the book goes on. Because it's basically unedited and Neil hasn't written a book before he starts pretty clunky, his voice more dictational and having not yet found his 'literary voice' yet but he picks up fast and by the end is actually playing with the form and rollicking around in the prose a bit like a real honest-to-god writer. If Neil continues to write, one gets the feeling his pen hand could get dangerous over the next few rounds.
For deep Neil Young fans the issue of "how good this book is" is totally beside the point. It's a must. Fans looking for insight into the character and motivations and techniques of the artist and icon that is "Neil Young" as the public knows him would probably be best served to read this book and McDonough's "Shakey" back to back for a more "fun" if not juicier and fuller picture of the icon--the two books together create a kind of yin and yang. Neil paints himself as a mellow old guy that really just wants to get lost in his interests and obsessions and enjoy a peaceful state of mind between his dances with the muse and his artistic excursions and claims that he's lived a totally uncalculated life and career. You read the words "gee-whiz" a lot on the page and in the melancholic and deeply wistful tone of his reflections. McDonough on the other hand paints Neil as the ruthless brilliant prince of darkness cunningly and bombastically claiming his throne as one of the great rock and roll visionaries of the 20th century at any cost to his personal relationships and business adversaries. In reality of course the truth is something other than a biographer or an autobiographer can tell us about an icon and we're left with how good the stories are be they true, false or somewhere in between and Neil tells some good ones here about experiences and folks both famous and from the shadowy annals of his personal life and pastoral ranch existence out of the spotlight.
WHP is never a slog, in fact it's a page turner even when you're bobbing like a bouy in a soft green sea through a page full of "golly gosh, gee willickers, jimminy cricket those were the good old times, gee-whiz I wish I could be jamming with my high school band again on surf tunes, those were the good old days". Neil also talks a lot about being old. He's honest about the joys and rewards of having lived a full life and the pleasure of reflecting on them as an older man, but he's also honest about the fears, the shadows and darkness that you live with as you grow older and you begin to lose your friends and companions to the onward march of time and know that you are slated for such a departure somewhere not too distant in an ever charging future.
"Waging Heavy Peace" is unique. It's flawed, but it's Neil to the core and his memories are interesting, often fascinating even through his mellowing sunset colored glasses.
This shit is classically exasperating, pure Neil Young. Like a lot of his albums over the past 15 years one gets the feeling that it might have been more powerful with a little reflection and editing in the process but that's not Neil's thing and the diamonds are still scattered around in a lot of rough here. As some critics have noted it is interesting to see the writing and flow get better as the book goes on. Because it's basically unedited and Neil hasn't written a book before he starts pretty clunky, his voice more dictational and having not yet found his 'literary voice' yet but he picks up fast and by the end is actually playing with the form and rollicking around in the prose a bit like a real honest-to-god writer. If Neil continues to write, one gets the feeling his pen hand could get dangerous over the next few rounds.
For deep Neil Young fans the issue of "how good this book is" is totally beside the point. It's a must. Fans looking for insight into the character and motivations and techniques of the artist and icon that is "Neil Young" as the public knows him would probably be best served to read this book and McDonough's "Shakey" back to back for a more "fun" if not juicier and fuller picture of the icon--the two books together create a kind of yin and yang. Neil paints himself as a mellow old guy that really just wants to get lost in his interests and obsessions and enjoy a peaceful state of mind between his dances with the muse and his artistic excursions and claims that he's lived a totally uncalculated life and career. You read the words "gee-whiz" a lot on the page and in the melancholic and deeply wistful tone of his reflections. McDonough on the other hand paints Neil as the ruthless brilliant prince of darkness cunningly and bombastically claiming his throne as one of the great rock and roll visionaries of the 20th century at any cost to his personal relationships and business adversaries. In reality of course the truth is something other than a biographer or an autobiographer can tell us about an icon and we're left with how good the stories are be they true, false or somewhere in between and Neil tells some good ones here about experiences and folks both famous and from the shadowy annals of his personal life and pastoral ranch existence out of the spotlight.
WHP is never a slog, in fact it's a page turner even when you're bobbing like a bouy in a soft green sea through a page full of "golly gosh, gee willickers, jimminy cricket those were the good old times, gee-whiz I wish I could be jamming with my high school band again on surf tunes, those were the good old days". Neil also talks a lot about being old. He's honest about the joys and rewards of having lived a full life and the pleasure of reflecting on them as an older man, but he's also honest about the fears, the shadows and darkness that you live with as you grow older and you begin to lose your friends and companions to the onward march of time and know that you are slated for such a departure somewhere not too distant in an ever charging future.
"Waging Heavy Peace" is unique. It's flawed, but it's Neil to the core and his memories are interesting, often fascinating even through his mellowing sunset colored glasses.
October 23, 2012
Extremely disappointing. Seriously, you don't understand the irony of describing a visit to a Hawaiian Costco? Where the big discovery was that they sold sonic care brush replacements? Who knew that hanging out with Neil was like getting stuck on the couch next to your friend's 98-year-old grandfather?
Neil's in the Rock n' Roll 1% and it's tremendous let down he chooses to spend most pages describing his thoughts on finances, poor business decisions, and advertising an idea for a new music service when most of the country is hurting (and shelling out $30 for this book).
Don't get me wrong, I love his music, I will defend my purchase of the archives a million times over, but unfortunately this release degrades the man in relation to the myth. In the future let the music do the talking, Neil. The passages about 'Words', Briggs, and unreleased material were fantastic. It was painful to sift through the wreckage to mine them.
Anyone looking for a book on Neil, pick up Shakey, perhaps the most well researched, vastly entertaining rock biography ever written, about a fascinating subject that perhaps is too elusive for even the man himself to understand?
Neil's in the Rock n' Roll 1% and it's tremendous let down he chooses to spend most pages describing his thoughts on finances, poor business decisions, and advertising an idea for a new music service when most of the country is hurting (and shelling out $30 for this book).
Don't get me wrong, I love his music, I will defend my purchase of the archives a million times over, but unfortunately this release degrades the man in relation to the myth. In the future let the music do the talking, Neil. The passages about 'Words', Briggs, and unreleased material were fantastic. It was painful to sift through the wreckage to mine them.
Anyone looking for a book on Neil, pick up Shakey, perhaps the most well researched, vastly entertaining rock biography ever written, about a fascinating subject that perhaps is too elusive for even the man himself to understand?
December 17, 2012
I love Neil Young and I love this book. It continually brought tears to my eyes. His very human and enjoyable style made reading such a pleasure. I did not want this book to ever end. A possible Springfield reunion gave me shivers down my spine. I went racing back to my old vinyl to listen to the amazing and wonderful songs mentioned in the book. Pono has me totally buzzed - I would love to stop listening to digital crap and hear again the wonderful full music that musicians make for us. No wonder the music business is going down. There is no quality. Good on you Neil for pushing the Pono technology forward. His electric car Lincvolt is a revolution. I watched his movie Human Highway and absolutely loved it. I recently saw his tour with Crazy Horse when it came through Winnipeg and he played lots of tunes from psychedelic pill. This man is a genius in so many ways. More, more, more!
July 25, 2021
Not a linear autobiography, but more of free flowing monologue; this would be good for anyone who really likes Neil Young’s music—as I do. One can hear Neil’s voice clearly. He’s had an interesting, privileged life with some personal highs and lows. His love of family, friends, colleagues, music, cars, and travel comes through clearly, as does his passion for Pono, a digital music provider that brings back the sounds lost in itunes and cds, and alternative fueled cars. It’s repetitive at times, but it adds to his charm and personable way of communicating. He's Canadian, but also an engaged American resident.
