Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography by Jimmy McDonough. Anchor Books. 786 pages. $16.95
It’s probably about as hard to sum up Neil Young as it is to sum up Jimmy McDonough’s fantastic biography of him, but one incident comes close.
The year is 1975. Young is touring with Stephen Stills, former bandmate from Buffalo Springfield and of course CSNY. Stills, whose obnoxious disposition cranks up a few notches when he’s high, loudly bitches at Young’s crew at a show in Charlotte. Later, with the two stars in separate buses heading for the next show in Atlanta, Stills gets Young on the CB radio and starts tearing into him personally. Young decides he’s had enough. After ripping the CB out of the wall, he tells the driver to take the Memphis exit. Stills arrives in Atlanta not only to find no Neil, but – with 21 sold-out dates to go – no tour. All he has is a telegram: “Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil.”
Rash decisions, snap judgments, sudden bail-outs at the worst possible time; Neil Young seems to have done a lot of living by the seat of his pants, and he makes records the same way. This is not to say he has no regrets; the guy who once sang “Why do I keep fuckin’ up?” has apparently done a lot of it and put other people at risk in the process – like his manager, who had to make good on all those missed shows. His art is that of never staying in the same place very long. He makes reputedly great albums he won’t release, releases dreck that never should have seen the light of day, and – like Bob Dylan, the only major rock star to whom he compares – suddenly uncorks a masterpiece just when you’ve counted him out; sometimes, as in the case of his 1975 disc Tonight’s the Night, a masterpiece that sounds like dreck the first time you hear it because it’s too twisted and idiosyncratic for you to get a grip on it – or, maybe, because it starts spontaneously and ends that way.
“I like it if people enjoy what I’m doing,” Young tells McDonough, “but if they don’t, I also like it. I sometimes really like aggravating people with what I do. I think it’s good for them.”
It probably is – and God knows Young has provided enough sides of himself for everyone to love or hate. How many Neil Youngs have there been over the last 30 years? Well, let’s see. There’s the singer-songwriter who – with or without Crosby, Stills and Nash – wrote pleasant, slightly obscure ballads and rock classics that have become oldies staples: “Heart of Gold,” “Old Man,” “Helpless,” “Southern Man,” “Ohio,” et al. There’s the Crazy Horse Neil, a hard-rock warrior leading a rag-tag band through soaring, sonic chargers like “Like a Hurricane” and “Cortez the Killer,” where the lyrics are sparse and Young’s blistering Fender tells more than words can say. There’s the techno Neil who tried to harness digital sound, and the retro Neil who went back to basics. There’s the politically incorrect reactionary who thumbed his nose at the hipoisie and voted for Reagan, and the voice of the common man who helped get Farm Aid off the ground. And there’s the elder statesman Neil, grunge before grunge was born, still cool enough when he was pushing fifty to be quoted in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Super reivew Rodney: very fine representation of the book and of Neil himself, as subject as big as the great outdoors.
2 - Mary
Though I learned a lot from this book (e. g. never knew Rick James and Neil Young were in a band together), I found the author too fond of grand pronouncements to take seriously. He loves to make generalizations about whole decades, writing off the whole 80s for example, when the truth is there is good music and bad being produced at any moment in time. Such sloppy thinking and pretentious writing to boot!
3 - Rodney Welch
I never thought the thinking was sloppy. Was the writing pretentious? Well, it wasn't unpretentious, I'll grant you that, but here was a case where I thought the personal approach worked, much the way it does in the work of people like Lester Bangs or Nick Tosches.
4 - Thrasher
Rodney,
Interesting review of Shakey. Really liked your points about Neil playing with Crazy Horse since it demonstrates that Neil often is in this for more than just the music. It's often about a band that allows him to be himself and go to places he hasn't been before.
Take Greendale for instance.
Anyway, enjoyed the review and put a link to it on Thrasher's Wheat at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~thrasher1/wheatfield.html
There's also a link to other reviews of the Shakey bio.
Keep on Rockin!
Thrasher
5 - Rodney Welch
Thanks. I bought On the Beach this weekend -- hope to post some comments in the next day or so. A most interesting disc.
6 - bluesufi
at times i see neil young as a van gogh of music
he has definitely brought us colors we have never seen before
but given the tool of media, which van did not have, he has consciously created his own legacy
if he is a contradiction, he is a contradiction by choice
he seems to know, or has learned, the differences between utter selfishness, self preservation and pursuing the art of what he hears and wants to share.
how many of us given the means could do that ?
how many other rock artists given millions have had the consciousness to do that ?
dylan for sure
he is a man on many missions on many levels and somehow accomplishes it or walks away from it
he has never been owned by the music industry or any other artist
if nothing else, neil determined at an early age to be remembered and to do whatever that required
he's as strange a bird as rock music has ever heard and seen
except if he was a real bird he'd refuse to fly he'd make birds that drive tractor trailers and trains a reality
for a canadian he's as american as you can get
remember the american's ? (stills, '73)
to hate him is to love him