Sooo...I think Neil Young is kind of a God. This is reasonably well documented in these pages. If not a God, than a demi god at worst. Neil... burst onto my conscious self with the seminal “Rust Never Sleeps”. It was 1979 and I was a senior in high school. I had been dismissive of Neil because my sisters boyfriend, then her husband, had taken her to see his concert in 72 or 73 and it was right after “Harvest” and “After the Goldrush” and everyone was expecting a nice melodic show of hits. But Neil was suffering from the deaths of friends Danny Whitten (original Crazy Horse Guitarist) and Bruce Berry (Roadie) and he was in a dark place. He was out with Nils Lofgren and he took them all to Miami Beach in angry booze soaked, short shows where he was famous for yelling at the crowd “WAKE UP”. I had read about it a few years before in a great Cameron Crowe article in Rolling Stone which I read (then) like other people read their text books. Neil was very deep and soulful and interesting but, he had not grabbed me... until “Rust Never Sleeps”.
The album (yes kids, there were things called albums) moved me hard and fast and it moved me right in time to go away to college. I had been a singer, songwriter geek in high school. It was fine for being sensitive and trying to be a particular type of poser. Jackson Browne, Dan Fogelberg..blah, blah, blah. Neil was that as well. Harvest was about as singer, songwritery as anyone could be but Neil also had an edge. An electric guitar which he tore up and which, just as importantly every guitar playing friend I had ever known was tremendously dismissive of his style. He was an anti-hero, an iconoclast. There was not a trace of disco, it was all Neil and when he sand, “My, my, hey, hey”... whether it was out of the blue, or into the black, it was the real thing. That caused me to go back an explore the portfolio. Decade was a primer but eventually you needed all of his albums. He reinvented himself... a lot. He put out some tremendous crap but was always following the muse and he became an integral “godfather” of grunge and inspired much of the ethos and lets face it...grunge was awesome.
So I read articles and interviews (the Cameron Crowe Interview referenced above really is tremendously interesting and well written) and somewhat essential though in reading his new book, he seemed to lie a lot, especially about the drugs.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-rebellious-neil-young-cameron-crowes-1975-rolling-stone-interview-20110601
I have read several biographies of Young including “Shakey” by Jimmy Mc Donnough and “Neil Young” by Steve Simmins. I think “Shakey” was an authorized biography. Personally I would have been happier to have Crowe do it but my guess is he that he is too busy with other projects and that Neil might have just told him other lies this time.
So now we get Neil in Neil’s voice and the one thing I would like to assure you is that there is no ghost writer for this Autobiography. If there is I would like to meet him and I would like to find out where he too grade school composition and burn down the school. I love Neil Young. I love his songs. I would say he is a “brilliant” pop songwriter who has compiled a body of work that puts him in the top 5 for lifetime achievement in rock. Dylan is of course Dylan but then there is Neil and then maybe Elvis Costello and then... I don't know. But for all those great songs, the man cannot write worth shit. His paragraphs amble around and he repeats himself incessantly throughout the book and as I said he just cannot write. A typical paragraph will describe an incident with... Ben Keith, the awesome Nashville pedal steel guitarist that held up all Neils epic country work with the session band he put together for Neil called “The Stray Gators”. About Keith he would recite a road trip and then end the section, and the paragraph with something like the following. Ben Keith was one of a kind. That guy really moved me. He was a righteous dude. I really miss him. I seriously do. You can only read so many things like that about people. I acknowledge that he has met and is likely friends with everyone but get an editor!
The book clocks in at 500 pages but it reads more like 300. There are a lot of chapters with blank pages between and there are a lot of cool pics from over the years. His relationship with his wife Pegi is sweet and says a lot about getting let you get old enough and mature enough to handle a real relationship and his passion for his kids and especially his son Ben is heartbreaking and beautiful That is really one of the hallmarks of the book is how Ben’s conditions changed Neils life and viewpoint and art.
His passions run through the book though. Neil is a sound Nazi. A hater of the CD format (I remember he was one of those guys drawing green lines on their CD’s to improve sound) to the much reviled MP3 format that we all enjoy now. Apparently it sucks. According to Neil you get like 16% of the spectrum on an MP3. he has been working on something he called PureTone to bring better sound to our listening devices but has run into an obstacle with Apple. That is where the title comes from when he explains that he was asked if he was waging war with Apple and he replied, “More like waging heavy peace”. He does know how to turn a phrase.
He talks about hi “Geffen Years” and he talks about his producers and managers and backup musicians and of course he talks about Crazy Horse. he loves the Horse in both of it’s incarnations with Danny Whitten early and Frank “Pancho” Sanpedro later. it is amazing how many people have sang with and backed Neil from James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt to Eddy Vedder. It is quite a resume’. He speaks of the early days in Canada with the Squires and takes us through Buffalo Springfield, Solo, CSNY, Crazy Horse, Stray Gators, Solo, Nils Lofgren, Solo, CSNY... it seems to never stop but it hammers home how long the guy has been brilliant and sought after.
He loves cars and the legendary story about driving down illegally from Canada in an old hearse is a classic but shit, he names more cars than he names bands. He did not spend a lot of time on his Lionel debacle or the model trains and for that I was grateful but you can say one thing for sure, the man has passions. As I said in the 75 and 79 interviews he was pretty categorical that he did not use drugs. Kind of obnoxious about it (thing Lance Armstron and Roger Clemens) but that is all out the windows here. It is also clear he settled on weed as his drug of choice and used pretty religiously until recently. He is now trying to write songs without it and the results of that remain to be seen.