His love for his son with a developmental disability comes through strong. His respect and admiration for his fellow musicians in his bands defies the misperceptions that have been driven in the popular press. But interestingly, he has little to say about his collaboration with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash.
And like any autobiographical work, he exhibits some very human flaws and inconsistencies. A minor example is highlighted when he describes a 2010 tour he did on the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Katrina and the tragic oil spill. He writes, “Johnny Tyson, an old friend of mine from many years back who is a music lover and a man who likes to do good things for people, followed us around with a semi of Tyson poultry products for the food banks.” He later complains about the smells of factory farms when on a long drive in the country. To his credit, he has always made time to participate in the annual Farm Aid concerts which support family farms. But doesn’t he see the inconsistency of praising Tyson, owner of numerous factory farms that are driving family farms out of business?
But with Neil, let's face it, it's all about the music. Here are some less obvious ones:
Four Strong Winds (One of his favorite songs written by Canadian icon Ian Tyson)
When God Made Me
Are You Passionate
And a more obvious one, perhaps my favorite Neil song that never gets old:
One of These Days
His love for his son with a developmental disability comes through strong. His respect and admiration for his fellow musicians in his bands defies the misperceptions that have been driven in the popular press. But interestingly, he has little to say about his collaboration with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash.
And like any autobiographical work, he exhibits some very human flaws and inconsistencies. A minor example is highlighted when he describes a 2010 tour he did on the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Katrina and the tragic oil spill. He writes, “Johnny Tyson, an old friend of mine from many years back who is a music lover and a man who likes to do good things for people, followed us around with a semi of Tyson poultry products for the food banks.” He later complains about the smells of factory farms when on a long drive in the country. To his credit, he has always made time to participate in the annual Farm Aid concerts which support family farms. But doesn’t he see the inconsistency of praising Tyson, owner of numerous factory farms that are driving family farms out of business?
But with Neil, let's face it, it's all about the music. Here are some less obvious ones:
Four Strong Winds (One of his favorite songs written by Canadian icon Ian Tyson)
When God Made Me
Are You Passionate
And a more obvious one, perhaps my favorite Neil song that never gets old:
One of These Days
January 3, 2013
I approached this book knowing full well that "Shakey" was the standard linearly-arranged biography (of a sort), and that this would be a rambling set of observations in typical Neil style. As a fan, I'm inclined to give the book four stars for its warm, curmudgeonly style, though Young is scarcely a literary genius. As a general-purpose read, it might be more of a moderate three-star, and some who are unfamiliar with Young's music might put it down in frustration - and Young understands that.
There is nothing here even approaching a chronological history, as we bounce from Springfield to "Le Noise" to "Human Highway" to "Gold Rush" days. If you're the type that enjoys stream-of-consciousness fiction, you'll have no problem with this, and might even appreciate the rhythm of the book, like a pinball zipping along inside a noisy arcade machine, trying to avoid TILT at every angular rebound.
One aspect of Young's personality I gained from this book is that, in addition to struggling with polio, epilepsy, and multiple brain aneurysms, Young displays aspects of a mild Asperger's, a mild ADHD, and might have made a great electrical or mechanical engineer with the proper educational background (though we might have lost his musical creative genius that way). He is constantly fiddling with Lionel train layouts, electric versions of classic mega-cars, and methods for enhancing digital music quality by reintroducing analog slope characteristics (PureTone or Pono or whatever it's called nowadays).
Where a classic attention-deficit person might start three dozen projects and finish none, Young starts dozens of musical and engineering projects and always intends to finish each one over time. As he is entering the later years of his life, his goal (besides curmudgeon story-telling) is to try to see every project through to completion. His musical "Archives" project in this venue becomes less an ego-fulfillment exercise, and more of an effort to see that all the albums that never got released (Homegrown, Sedan Delivery, Island in the Sun) finally get their due. Young already has such a rich back catalog, it's hard to believe he has so many unreleased musical works, but it indicates what a man of multiple ideas he always has been. (But please, Neil, can we get a proper digital release of the incomparable "Time Fades Away" live album?)
If you're not a car buff or amplifier buff, you may find some of his collector obsessions tedious, but he is simply performing the same project-completion tasks in cars and electronics projects that he is doing in music archiving. I breezed over some of his discussions of 1950s Cadillacs and his Old Black guitar, understanding that these are aspects of his life he wants to chronicle as much as his music.
Whether Neil has been an absent father or not, he makes clear how much he loves and admires his three kids. Two sons have some disabilities (Zeke with mild aneurysm issues, Ben with profound cerebral palsy), while his daughter Amber Jean is an artist living a relatively normal life. Young is grateful to his wife Pegi for launching the Bridge School project to help those with profound disabilities, and constantly expresses his gratitude to her and his kids. In fact, much of this book is a positive settling of scores with friends and lovers, as he admits to being an immature jerk to his two previous significant others (Susan Acevedo and Carrie Snodgress), while writing mini-accolades to close friends who have preceded him in death. Neil is full of new ideas to carry music forward, but he is painfully aware of his own mortality throughout this book.
It deserves mentioning that some reviewers of this book who consider Neil's golden years to be only the early '70s, only the late '70s Rust Never Sleeps era, only the mid-90s Greendale era, sound as misguided as David Geffen, when he tried to sue Young in the 1980s for making "uncharacteristic" work. Young has been a shape-shifter since 1964, adopting dozens of personae for dozens of classes of listeners. His body of work remains fascinating, as the recent "Psychedelic Pill" or "Le Noise" efforts show. Understanding Young as a musical artist means grasping each of the inherent personae. If you only understand Buffalo Springfield or "Greendale" or "Harvest" or "Tonight's the Night," well, you really don't understand Young at all.
There is nothing here even approaching a chronological history, as we bounce from Springfield to "Le Noise" to "Human Highway" to "Gold Rush" days. If you're the type that enjoys stream-of-consciousness fiction, you'll have no problem with this, and might even appreciate the rhythm of the book, like a pinball zipping along inside a noisy arcade machine, trying to avoid TILT at every angular rebound.
One aspect of Young's personality I gained from this book is that, in addition to struggling with polio, epilepsy, and multiple brain aneurysms, Young displays aspects of a mild Asperger's, a mild ADHD, and might have made a great electrical or mechanical engineer with the proper educational background (though we might have lost his musical creative genius that way). He is constantly fiddling with Lionel train layouts, electric versions of classic mega-cars, and methods for enhancing digital music quality by reintroducing analog slope characteristics (PureTone or Pono or whatever it's called nowadays).
Where a classic attention-deficit person might start three dozen projects and finish none, Young starts dozens of musical and engineering projects and always intends to finish each one over time. As he is entering the later years of his life, his goal (besides curmudgeon story-telling) is to try to see every project through to completion. His musical "Archives" project in this venue becomes less an ego-fulfillment exercise, and more of an effort to see that all the albums that never got released (Homegrown, Sedan Delivery, Island in the Sun) finally get their due. Young already has such a rich back catalog, it's hard to believe he has so many unreleased musical works, but it indicates what a man of multiple ideas he always has been. (But please, Neil, can we get a proper digital release of the incomparable "Time Fades Away" live album?)
