Shakey: Neil Young's Biography

Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by McDonough, James. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780679427728.

"You cant go along from people to people, place to place, creating, changing, without hurting a lot of people. How can you do that? Can you think of an answer? I think Im going a good job--even though its painful sometimes." Neil Young is one of rock and rolls most important, influential and enigmatic figures, an intensely reticent artist who has granted no writer access to his inner sanctum--until now. In Shakey, Jimmy McDonough tells the whole story of Youngs incredible life and career: from his childhood in Canada to his cofounding of the pioneering folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield; to the bleary conglomeration of Crazy Horse and simultaneous monstrous success of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; to the depraved depths of Tonights the Night and the strange changes of the Geffen years; to Youngs unprecedented nineties "comeback" with Ragged Glory and Harvest Moon. McDonough spent six years doggedly pursuing rocks most elusive quarry, talking to more than three hundred of Youngs associates (many of whom spoke freely for the first time), as well as sitting down with Young in person for more than fifty hours of interviews. This long-awaited, unprecedented story of a rock and roll legend is filled with never-before-published words directly from the artist himself: -on heroin: "I didnt see any reason to try it. I never shot up anything... I guess after I wrote a couple songs about it, then people who mightve offered it...didnt." -on abruptly firing Crazy Horse to record with Pearl Jam: "That happens over and over again through my whole fuckin life with all these bands. Thats the reason Im still here. Because as painful as it is to change--and as ruthless as I may seem to be in what I have to do to keep going--you gotta do what ya gotta do. Just like a fuckin vampire. Heh heh heh." -on himself: "Look around me-Im a fuckin capitalist businessman! Ive got all this shit. Im a good businessman, right?" By his own admission, Young has left behind "a lotta destruction....a big wake" in achieving his dreams, and for the first time he addresses that subject in painful details. Shakey-titled after one of Youngs many aliases, Bernard Shakey-is not only a detailed chronicle of the rock era told through the life of one very idiosyncratic, uncompromising artist, but a compelling human story as well: that of a loner for whom music was the only outlet, a driven yet tortured figure who learned to control epilepsy via "mind over matter." Its also about an oddly passionate model-train mogul who, inspired by his own sons struggle with cerebral palsy, became a major activist in the quest to help others with that condition. The story is uniquely told in McDonoughs interwoven voices--those of biographer, critic, historian, obsessive fan--and by the ever cantankerous Young himself, who puts his biographer through some unforgettable paces while answering the perennial question Is it better to burn out than to fade away?