While this is a book for fans it is also a book for the pop music historian. Neil has been on the scene for almost all of it and took us from “Sugar Mountain” to “Rockin in the Free World, and in between he might of slopped a few chords but he has never missed a beat. Generally I feel about old rockers like I do about old athletes. Why don't you just retire with some grace and class. but with Young, I am happy that he is still thrashing around. “It is better to burn out, than it is to rust.” True dat.
The album (yes kids, there were things called albums) moved me hard and fast and it moved me right in time to go away to college. I had been a singer, songwriter geek in high school. It was fine for being sensitive and trying to be a particular type of poser. Jackson Browne, Dan Fogelberg..blah, blah, blah. Neil was that as well. Harvest was about as singer, songwritery as anyone could be but Neil also had an edge. An electric guitar which he tore up and which, just as importantly every guitar playing friend I had ever known was tremendously dismissive of his style. He was an anti-hero, an iconoclast. There was not a trace of disco, it was all Neil and when he sand, “My, my, hey, hey”... whether it was out of the blue, or into the black, it was the real thing. That caused me to go back an explore the portfolio. Decade was a primer but eventually you needed all of his albums. He reinvented himself... a lot. He put out some tremendous crap but was always following the muse and he became an integral “godfather” of grunge and inspired much of the ethos and lets face it...grunge was awesome.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-rebellious-neil-young-cameron-crowes-1975-rolling-stone-interview-20110601
I have read several biographies of Young including “Shakey” by Jimmy Mc Donnough and “Neil Young” by Steve Simmins. I think “Shakey” was an authorized biography. Personally I would have been happier to have Crowe do it but my guess is he that he is too busy with other projects and that Neil might have just told him other lies this time.
So now we get Neil in Neil’s voice and the one thing I would like to assure you is that there is no ghost writer for this Autobiography. If there is I would like to meet him and I would like to find out where he too grade school composition and burn down the school. I love Neil Young. I love his songs. I would say he is a “brilliant” pop songwriter who has compiled a body of work that puts him in the top 5 for lifetime achievement in rock. Dylan is of course Dylan but then there is Neil and then maybe Elvis Costello and then... I don't know. But for all those great songs, the man cannot write worth shit. His paragraphs amble around and he repeats himself incessantly throughout the book and as I said he just cannot write. A typical paragraph will describe an incident with... Ben Keith, the awesome Nashville pedal steel guitarist that held up all Neils epic country work with the session band he put together for Neil called “The Stray Gators”. About Keith he would recite a road trip and then end the section, and the paragraph with something like the following. Ben Keith was one of a kind. That guy really moved me. He was a righteous dude. I really miss him. I seriously do. You can only read so many things like that about people. I acknowledge that he has met and is likely friends with everyone but get an editor!
The book clocks in at 500 pages but it reads more like 300. There are a lot of chapters with blank pages between and there are a lot of cool pics from over the years. His relationship with his wife Pegi is sweet and says a lot about getting let you get old enough and mature enough to handle a real relationship and his passion for his kids and especially his son Ben is heartbreaking and beautiful That is really one of the hallmarks of the book is how Ben’s conditions changed Neils life and viewpoint and art.
His passions run through the book though. Neil is a sound Nazi. A hater of the CD format (I remember he was one of those guys drawing green lines on their CD’s to improve sound) to the much reviled MP3 format that we all enjoy now. Apparently it sucks. According to Neil you get like 16% of the spectrum on an MP3. he has been working on something he called PureTone to bring better sound to our listening devices but has run into an obstacle with Apple. That is where the title comes from when he explains that he was asked if he was waging war with Apple and he replied, “More like waging heavy peace”. He does know how to turn a phrase.
He talks about hi “Geffen Years” and he talks about his producers and managers and backup musicians and of course he talks about Crazy Horse. he loves the Horse in both of it’s incarnations with Danny Whitten early and Frank “Pancho” Sanpedro later. it is amazing how many people have sang with and backed Neil from James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt to Eddy Vedder. It is quite a resume’. He speaks of the early days in Canada with the Squires and takes us through Buffalo Springfield, Solo, CSNY, Crazy Horse, Stray Gators, Solo, Nils Lofgren, Solo, CSNY... it seems to never stop but it hammers home how long the guy has been brilliant and sought after.
He loves cars and the legendary story about driving down illegally from Canada in an old hearse is a classic but shit, he names more cars than he names bands. He did not spend a lot of time on his Lionel debacle or the model trains and for that I was grateful but you can say one thing for sure, the man has passions. As I said in the 75 and 79 interviews he was pretty categorical that he did not use drugs. Kind of obnoxious about it (thing Lance Armstron and Roger Clemens) but that is all out the windows here. It is also clear he settled on weed as his drug of choice and used pretty religiously until recently. He is now trying to write songs without it and the results of that remain to be seen.
While this is a book for fans it is also a book for the pop music historian. Neil has been on the scene for almost all of it and took us from “Sugar Mountain” to “Rockin in the Free World, and in between he might of slopped a few chords but he has never missed a beat. Generally I feel about old rockers like I do about old athletes. Why don't you just retire with some grace and class. but with Young, I am happy that he is still thrashing around. “It is better to burn out, than it is to rust.” True dat.
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