If you're not a car buff or amplifier buff, you may find some of his collector obsessions tedious, but he is simply performing the same project-completion tasks in cars and electronics projects that he is doing in music archiving. I breezed over some of his discussions of 1950s Cadillacs and his Old Black guitar, understanding that these are aspects of his life he wants to chronicle as much as his music.
Whether Neil has been an absent father or not, he makes clear how much he loves and admires his three kids. Two sons have some disabilities (Zeke with mild aneurysm issues, Ben with profound cerebral palsy), while his daughter Amber Jean is an artist living a relatively normal life. Young is grateful to his wife Pegi for launching the Bridge School project to help those with profound disabilities, and constantly expresses his gratitude to her and his kids. In fact, much of this book is a positive settling of scores with friends and lovers, as he admits to being an immature jerk to his two previous significant others (Susan Acevedo and Carrie Snodgress), while writing mini-accolades to close friends who have preceded him in death. Neil is full of new ideas to carry music forward, but he is painfully aware of his own mortality throughout this book.
It deserves mentioning that some reviewers of this book who consider Neil's golden years to be only the early '70s, only the late '70s Rust Never Sleeps era, only the mid-90s Greendale era, sound as misguided as David Geffen, when he tried to sue Young in the 1980s for making "uncharacteristic" work. Young has been a shape-shifter since 1964, adopting dozens of personae for dozens of classes of listeners. His body of work remains fascinating, as the recent "Psychedelic Pill" or "Le Noise" efforts show. Understanding Young as a musical artist means grasping each of the inherent personae. If you only understand Buffalo Springfield or "Greendale" or "Harvest" or "Tonight's the Night," well, you really don't understand Young at all.
April 30, 2013
This was a great book and after I read the last page I wanted more. Neil Young writes this book almost like a series of journal entries that flip between his present day projects (like creating electric cars and restoring real sound through Pono) and brief stories of his life making music. It's amazing how much knowledge this guy has about the technical side of music - he really is quite a talented geek! As he tells his tale about starting out in such varied places as Winnipeg and Hollywood, and meeting and playing with an array of different people (most of whom are in the category of music icon today), it's all presented in such a matter-of-fact, this-is-how-it-was, kind of way. I guess when you're living in that life it doesn't seem so amazing until you look back on it with the eyes of someone who wasn't there.
What I also thought very interesting was that he wrote this book while sober and straight. His recollections of making music tell how they were always drinking and smoking weed or other things, but all the while creating some brilliant sounds. Young also notes that since he has been sober, he has not been able to write a song, that the muse has left him but he hopes only for the time being. There's a strong feeling of time catching up with him and he writes with a sense of age where he laments the friends that were lost too soon to the demons of the rock & roll life. But he's also got a very spiritual nature and seems to accept that it all is just part of the plan of the universe. The theme of life is very present in his writing, with which of course must also come the theme of death, as one cannot exist without the other. After his doctor's advise that it would be best to quit the drugs and alcohol, and after seeing his own father suffer through dementia, it seems that Young has been somewhat scared straight. Though the reason for his sobriety is most valid, he makes mention of whether the act may cost him his muse.
While sometimes a bit disjointed (his stories come out at times as if he is a man already struggling with infirmities of old age), his passion for music and the future of music is most intense. It is also interesting to me how he views his own role in the creation of such great music as a mere drop in the bucket. Must be the Canadian in him which keeps him so modest and so willing to tout the praises of others, who were more the creative genuises in his eyes. But make no mistake, he is an artist to the core and does mention his own perfectionism and brilliance at times. However, he is also quick to mention how often it hurt those around him in order to fulfill his own musical cravings.
Neil Young makes it seem like he's a pretty regular guy telling the stories of the music that moves him so deeply. He needs to know that what he has been a part of is most definitely iconic and will live on forever in the music that he and his friends made. I don't think he realizes the significance of his impact in the world and how lucky he was to have been part of those days when such great music was born. As I read this book, I kept thinking about all the things that I haven't done in my life and whether there was time to do any of it now. Then I realized that the man writing the story was doing so in addition to all the things he had already done and continues to do, so it inspired me to do more and not accept excuses about lost time. I finsihed the book and wished I could go hang out with Neil Young and just absorb more of his thoughts and stories of life, preferably at his house in Hawaii, where we could just sit and listen to the ocean and share some lovely space on this planet.
What I also thought very interesting was that he wrote this book while sober and straight. His recollections of making music tell how they were always drinking and smoking weed or other things, but all the while creating some brilliant sounds. Young also notes that since he has been sober, he has not been able to write a song, that the muse has left him but he hopes only for the time being. There's a strong feeling of time catching up with him and he writes with a sense of age where he laments the friends that were lost too soon to the demons of the rock & roll life. But he's also got a very spiritual nature and seems to accept that it all is just part of the plan of the universe. The theme of life is very present in his writing, with which of course must also come the theme of death, as one cannot exist without the other. After his doctor's advise that it would be best to quit the drugs and alcohol, and after seeing his own father suffer through dementia, it seems that Young has been somewhat scared straight. Though the reason for his sobriety is most valid, he makes mention of whether the act may cost him his muse.
While sometimes a bit disjointed (his stories come out at times as if he is a man already struggling with infirmities of old age), his passion for music and the future of music is most intense. It is also interesting to me how he views his own role in the creation of such great music as a mere drop in the bucket. Must be the Canadian in him which keeps him so modest and so willing to tout the praises of others, who were more the creative genuises in his eyes. But make no mistake, he is an artist to the core and does mention his own perfectionism and brilliance at times. However, he is also quick to mention how often it hurt those around him in order to fulfill his own musical cravings.
Neil Young makes it seem like he's a pretty regular guy telling the stories of the music that moves him so deeply. He needs to know that what he has been a part of is most definitely iconic and will live on forever in the music that he and his friends made. I don't think he realizes the significance of his impact in the world and how lucky he was to have been part of those days when such great music was born. As I read this book, I kept thinking about all the things that I haven't done in my life and whether there was time to do any of it now. Then I realized that the man writing the story was doing so in addition to all the things he had already done and continues to do, so it inspired me to do more and not accept excuses about lost time. I finsihed the book and wished I could go hang out with Neil Young and just absorb more of his thoughts and stories of life, preferably at his house in Hawaii, where we could just sit and listen to the ocean and share some lovely space on this planet.
October 8, 2012
Neil and I go back a long way. Not that we're pals, you understand, or musician-comrades. Part of the phenomenon of ‘sixties/‘seventies rock and folk music was that these musicians wrote songs that we could not only understand, but ones we could relate to from our own lives. They were visionaries, a step or two ahead of the rest of us - partially because they had already exposed themselves to a broader spectrum of society than that of those of us hunkered down in jobs, marriages, families, or other social structures that limited our life experiences, and partially because they were able to articulate their feelings toward a world that seemed yet to be born from that broader view of modern life. We attached ourselves to these musicians and their art in an emotional manner, trusting that by doing so we could not only understand this strange, new world that seemed to be emerging, but that we could thrive in it.
I’d be the first to say that these musicians would have had apoplexy at the responsibility inherent in embracing such ties to all of us, and that’s why, I think, the best of them kept on changing their bands, their musical styles, the tone and nature of their lyrics. By doing so, they were tacitly saying, “This is me, but if you can relate to bits and pieces of me, then take what you need and leave the rest for someone else.” I think we all realized very soon that the “me” in this was a grander sense of self, a self all or some of us could share as true parts of each of us.
