Neil Young

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 show more 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. show less

Neil's second memoir in just a few years. Do we really need two books on the life of an aging - if occasionally still brilliant - rocker, both written within months of each other? Especially when Waging Heavy Peace was quite good, but also a bit unfocused?

Well, sort of. Special Deluxe is a much more straight-forward autobiography than the predecessor, in that Neil uses cars that he or his family have owned through the years as signposts for changes in his life, from a small town in Canada to show more superstardom (somewhat ironically, given his praise for his wife, ending just before his recent divorce). And Neil loves his cars. He may not remember exactly when he played a certain gig, but he'll remember every detail of the car he bought on a whim on the way home, and the technical problems that led to him getting rid of it. And ultimately, the big question: How can he be a socially conscious old save-the-Earth hippie and still drive around in huge 1950s gas-guzzlers? Well, he wouldn't be Neil Young if he didn't on a whim decide to do something about that...

Full disclaimer: You had better have at least a passing interest in cars, and preferably alternative fuels, if you want to get through this. As much as Neil often uses the car as an entry point to a story he wants to tell about life, fame, drugs, music or family, there are also long stretches where he seems to impatiently brush all that stuff aside just so he can gush about the design of the grill of a 1959 Continental for a while.

But you take the good with the bad; even if the book occasionally drags, it has that charm that comes from listening to an enthusiast being indulged to nerd out about something he loves, and I can't not like how unassuming it comes across. Neil Young's music has always been a work in progress, and judging by both his books, he himself is as well - there are no sure answers, no big lessons learned that don't come with a shrug that you can't always be perfect. It's not a book I need, but you can't live by need alone. show less

If you've ever wanted to ride from here to Ann Arbor and listen to the great Neil Young ramble on, this is your book. This is probably the most honest and genuine book I've ever read, in terms of an author (and there's no way this could have been ghostwritten) expressing what's on his mind at one stage of his life. This is endearing, particularly since Young is unafraid to get into some pretty un-rock-n-roll territory, such as his fears of developing dementia and how he and his wife's dog show more handled a roadside emergency. The main downside to all this here-and-now is that his musical reminiscences are relatively few and extremely scattershot; the book is nearly useless as a chronicle of his career, though admittedly the interested reader can find this in the considerable biography "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough. The reader must also wade through repetitive, uninteresting accounts of various automotive and electronics projects, notably a gadget he's pitching to improve the quality of downloaded music. And his attempts to present himself as a scientist are laughable; every opinion he expresses is easy to disprove. But I wouldn't have missed this book for the world. show less

This (after Waging Heavy Peace) is the second of Neil Young’s two recent autobiographies. Waging Heavy Peace was more of a straight-forward biography, although not told strictly chronologically (or strictly anything else, really). This one takes an unusual angle — a life told by way of associations with cars.

Neil Young loves cars. He has strong memories of cars from his youngest days. In fact, it seems as though his car-collecting, and his love of older cars throughout his life, is a show more kind of attempt to recapture the feeling he had for those cars in his youth. It gives an interesting spin to everything about him — a longing for those feelings that he had, when his life and the pleasures of his life were so simple.

There are two things going on in the book. One is his reminiscences. Those are very sincere and touching — memories of friends, of songs, of times, of women, of old feelings. It’s as though he stores his memories in cars. Each car in the book, pictured in a watercolor painted by himself at the beginning of each chapter, is a starting point for recalling those times and feelings.

The other thing going on is a kind of enlightenment about cars, the effect that the kinds of cars Young likes have on the environment, his realization that he can’t in good conscience go on with what he’s been doing, and his decision to do something about it. As he recalls those old cars of his youth, he also recalls their impact on the environment, measured literally in their carbon dioxide output.

Finally, it’s a friend of his daughter who confronts him with the contradiction between his cars and his concern for the environment. And he turns himself around passionately and obsessively, just as he does everything that matters to him. He says, “Looking at my huge collection of gas-guzzlers, I realized that I was in love with something that needed to be replaced, something that had become obsolete.”

From then on, it’s his story of environmental activism, embodied in the Lincvolt, his project to reform those 1940’s and 1950’s heavy metal cars he loves so much and make them as environmentally sound as his words.

Reading both of these books, I think Neil Young is probably a hard guy to take day to day. He’s obsessive, sometimes very self-centered and self-indulgent, but he’s also incredibly transparent and sincere. That’s what makes him so different, and it shines through. If you want to know him better, read the book. show less