This Tome's For You

I'm a big fan of Neil Young (if you don't believe me check my profile), so I'm glad he wrote a memoir, Waging Heavy Peace.  I just wish he'd done a better job.  It's written in a conversational style, but the sort of conversation you might have at a party where a hippie backs you up against the wall and goes into a long-winded tale about the old days.

Actually, I wish most of it were about the old days.  Neil shoots back and forth, and spends a tremendous amount of time talking about present-day issues, like how bad digital sound is and how he's writing this book--the very one you're reading now.

But then, what could we expect?  Neil was always mercurial--refusing to play old hits in concerts, dropping out of tours without notice, recording odd albums that seemed to test his fans.  Still, that's the Neil we love. I don't know if he could have done it any other way, and the results, at their best, are as good as it gets.

The book is almost 500 pages, with a bunch of short chapters (68) so Neil, in his haphazard way, does get around to most of the periods in his life you'd like to know about, but it can be rough sledding.  It would be great if someone cut this up and rearranged it in chronological order, so fans could concentrate on the stuff they want to know (which is probably less than half the contents).

He sometimes muses on life, and it's not too deep, but what do you expect from a guy whose spent a large portion of the last 45 years smoking weed? He laments a lot of lost friends and band members, which is, alas, how it works in rock and roll.  He's quite generous with his compliments, but when you read between the lines--and when Neil is being most honest--you get the feeling he was a strong-willed artist who wouldn't let anyone or anything get in the way of him and his music.  This is great for the millions who love his stuff, but it may have been tough at times on a lot of people who were close to him.

Anyway, I recommend the book for Neil fans.  It could have been a lot better, but there's no place else to get this perspective.