Neil’s writing in this book is very much like a lot of his music: off the cuff, casual (sometimes to the point of being inarticulate in a writerly sense), emotional. The trick to “understanding” Neil, Dylan, and so many others, was to absorb a feeling from them, something non-verbal, something that perhaps only music could properly communicate. Still, toward the end of this book, I began to understand what Neil Young had been up to all those years - not in terms of music, but that of life itself. It took me quite a few pages to understand that this book isn’t prose per se; it’s a conversation in a Picasso-like, multidimensional way, with all of us who had followed his music through the years, and with those dear, personal friends of his who were now departed, and with those like his son Ben, who through birth defect, can’t talk or walk.
I want to go on - in detail - and mention how I and my closest friends of that early era related to some of his albums: “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” “After The Goldrush,” his earlier work with the Buffalo Springfield band, and later with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and his Rust Never Sleeps tour. Then, as he began to assume senior status in the music world, his mentoring of younger talent. But I won’t go into all that. It's all in the book, at least to some extent.
Neil’s still out there, searching, looking for relevance in both music and in a world drowning in its own leavings. He uses the book partly to promote a new sound system that captures the fuller aural spectrum that musicians hear, a palate once available on vinyl, but not in the current digital world. And he’s passionate about alternative energy to drive vehicles, something he experiments with himself.
This isn’t a memoir, as you would expect one to be written. Neil doesn’t talk down to anyone. He’s simply an everyman with a voice larger than most, and he hasn’t let that go to write this book.
I’d be the first to say that these musicians would have had apoplexy at the responsibility inherent in embracing such ties to all of us, and that’s why, I think, the best of them kept on changing their bands, their musical styles, the tone and nature of their lyrics. By doing so, they were tacitly saying, “This is me, but if you can relate to bits and pieces of me, then take what you need and leave the rest for someone else.” I think we all realized very soon that the “me” in this was a grander sense of self, a self all or some of us could share as true parts of each of us.
Neil’s writing in this book is very much like a lot of his music: off the cuff, casual (sometimes to the point of being inarticulate in a writerly sense), emotional. The trick to “understanding” Neil, Dylan, and so many others, was to absorb a feeling from them, something non-verbal, something that perhaps only music could properly communicate. Still, toward the end of this book, I began to understand what Neil Young had been up to all those years - not in terms of music, but that of life itself. It took me quite a few pages to understand that this book isn’t prose per se; it’s a conversation in a Picasso-like, multidimensional way, with all of us who had followed his music through the years, and with those dear, personal friends of his who were now departed, and with those like his son Ben, who through birth defect, can’t talk or walk.
I want to go on - in detail - and mention how I and my closest friends of that early era related to some of his albums: “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” “After The Goldrush,” his earlier work with the Buffalo Springfield band, and later with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and his Rust Never Sleeps tour. Then, as he began to assume senior status in the music world, his mentoring of younger talent. But I won’t go into all that. It's all in the book, at least to some extent.
Neil’s still out there, searching, looking for relevance in both music and in a world drowning in its own leavings. He uses the book partly to promote a new sound system that captures the fuller aural spectrum that musicians hear, a palate once available on vinyl, but not in the current digital world. And he’s passionate about alternative energy to drive vehicles, something he experiments with himself.
This isn’t a memoir, as you would expect one to be written. Neil doesn’t talk down to anyone. He’s simply an everyman with a voice larger than most, and he hasn’t let that go to write this book.
May 1, 2016
This is one of the worst books I've ever read. Before reading this, I had the utmost respect for Neil Young's creativity. After reading the small percentage of this book that I could make it through, I realized that he really has nothing to say.
March 10, 2013
Neil Young is one of my favorite musicians so i I began this book with a bias. it's a book that rambles a bit but there are nuggets of gold, and you have to admire his vision and passion.
October 7, 2021
Lukaisin Neil Youngin Muistelmat (Like, 2012). Mielenkiintoinen kirja. Vuonna 1945 ilmestynyt tarinoi opuksessa luonnollisesti musiikistaan ja elämänsä tärkeistä ihmisistä, mutta ei tämä ole mikään perinteinen rokkimuistelma, jossa yritettäisiin saada koko ura samojen kansien väliin.
Kronologisuus on hylätty ja johdonmukaisuus puuttuu. Melko paljon käytetään aikaa sekä autoista että pienoisrautateistä jaarittelemiseen. Mutta semmoista kai se on, kun vanha mies muistelee!
Vaimosta ja lapsista, erityisesti kehitysvammaisesta Ben-pojasta, puhutaan harvinaisen lämpimästi, tosin pari vuotta kirjan ilmestymisen jälkeen koitti avioero. Daryl Hannahin kanssa kai tuo Neil on nykyään kimpassa.
Suureen osaan nousevat ponnistukset mahdollisimman laadukkaan äänentoistojärjestelmän kehittämiseksi, jopa siinä mittakaavassa, että homma tuntuu Pono-systeemin markkinonnilta. Ei siitä kyllä mitään tullut, projekti hylättiin joitakin vuosia sitten.
Neil Young antaa itsestään aika mielenkiintoisen kuvan. Ei välttämättä helpoin mahdollinen kaveri, aika kova ja ehdoton, mutta sitten vähän hölmöllä tavalla idealistinen miljonääri. Kivahan se on, että haluaa parantaa maailmaa ja kehittää sähköautoilua, mutta ilmeisesti rahoja tuli pistettyä myös vedellä kulkevaan autoon...
Neil Youngin levyjä tuli kuunneltua lukemisen ohessa. Vaihtelevan tasoista kamaa, esikoislevy ei edelleenkään kuulosta kaksiselta mutta sitten joku Massey Hall -konserttitaltiointi oli kova.
Kronologisuus on hylätty ja johdonmukaisuus puuttuu. Melko paljon käytetään aikaa sekä autoista että pienoisrautateistä jaarittelemiseen. Mutta semmoista kai se on, kun vanha mies muistelee!
Vaimosta ja lapsista, erityisesti kehitysvammaisesta Ben-pojasta, puhutaan harvinaisen lämpimästi, tosin pari vuotta kirjan ilmestymisen jälkeen koitti avioero. Daryl Hannahin kanssa kai tuo Neil on nykyään kimpassa.
Suureen osaan nousevat ponnistukset mahdollisimman laadukkaan äänentoistojärjestelmän kehittämiseksi, jopa siinä mittakaavassa, että homma tuntuu Pono-systeemin markkinonnilta. Ei siitä kyllä mitään tullut, projekti hylättiin joitakin vuosia sitten.
Neil Young antaa itsestään aika mielenkiintoisen kuvan. Ei välttämättä helpoin mahdollinen kaveri, aika kova ja ehdoton, mutta sitten vähän hölmöllä tavalla idealistinen miljonääri. Kivahan se on, että haluaa parantaa maailmaa ja kehittää sähköautoilua, mutta ilmeisesti rahoja tuli pistettyä myös vedellä kulkevaan autoon...
Neil Youngin levyjä tuli kuunneltua lukemisen ohessa. Vaihtelevan tasoista kamaa, esikoislevy ei edelleenkään kuulosta kaksiselta mutta sitten joku Massey Hall -konserttitaltiointi oli kova.
