‘Waging Heavy
Peace’ is Neil Young’s 500 page autobiography. He used no ghostwriter or
collaborator; he just sat down and started typing in such an easy,
conversational style that the reader can imagine themselves sitting down with
him in front of a fire, listening to him talk.
The book covers
his life from childhood to present; his music, his friends, his failed
relationships, his children, his fellow musicians, his health (lots of
problems), his love of toy trains and big old 1950s and ‘60s cars, and his two
current projects: Lincvolt, an old Continental turned into an electric car; and
Pono (originally PureTone), a super high quality music system that can be
streamed. It’s a bit of a ramble; he jumps from the here and now- what is
happening with the Lincvolt project, with Pono- to his early days, starting out
in music; then to a reverie about The Horse, as he refers to Crazy Horse, his
long time band, which he speaks of as an entity that is more than the people
who make it up. He mentions more than once that, on his doctor’s advice, he has
quit smoking pot and drinking. His father had dementia, and the doctor has seen
a shadowy ‘something’ on a brain MRI. He points out that since he quit, he has
not written one bit of music, and you can tell there is some fear there that
this dry spell might be more than a spell. But he’s still got lots of projects
going; even if he was to never write another note of music he’d still be busy
for the next 40 years at least. I do hope that does not turn out to be the
case, though!
More than once
I got lost as to what point in time Young was writing about after a sudden
switch, which forced me to go back a couple of pages and see where I’d missed
the transition, but it’s small price to pay for this journey through his past. I
found the passages about his music the most interesting, how the songs related
to things that were going on in his life. He wrote ‘Cinnamon Girl’, ‘Cowgirl in
the Sand’, and ‘Down By the River’ in one feverish day while he had a bad case
of the flue. Another album was written while he waited for the operation to
repair a brain aneurysm. The sheer volume of things Young has accomplished is
amazing: all the music, the benefit performances, the Bridge School, Farm Aid, his work on model train
advancements, Lincvolt, Pono, creating ways for his quadriplegic son to be
included in everything the family does. He is an inspiration. Long may he run.
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