Neil Young
Blue Rider Press
ISBN: 978039915946
* * ½
Confession: I’ll listen to or read anything with which Neil
Young is associated. This is an important admission because how much you will enjoy his recent autobiography
(newly available as an e-book) probably depends upon how much you already know,
as this one is definitely for Young fans.
Neil Young is a heck of a songwriter, but he’s no literary stylist.
This is billed as an autobiography, but it’s really a stream of consciousness
memoir loaded with asides. Young is refreshingly earnest and guileless, but
he’s all over the place in how he presents his story. There is no single
narrative arc and Young seems to have typed his thoughts as they occurred.
There is very little attempt to group likeminded themes or anchor the story in
any way. Unless you have followed his life and career, you will find the book’s
chronology confusing–sequencing just isn’t something that concerns Young. For
example, snippets of his Ontario boyhood come later in the book and are
interspersed with thoughts about recent events, friendships, concert memories, shout-out
thank yous, and commentary on his hobbies.
We learn that Neil Young really
likes cars, toy trains, guitars, playing with Crazy Horse, and clean sound. It
would be no stretch to say he’s obsessed with these things to the point of
needless repetition. We read, for example, numerous screeds on the horrid sound
quality of MP3 and CD files, and of his vision for analog-based high-quality
recordings. It’s been on his mind for so long that his original entrepreneurial
enterprise, PureTone, changed its name to Pono because of trademark disputes–something
we only learn after the fifth or sixth explanation of why he cares so much
about sound. We get similar disjointed discussions of the LincVolt, Young’s
conversion of a 1959 Lincoln Continental, which he hopes will become a usable large electric car. These are laudable projects,
but they belong in separate chapters so Young can stop rupturing the narrative
with sermons.
Of course, these projects are laudable, which is why we read about them, and Young is a man
of both talent and integrity, which is why we care. Young makes no attempt at
self-aggrandizement, nor does he ask us to overlook his failings. He is quite
willing to admit that he was responsible for the breakup of past
relationships–most famously with actress Carrie Snodgrass–that he used to drink
to excess, that he has disappointed friends, and that he smoked pot regularly
until ordered not to by his doctor. (Young suffers from epilepsy, about which
he is also candid.)
Young fans will find interesting reflections on his
parents–his father, Scott Young, was a respected journalist and sportswriter–of
his early days of playing rock, doo-wop, and R & B covers, of being
inspired by more mature bands, and of hanging out with everyone from Joni
Mitchell and Bob Dylan to Devo, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam. But this is
not one of those rock biographies in which the protagonist disses other
musicians or past band members–Young has little but praise for everyone with
whom he has played and tells very few tales out of school. He considers himself
lucky for possessing Broken Arrow Ranch in California, for his marriage to
Pegi, and for longtime friends (including Pancho Sampedro, Billy Talbot, Steve
Stills, and Nils Lofgren). Sometimes we wish Young was more candid; fans know,
for instance, that he has had famed spats with his friends—especially Stills.
Young is now 68, and the book has the wistful feel of an
aging man musing upon the joys and
losses in his personal journey. (There are loving passages to departed friends
such as Danny Whitten, Ben Keith, Nicolette Larson, and Kurt Cobain.) Young adores
being a father, even though both of his sons suffer from cerebral palsy and
younger son, Ben, is quadriplegic, and his daughter, Amber Jean, inherited his
epilepsy. When he tells us that he learned from Ben how many ways there are to
communicate, we believe him.
This is not great literature. The books runs over 500 pages
and a good editor could have pared it by 25%. (A developmental editor would
have restructured it and made Young connect a lot of the stray dots.) But what
comes through clearly is that Young considers his life the eponymous hippie
dream. Who can begrudge a man who chased the Muse and found inner peace?
Rob Weir
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