October 9, 2012
Neil Young wants you to know that as of January of 2011, he has given up smoking pot. He also wants you to know that as a result of his weedless existence, he's suffering from a heavy case of songwriter's block. Finally, he wants you to know that despite his newfound inability to write songs, he has to be creative. He's Uncle Neil, after all, right? And what would Uncle Neil be without a creative project to suck up all his energies? Hence the composition of Waging Heavy Peace.
That's right: the impetus behind Young's autobiographical musings is his inability to do what he's really good at - write and play music. But it turns out that Young is a very talented writer indeed, and Waging Heavy Peace isn't so much a brilliant, linear rock memoir in the vein of Patti Smith's Just Kids and Keith Richards' Life but a sixty-plus chapter collection of chapters (or songs, if you will) that randomly jump backwards and forwards in time as they follow the ramblings of Young's muse.
The topics range from the formation of early bands such as the Squires and the Mynah Birds (with Bruce Palmer on bass and Rick James (!) on lead vocals), the composition and recording of classic albums (Tonight's the Night, Harvest, and Le Noise stick out the most), to spirituality (Young calls himself a pagan and worshiper of a female Great Spirit), to environmentalism (Young has already created an environmentally friendly car, the Lincvolt, and shows his disgust with factory farming and the botched handling of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill), to his controversial comments on Ronald Reagan and relationship with David Geffen, the man who sued him in the 1980s for making music that wasn't characteristic of Neil Young.
Young loves Buffalo Springfield and wants to play with them again, even though he claims that the band was based on the chemistry provided by the late Palmer. He also has good things to say about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - a band that he claims was based on friendship. Crosby provided the energy, Nash the professionalism and work ethic, and Stills the genius and demons. It's heartwarming to read how much Young admires Stills and values their symbiotic musical relationship and friendship.
It turns out that Young thinks that Comes a Time is his best recorded album and that he's always done his best work with Crazy Horse - which is good news for those of you awaiting the release of the Psychedelic Pill album later this month.
Waging Heavy Peace also delves deeply into Young's role in the audio wars. He and his collaborators have developed a company called Pono that promises to make studio-level sounding records available through Internet downloads. Young feels that current MP3s capture only 5% of what the musicians hear in the studio, and he wants to up the anti. He reports that Apple and iTunes are giving him a hard time over this project.
Young also writes a lot of pages on some of his favorite topics: vintage American cars, vintage toy railroad cars, and guitars. He's a collector at heart, a pack rat who likes to arrange things in specific orders. It's cool to see how the nonlinear approach to the book contradicts what Neil says about the cataloguing of his collections. I mean, have you delved into the Archives project? Uncle Neil certainly has a rage for order.
Young's passion for collecting truly gives insight into his personality, as do his deep love for his family and friends. He bears his soul in paying tribute to his wife Pegi throughout the book and in showing his love for his disabled sons Zeke and Ben. Out of his two sons, he focuses the most on Ben, about whom he writes as he would an able-bodied man. But he also provides insight into the extensive details that go into Ben's care.
In addition to Stills, the musician friends about whom he writes most fondly are his producer David Briggs and original Crazy Horse guitarist and singer Danny Whitten. He considers the albums that Briggs produced to be collaborations. Young says that Whitten, whose death from a heroin overdose he chronicles on Tonight's the Night, was a better singer and overall performer than he was. The evidence? YouTube clips of Danny and the Memories and Whitten's other band, the Rockets.
By the end of the book, Young has presented himself as a sad but optimistic man, one who feels very guilty about the many people in his life who have lived with longterm illnesses or have died young but who also believes that each day brings new possibilities. He claims that it's true that he's a perfectionist when it comes to his art and will leave projects at the drop of a hat. But Young's sensitivity and openhearted nature override what comes off to many as his flightiness and need for control.
The triumph of Waging Heavy Peace is that after reading it, you really feel that you've had a great time hanging out with Neil Young. Just don't offer him any pot. He'll most definitely refuse you but then offer you a great story, such as the one about the time that he and Briggs . . .
That's right: the impetus behind Young's autobiographical musings is his inability to do what he's really good at - write and play music. But it turns out that Young is a very talented writer indeed, and Waging Heavy Peace isn't so much a brilliant, linear rock memoir in the vein of Patti Smith's Just Kids and Keith Richards' Life but a sixty-plus chapter collection of chapters (or songs, if you will) that randomly jump backwards and forwards in time as they follow the ramblings of Young's muse.
The topics range from the formation of early bands such as the Squires and the Mynah Birds (with Bruce Palmer on bass and Rick James (!) on lead vocals), the composition and recording of classic albums (Tonight's the Night, Harvest, and Le Noise stick out the most), to spirituality (Young calls himself a pagan and worshiper of a female Great Spirit), to environmentalism (Young has already created an environmentally friendly car, the Lincvolt, and shows his disgust with factory farming and the botched handling of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill), to his controversial comments on Ronald Reagan and relationship with David Geffen, the man who sued him in the 1980s for making music that wasn't characteristic of Neil Young.
Young loves Buffalo Springfield and wants to play with them again, even though he claims that the band was based on the chemistry provided by the late Palmer. He also has good things to say about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - a band that he claims was based on friendship. Crosby provided the energy, Nash the professionalism and work ethic, and Stills the genius and demons. It's heartwarming to read how much Young admires Stills and values their symbiotic musical relationship and friendship.
It turns out that Young thinks that Comes a Time is his best recorded album and that he's always done his best work with Crazy Horse - which is good news for those of you awaiting the release of the Psychedelic Pill album later this month.
Waging Heavy Peace also delves deeply into Young's role in the audio wars. He and his collaborators have developed a company called Pono that promises to make studio-level sounding records available through Internet downloads. Young feels that current MP3s capture only 5% of what the musicians hear in the studio, and he wants to up the anti. He reports that Apple and iTunes are giving him a hard time over this project.
Young also writes a lot of pages on some of his favorite topics: vintage American cars, vintage toy railroad cars, and guitars. He's a collector at heart, a pack rat who likes to arrange things in specific orders. It's cool to see how the nonlinear approach to the book contradicts what Neil says about the cataloguing of his collections. I mean, have you delved into the Archives project? Uncle Neil certainly has a rage for order.
Young's passion for collecting truly gives insight into his personality, as do his deep love for his family and friends. He bears his soul in paying tribute to his wife Pegi throughout the book and in showing his love for his disabled sons Zeke and Ben. Out of his two sons, he focuses the most on Ben, about whom he writes as he would an able-bodied man. But he also provides insight into the extensive details that go into Ben's care.
In addition to Stills, the musician friends about whom he writes most fondly are his producer David Briggs and original Crazy Horse guitarist and singer Danny Whitten. He considers the albums that Briggs produced to be collaborations. Young says that Whitten, whose death from a heroin overdose he chronicles on Tonight's the Night, was a better singer and overall performer than he was. The evidence? YouTube clips of Danny and the Memories and Whitten's other band, the Rockets.
By the end of the book, Young has presented himself as a sad but optimistic man, one who feels very guilty about the many people in his life who have lived with longterm illnesses or have died young but who also believes that each day brings new possibilities. He claims that it's true that he's a perfectionist when it comes to his art and will leave projects at the drop of a hat. But Young's sensitivity and openhearted nature override what comes off to many as his flightiness and need for control.
