Neil Young: Waging Heavy Peace

"I couldn't believe I was dealing with such a disinterested interview subject and then he said he didn't read, and i realized. oh, that's why this songwriter/tech geek with an author father doesn't seem to play along with my discussion, his mind has no reach."

I couldn’t respond to one of his remarks by raising an idea it had made me think of and have him make some connection to some other thought and then respond to that.

I get the feeling this guy is the kind of interviewer who doesn't actually ask questions.

"That reminds me of Moby Dick! You know, the great hunt..."

"..."

"don't you read?"

I didn't even want to comment on yet another horrible example of needless autobiographical shoehorning.

What about the reviewer's description of why reading is fundamental?

not that wilkerson claims to be "especially well read"

I think I need the audiobook. It's read by Keith Carradine.

for real? if so that is definitely going to be the way i experience this book, if i ever do

So many rock memoirs and bios coming out at once. Neil Young, Pete Townshend, Greg Allman, Bruce, Leonard Cohen. Fogerty just announced his.

Allman's was better than Young's. Will read Townshends and possibly Fogerty's. Dont care about the other ones, unless by "Bruce" you mean "Bruce Dickinson"

omg

Not a big fan of the "Boss", brah

I bought this from Audible. Carradine sounds great, but so far this book has more shilling than Sammy Hagar's Red. I hope it gets better and tones down the PR bullshit.

SPOILER ALERT: it doesn't.

ha, yeah, don't hold your breath. i don't know, it's worth it, you can just skim the pono. short version: pono is so cool.

It's harder to skim through an audiobook.

At least Keith sounds like such a badass when he says "biomass".

is the audio book in pono? i hear you're only getting 5% of carradine's badassness if not.

Sounds like its about a 64kbps mono mp3. Surprised Neil allowed it.

I actually didn't mind the constant shilling for Pono and the endless digressions about cars or toy trains. It kind of confirmed my long-held suspicions that Neil might be kind of a drag to spend any significant length of time with, no matter how much I love his music.

haha, yeah there were times when i imagined his friends/wife saying to him while he writing: "are you sure you don't want to smoke a little weed and calm down?"

Sadly, his digressions into fears of dementia seem incredibly relevant based on the book so far. :(

He seems to have written literally anything that came into his head and it was edited really minimally. It has an unusually intimate effect, like you're sitting beside him as he rambles on about his life; it's just that he rambles so often about his obsessions that it becomes absurd and hilarious. A "Waging Heavy Peace" drinking game based on taking a shot every time Pono, cars or model trains are mentioned would get you life-threateningly shitfaced in no time.

yeah, i can't imagine anyone edited this thing. i just think of it as neil spending an hour a day writing, and barely thinking about what he's already written about. so sometimes it's interesting, sometime's it's not.

i honestly wonder if he would have put more work into it if his dad were alive, but then i doubt he even would have tried

I hate to say it but this is pretty dire.

I think it's fair to say that Shakey remains the definitive book on Neil, yeah.

I actually didn't mind the constant shilling for Pono and the endless digressions about cars or toy trains. It kind of confirmed my long-held suspicions that Neil might be kind of a drag to spend any significant length of time with, no matter how much I love his music.

― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, November 13, 2012 1:53 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha, yeah there were times when i imagined his friends/wife saying to him while he writing: "are you sure you don't want to smoke a little weed and calm down?"

― tylerw, Tuesday, November 13, 2012 1:55 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM, LOL

I considered buying the audiobook but found the book cheap-ish on eBay ($12 with shipping) and just bought the damn thing. It hasn't arrived yet but I'm looking forward to it. I like the idea of it being a window into Neil's famously ornery, cantankerous, uncompromising psyche, and by all accounts, that sounds like just what it'll be.

Its not really ornery, cantakerous and uncompromising: its more like depressed and childlike.

He's rarely cantankerous, unless he's talking about the sound quality of MP3s or the televising of the rock and roll hall of fame ceremony. I think Bill's on point with the childlike poutiness; there's a simplicity to his whole presentation of "the Neil Young experience" that makes me wonder how real this all is.

I do recommend the Gregg Allman book. Definitely a cool guy who admits to some serious missteps in the past.

oh god, another chancee!
Neil Young will do a Book Club Twitter Chat, sponsored by Blue Rider Press and Penguin Online, on Wednesday, the 28th of November, 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm (ET), when he will be taking questions about Waging Heavy Peace. To participate and for updates, follow @BlueRiderPress, @PenguinUSA, @NeilYoung
#WagingHeavyPeace

Did this happen? Didn't see anything on Twitter! Don't tell me I'm following Penguin books now for nothing.