The triumph of Waging Heavy Peace is that after reading it, you really feel that you've had a great time hanging out with Neil Young. Just don't offer him any pot. He'll most definitely refuse you but then offer you a great story, such as the one about the time that he and Briggs . . .
May 16, 2021
Dull and kinda boring. I am a fan of Neil Young and his down to earth song writting but this book wasn't very good. His Live at Massey Hall album made me read this to learn more about such a talented musician. But I was disappointed. The book reads as "it was a great time" and "those were great moments in my life" and rambles on into tangents. I had a hard time finding moments of clarity and meaningful insight. I enjoyed parts of the book but have no ambitions of trying reading this ever again.
July 29, 2022
Neil Youngs career has spanned over fifty years. In this book, Young reflects on his life from his Canadian childhood to his years with various artists he sang with, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash (CSN), and Crazy Horse. It was a delight to read Youngs insights, his thoughts and life as a legendary singer that I still love today.
We find out about his inner soul and life challenges, mistakes, achievements, and goals which draws us to see him as a real person. He spoke about his love for music and how he is guided by the “Muse”. It is not predictable but takes it wherever it wants him to go. He muses from day to day about how the quality of modern recordings on mp3 formats is inferior because mp3 compression degrades music a lot compared to older albums. He develops PureSound and talks a lot about its pure sound quality. It is the future of digital music because it retains all data from its original format.
Young is also enthusiastic about model railroads and cars. He describes his love of old, big cars (Cadillacs and Lincolns) and environmental concerns and passion for self-generating electric powered cars. He muses about his LincVolt project many times and bringing the eclectic 50’s and 60’s cars back to life.
It was enjoyable to hear him musing about his joys and his love of people, his charity, and his life with the bands he played with and song writing experiences and all the musicians who influenced him. There are many. He hankers for past glories and absent friends and has a deep love for his family. This is not a typical autobiography about facts of his life. It is a book told from the heart, told with ramblings, his musings about his interests along with his music career. It is a unique book that will entertain you if you are a fan of Neil Young. It was nice to see the pictures of him, the musicians and family included.
We find out about his inner soul and life challenges, mistakes, achievements, and goals which draws us to see him as a real person. He spoke about his love for music and how he is guided by the “Muse”. It is not predictable but takes it wherever it wants him to go. He muses from day to day about how the quality of modern recordings on mp3 formats is inferior because mp3 compression degrades music a lot compared to older albums. He develops PureSound and talks a lot about its pure sound quality. It is the future of digital music because it retains all data from its original format.
Young is also enthusiastic about model railroads and cars. He describes his love of old, big cars (Cadillacs and Lincolns) and environmental concerns and passion for self-generating electric powered cars. He muses about his LincVolt project many times and bringing the eclectic 50’s and 60’s cars back to life.
It was enjoyable to hear him musing about his joys and his love of people, his charity, and his life with the bands he played with and song writing experiences and all the musicians who influenced him. There are many. He hankers for past glories and absent friends and has a deep love for his family. This is not a typical autobiography about facts of his life. It is a book told from the heart, told with ramblings, his musings about his interests along with his music career. It is a unique book that will entertain you if you are a fan of Neil Young. It was nice to see the pictures of him, the musicians and family included.
May 24, 2023
Neil Young published this memoir in 2012 and wrote it when he was 65 years old (Young was born in 1945). Young, of course, is the singer-songwriter who started his musical career in the 1960s and played with Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; and Crazy Horse. He is best known however for his solo career and his many critically acclaimed albums including Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest.
This memoir was written exclusively by Young and was not edited by a ghost writer as many rock bios are. The narrative is very rambling and goes from one era to another without any chronological order. Young also talks a lot about some of his pet projects including PureTone (later called Pono) which was what Young wanted music to be. It was a portable digital media player and music download service for high-resolution audio. (According to Wikipedia, it met its demise in 2017). He also discusses his prototype for an electric luxury car called LincVolt which was a 1959 Lincoln Continental converted into a more fuel-efficient vehicle. Young talks about other loves including his Lionel trains and of course family and friends. He also seems to have a very love/hate relationship with new technology including streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube. He had this to say about YouTube: "If you forget what you are doing, it shows up on YouTube. If you remember what you are doing, it shows up on YouTube....If snot comes out of your nose while you are playing the harmonica and slithers down the harmonica rack onto your T-shirt, it is on YouTube..."
But he also talks about his love of music from his early days in Winnipeg, Canada, up to when the book was published and his expected recording of a new album with Crazy Horse. He spends a lot of time discussing many of his friends and technicians that worked on his albums and unless you are familiar with them, the names kind of get lost in the telling. His love of family is also very apparent, especially for his two sons Zeke and Ben who were both born with cerebral palsy. At the time he wrote the book he was married to Pegi Young who he also felt great love for (however, they divorced in 2014).
Overall, by reading this book you end up really feeling like you know him. The book is somewhat rambling and Young has a tendency to go off on tangents but I would still recommend this to anyone who lived during the 60s and 70s and who loves the music of that time. Young is a classic!
This memoir was written exclusively by Young and was not edited by a ghost writer as many rock bios are. The narrative is very rambling and goes from one era to another without any chronological order. Young also talks a lot about some of his pet projects including PureTone (later called Pono) which was what Young wanted music to be. It was a portable digital media player and music download service for high-resolution audio. (According to Wikipedia, it met its demise in 2017). He also discusses his prototype for an electric luxury car called LincVolt which was a 1959 Lincoln Continental converted into a more fuel-efficient vehicle. Young talks about other loves including his Lionel trains and of course family and friends. He also seems to have a very love/hate relationship with new technology including streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube. He had this to say about YouTube: "If you forget what you are doing, it shows up on YouTube. If you remember what you are doing, it shows up on YouTube....If snot comes out of your nose while you are playing the harmonica and slithers down the harmonica rack onto your T-shirt, it is on YouTube..."
But he also talks about his love of music from his early days in Winnipeg, Canada, up to when the book was published and his expected recording of a new album with Crazy Horse. He spends a lot of time discussing many of his friends and technicians that worked on his albums and unless you are familiar with them, the names kind of get lost in the telling. His love of family is also very apparent, especially for his two sons Zeke and Ben who were both born with cerebral palsy. At the time he wrote the book he was married to Pegi Young who he also felt great love for (however, they divorced in 2014).
Overall, by reading this book you end up really feeling like you know him. The book is somewhat rambling and Young has a tendency to go off on tangents but I would still recommend this to anyone who lived during the 60s and 70s and who loves the music of that time. Young is a classic!
April 17, 2021
OK, I am prejudiced. I have been a fan for such a long time now (where have I heard that line before?) that it is difficult to be rational and objective. And as time has gone by, and many of my former musical idols fail to provide the thrill they once did, Young's music speaks to me evergreen, his playing, singing, and lyrics as relevant to middle aged listeners as to young ones. I savored this book, read through most of it twice, and turned it into a soft, dog-eared resident of my recycling bin.
Have you ever wanted to sit down and have a beer with Neil Young, maybe watch him strum his guitar a little and reminisce, tell stories about some of the adventures he has had and the musicians that he has played with? Are you looking for some musical recommendations? Some witty yarns? Do you want to hear about how he met Steven Stills and started Buffalo Springfield? Do you want to know the inside story of poor Danny Whitten's early death from heroin addiction? About the fabulous music Young made with his close friend and producer David Briggs? This book is for you.
This is not a conventional autobiography. It reads more like a bunch of taped solo talks recorded during free moments in a busy, active life. For in addition to being one of the best known rock musicians on earth, Young is a father, a husband, a fanatical collector of cars and model trains, a man who obsessively chases good sound quality, a touring musician, someone who donates his energies to charities, and on top of all that, a person who appreciates the comforts of home - and he has had some lovely ones, which he describes. He does go over many parts of his life, but does not do so in a sequential fashion.
Young is too much of a gentleman to lambaste people in his autobiography, or to seriously dish on the women he has been romantically involved with, or to bitch about his bandmates or family members. There are times when he lets someone have it, but that is not what this is about. No, I get the feeling he is mostly just being himself in these pages, and talking to his readers in the way that he normally talks to people. Of course he understands that his fans want to get to know him some, and he wants to oblige us, to a degree anyway. Young believes that everything he does is perfectly reasonable, as do most of us, but if you step back a little, a rather uncompromising, eccentric, and uniquely talented musical artist comes into view. Probably he has not always been a breeze to deal with, but that can be said about a great many of us, can't it?
It is interesting to hear him talk about his music and some of the ways it was recorded and written, and he does it in a way that he knows a general reader will understand. He describes his band Crazy Horse as if it were some sort of skittish but marvelous beast that needs certain obscure conditions in order to flourish - don't spook the horse, he says. He thinks back to wonderful, all night recording sessions in the west L.A. hills, and driving home in the dawn light with his fingers crossed that a cop won't pull him over. He admits that up until recently, almost all his songwriting was done under the influence of marijuana, and that his recent sobriety has been a little difficult.
This book contains far too many memorable anecdotes to try to list them here. If you are already a fan, you will probably love this book. If you are not, don't start here. Go listen to some of his music instead. Check out Buffalo Springfield's Retrospective, After the Gold Rush, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Deja Vu, Zuma, On the Beach, Dreamin' Man, and Psychedelic Pill. And there is more - plenty more. Thanks, Neil.
Have you ever wanted to sit down and have a beer with Neil Young, maybe watch him strum his guitar a little and reminisce, tell stories about some of the adventures he has had and the musicians that he has played with? Are you looking for some musical recommendations? Some witty yarns? Do you want to hear about how he met Steven Stills and started Buffalo Springfield? Do you want to know the inside story of poor Danny Whitten's early death from heroin addiction? About the fabulous music Young made with his close friend and producer David Briggs? This book is for you.
This is not a conventional autobiography. It reads more like a bunch of taped solo talks recorded during free moments in a busy, active life. For in addition to being one of the best known rock musicians on earth, Young is a father, a husband, a fanatical collector of cars and model trains, a man who obsessively chases good sound quality, a touring musician, someone who donates his energies to charities, and on top of all that, a person who appreciates the comforts of home - and he has had some lovely ones, which he describes. He does go over many parts of his life, but does not do so in a sequential fashion.
Young is too much of a gentleman to lambaste people in his autobiography, or to seriously dish on the women he has been romantically involved with, or to bitch about his bandmates or family members. There are times when he lets someone have it, but that is not what this is about. No, I get the feeling he is mostly just being himself in these pages, and talking to his readers in the way that he normally talks to people. Of course he understands that his fans want to get to know him some, and he wants to oblige us, to a degree anyway. Young believes that everything he does is perfectly reasonable, as do most of us, but if you step back a little, a rather uncompromising, eccentric, and uniquely talented musical artist comes into view. Probably he has not always been a breeze to deal with, but that can be said about a great many of us, can't it?
It is interesting to hear him talk about his music and some of the ways it was recorded and written, and he does it in a way that he knows a general reader will understand. He describes his band Crazy Horse as if it were some sort of skittish but marvelous beast that needs certain obscure conditions in order to flourish - don't spook the horse, he says. He thinks back to wonderful, all night recording sessions in the west L.A. hills, and driving home in the dawn light with his fingers crossed that a cop won't pull him over. He admits that up until recently, almost all his songwriting was done under the influence of marijuana, and that his recent sobriety has been a little difficult.
This book contains far too many memorable anecdotes to try to list them here. If you are already a fan, you will probably love this book. If you are not, don't start here. Go listen to some of his music instead. Check out Buffalo Springfield's Retrospective, After the Gold Rush, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Deja Vu, Zuma, On the Beach, Dreamin' Man, and Psychedelic Pill. And there is more - plenty more. Thanks, Neil.
October 6, 2017
Palesemente scritta da Neil Young il Vecchio– da non confondersi con Neil Young il Giovane, l'evangelista tossico raffigurato sui santini stropicciati per le troppe suppliche dagli imbolsiti coltivatori diretti di marijuana della California del Nord durante l'harvest time di fine estate, Neil Young il Vecchio invece è quel signore dal fascino sgarrupato che negli ultimi vent'anni va cercando il feedback perfetto armato di sarcastico bruitisme fai-da-te, meglio noto come il Russolo di Topanga Beach, per inquadrare il personaggio un assolo di chitarra Neil Young il Vecchio sta a un assolo di Eric Clapton come uno strutturalista sta a Benedetto Croce – questa stropicciata, sgangherata,involuta, ripetitiva, mal scritta, scorbutica, auto-indulgente , auto-promozionale, narcisistica raccolta di frammenti autobiografici sembra corrispondere perfettamente al monito che Young il Vecchio riserva a un ipotetico quanto mitologico establishment stelle e strisce da qualche parte tra queste pagine e che recita più o meno “ecco cosa succede a riempire di dollari un hippie”. A leggerla (e leggere è verbo ardito per questa teoria di sbobinature) con occhiali rovesciati è una parabola del self made man che alla compiutezza preferisce la dispersione, all'epica del successo in un campo la poetica dei dispendiosi tentativi destinati a un gioioso fallimento da smaltire rigorosamente con un joint in una mano, un bicchiere di qualcosa nell'altra e a chiosa una filosofica e cialtrona considerazione in testa. Si tratti di trenini elettrici, di progetti quasi leonardeschi di automobili ecosostenibili, di standard per l'ascolto del suono digitale, di case, di mogli o di morte (c'è molta morte in questo libro, ma è giusto così, sia Neil Young il Giovane che il Vecchio hanno scritto bellissime canzoni sulla morte – non sono canzoni da metter su al vostro funerale, da far cantare in coro ai convenuti con la lacrimuccia agli occhi, ma da far fischiettare all'inchiodabare (ignoro l'appellativo tecnico) possibilmente ubriaco nel retrobottega del negozio di pompe funebri). Ci sono tante storie di musica ovviamente, ma quelle potete trovarle in tutte le biografie. Potrebbe sembrare che non ci sia piaciuta, ma noi (io e il mio gatto) amiamo Neil Young il Vecchio e le sue farneticazioni sonore e mentali. Da leggersi obbligatoriamente con un feedback in testa.
March 27, 2013
I love how Neil just went with the flow while writing this. It's as if you're hanging out with him and he remembers stories which connect to other stories. But even more than the easy way it reads, i respect his honesty and humbleness as he looks back on his life and apologizes to people in his past but recognizes that life is about choices and most of them are hard in one way or another.
I laughed out loud when he just gives shout outs to people like,
"Thanks, Larry!" He sprinkles these through the book. He treasures people, he admits he's a material guy, he relates a story about how Linda Ronstadt (whom he adores) warned Nicolette Larsen - "don't get involved with Neil - he doesn't live in the real world." And of course, that's why we love him.