Penguin Books USA ‏@penguinusa
Unfortunately our chat with @NeilYoung on Wed, 11/28 at 7:30 PM is postponed. We hope to announce a new date soon. #WAGINGHEAVYPEACE

He was on the Daily Show last night. Only caught a few seconds, where Stewart asked him about Pono. He neglected to ask the necessary follow-up, "How the fuck do you know what it sounds like? You've gone on record has having permanently damaged hearing!"

if you're anywhere near philly: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/music_nightlife/Neil-Young-books-Hurricane-Sandy-benefit-at-the-Borgata.html

I did some dramatic readings of the book on-air last week. I forgot what I picked because everything about this book is nonsensical in the best way possible.

That would be an excellent blurb--would get me to read the damn thing, unlike most other posts, and the mopey cover, and the sheer heft--but also, having read it, I think it does make (enough)sense. It's a jam, man, with recurring themes, images, segments of timelines--establishing a groove for a while, then we jump back to different roadtrips, incl in Lincvolt (for fun and possible profit), forward again to the band histories--but now we're with the Squires in Manitoba, where the trees always look like the wind's howling through them even when it isn't, and the people do too, and the bandstand starts shaking (just a polar bear, being chased out from under the building) and a guy's leaning up against a telephone pole, frozen in August--now Buffalo Springfield on the fabulous Sunset Strip, now rehearsing with the Horse, trying to find himself without weed, and without thinking too much (doesn't work with the Horse), now recording with Briggs, who hates him when he isn't daring to be great. His birth family, his marriages (frankness about his own shortcomings), his kids, his friends, great joy and smash-ups (he comes back to the death of Danny Whitten,just when and how I thought he wouldn't). It's all about bringing the resources of the past, present and future together, living up to and through it all, so far. Sure this involves some repetition, and vamping 'til he finds another telling turn of phrase, another story coming through the typing, another doggie door, rainbow, whatever. It's not pot but it's not bad.

Actually it may be pot.

I can only imagine how nonsensical this would be if Neil was still a stoner. Egad.

He might not have written it if he were still getting high, or he might have done the usual: light up, kick back and Skype with the journo, who hopefully knows what to ask, when to shut up, how to edit. He's looking for a new way to deal with the new, alarming sideffects of sobriety: "I walk the halls of straightness", but does eventually hear some new songs calling. He stopped smoking and drinking because of something his doctor spotted in his brain, so he's trying not to think about that too much. he has fun recalling musical adventures, but this leads him to and all around the departures of Whitten, Briggs, Palmer (thus Buffalo Springfield, basically), Tim Drummond, who's still around but drinking and in a wheelchair, having given up music when his wife left him. He wants to turn young people on to the glory of old sound made new, like he wants to feel inspired again, also not to be an imperious asshole to the people who work with and for him. He wants to play with his toys, and keep 'em nice. For instance.

i like dow's take on this book.
anyway, more PONO news: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-youngs-pono-plans-take-shape-with-new-trademarks-20121219
I like this quote from neil's manager:
"It's too early for me to talk about it, to give you anything that's based on reality," Roberts tells Rolling Stone. "Who knows what kind of problems there might be or might not be?"

He should release an album called PONOgraphy.

awesome posts dow

Tom Petty, Beastie Boys' Mike D, Kid Rock and members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers were among those consulted.

Pass.

Blood Sugar Sex Magik Pono

PONO's Boutique

I'll never read this, but like Everest it was there.

http://www2.alibris-static.com/isbn/9781897178454.gif

A book store here had a pile of these for $2.99 (different cover):

http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/9781847326942_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG

I've skimmed it a bit and it seems okay. Odd to include Buffalo Springfield but not CSNY, leaving out two or (I'd say) three major songs. And couldn't disagree more about "Ocean Girl" (first entry I checked), described as "fluff" and "trite."

maybe i wouldn't be enjoying this so much had i not read shakey too with all the essential details laid out in that book. reading this one's like listening to a good neil record, cornball self-indulgence and cosmic asides in equal measure all held together by his confidence despite it all. feel like the digressions and elaborations of minor episodes from his life at the expense of talking about bigger things might be influenced some by dylan's chronicles

That is really otm and I feel pretty much exactly how I felt while reading it. Like, if I had picked this up never having read Shakey and maybe only having heard a few of his standards, I probably would've thrown it down in disgust 2 chapters in.