He has a broad inventors vision and i'm pretty sure he loves Wayne's World which is one of my all time favorite films too.
He tells a story about how he brought home a daughter of one of the Rat Pack guys (Nancy Sinatra?)one night when he lived in Laurel Canyon and his cat had peed everywhere and his date ditched him. So very Neil. About how he makes the dorkiest of movies but he loves them, how he and Pegi's dog Nina were stranded on the 5 driving down to L.A. to meet Pegi who was recording an album and he had to call AAA and the guy who came with the tow truck was shocked it was really Neil and then asked, "Who is Cinnamon Girl?" and Neil said, "When we get to L.A. you will meet her."
He explains WHAT music is to him, how his creative process works and through the entire book you are overwhelmed by what a vulnerable, sensitive soul is housed in the frame of Neil Young. And he is FUNNY. Like that 6th grade boy who cracked you up in school - that's Neil.
Big surprise, I loved his book, i can't wait for the next. Hurry up, Neil!!!!! This one was better than i hoped it would be.
I laughed out loud when he just gives shout outs to people like,
"Thanks, Larry!" He sprinkles these through the book. He treasures people, he admits he's a material guy, he relates a story about how Linda Ronstadt (whom he adores) warned Nicolette Larsen - "don't get involved with Neil - he doesn't live in the real world." And of course, that's why we love him.
He has a broad inventors vision and i'm pretty sure he loves Wayne's World which is one of my all time favorite films too.
He tells a story about how he brought home a daughter of one of the Rat Pack guys (Nancy Sinatra?)one night when he lived in Laurel Canyon and his cat had peed everywhere and his date ditched him. So very Neil. About how he makes the dorkiest of movies but he loves them, how he and Pegi's dog Nina were stranded on the 5 driving down to L.A. to meet Pegi who was recording an album and he had to call AAA and the guy who came with the tow truck was shocked it was really Neil and then asked, "Who is Cinnamon Girl?" and Neil said, "When we get to L.A. you will meet her."
He explains WHAT music is to him, how his creative process works and through the entire book you are overwhelmed by what a vulnerable, sensitive soul is housed in the frame of Neil Young. And he is FUNNY. Like that 6th grade boy who cracked you up in school - that's Neil.
Big surprise, I loved his book, i can't wait for the next. Hurry up, Neil!!!!! This one was better than i hoped it would be.
December 31, 2012
Yes, you can write another book, Neil, and I will read it. Especially if there is again a deluxe edition with music and video excerpts. Before reading this book, I loved some of your music, and hated some of it, but I always liked you for some reason. Now I feel like you are a friend and I know why I like you. That is how intimate this book is. And after all, this was my Christmas read and I wish you health, happiness, and success.
Update, new year's eve 2012, days after closing this book it is still very much on my mind. I went yesterday to iTunes and purchased some more of his music. I am enjoying listening to it as if it was all new again. This guy is the real deal, authenticity was never an issue. The book is the same thing. It is all Neil, unembellished, rough in spots, unedited. Good on ya, Neil, I give you one more star, not because it is literary greatness but because you touched me deeply. Long may you run.
Update, new year's eve 2012, days after closing this book it is still very much on my mind. I went yesterday to iTunes and purchased some more of his music. I am enjoying listening to it as if it was all new again. This guy is the real deal, authenticity was never an issue. The book is the same thing. It is all Neil, unembellished, rough in spots, unedited. Good on ya, Neil, I give you one more star, not because it is literary greatness but because you touched me deeply. Long may you run.
September 25, 2012
Highly recommended for any Neil Young fan. It's a great read – totally fascinating even when it's a little frustrating, just like him. Read my full review here.
January 19, 2014
In the words of Ambrose Bierce, "The covers of this book are too far apart."
This is a book of rambling, repetitious tedium, spilled willy-nilly from the laptop of a top-notch example of the self-obsessed Me Generation rock star. The continuous litany of his possessions ("I bought this really cool car; I bought that really cool car; I bought some really cool model trains; I bought this really cool house. . .") is interspersed with his arrogant and self-congratulatory estimations of his own greatness. The blather goes on for nearly 500 pages, and the material of any real worth could have been pared down to about 20. The rest is of interest only as a case study of how insular, vapid and self-absorbed the world of a millionaire rock star can be.
Neil Young is a good songwriter and guitar player. That's where his talent resides. But if you're hoping to find in this book some insight or discussion of his songwriting or guitar playing, forget it. There's nothing of substance in that vein; there is essentially nothing related to music in this book -- except for a few passages about the cool guitars and cool amps Neil Young has owned over the decades of his stardom. ("Cool" is nearly the only adjective used in the book. Everything he buys is cool. And we are treated to a recitation of all of it, from the cars to the houses to his shoes to the bow and arrows he picked up in a roadside tourist shop.)
You'll read about the friends he watched die from drugs. And about his concern that maybe he won't be able to write songs anymore now that he's given up drugs. And of course you'll read all about how Neil Young is going to save the world by building a more fuel-efficient hybrid Lincoln Continental (because he likes big, cool cars). What a guy.
If you're one of those people who worship rock stars and turn them into heroes, and you've made Neil Young one of your cult idols, then by all means do not read this book. It will be shattering to discover just how shallow, dull, insensitive, ignorant, arrogant and un-insightful your hero is. And if you're someone who just likes Neil Young's music and would like to know more about it, then avoid this book: there is nothing of substance along that line here. But if you can stay awake through the dull, monotonous, soporific repetition, you will in fact learn something about Neil Young. Just don't expect to learn anything good, or interesting.
This is a book of rambling, repetitious tedium, spilled willy-nilly from the laptop of a top-notch example of the self-obsessed Me Generation rock star. The continuous litany of his possessions ("I bought this really cool car; I bought that really cool car; I bought some really cool model trains; I bought this really cool house. . .") is interspersed with his arrogant and self-congratulatory estimations of his own greatness. The blather goes on for nearly 500 pages, and the material of any real worth could have been pared down to about 20. The rest is of interest only as a case study of how insular, vapid and self-absorbed the world of a millionaire rock star can be.
Neil Young is a good songwriter and guitar player. That's where his talent resides. But if you're hoping to find in this book some insight or discussion of his songwriting or guitar playing, forget it. There's nothing of substance in that vein; there is essentially nothing related to music in this book -- except for a few passages about the cool guitars and cool amps Neil Young has owned over the decades of his stardom. ("Cool" is nearly the only adjective used in the book. Everything he buys is cool. And we are treated to a recitation of all of it, from the cars to the houses to his shoes to the bow and arrows he picked up in a roadside tourist shop.)
You'll read about the friends he watched die from drugs. And about his concern that maybe he won't be able to write songs anymore now that he's given up drugs. And of course you'll read all about how Neil Young is going to save the world by building a more fuel-efficient hybrid Lincoln Continental (because he likes big, cool cars). What a guy.
If you're one of those people who worship rock stars and turn them into heroes, and you've made Neil Young one of your cult idols, then by all means do not read this book. It will be shattering to discover just how shallow, dull, insensitive, ignorant, arrogant and un-insightful your hero is. And if you're someone who just likes Neil Young's music and would like to know more about it, then avoid this book: there is nothing of substance along that line here. But if you can stay awake through the dull, monotonous, soporific repetition, you will in fact learn something about Neil Young. Just don't expect to learn anything good, or interesting.
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