Neil Young’s Tome

Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young (2012. blue rider press. ISBN 9780399159466)

I’ve said it before when I reviewed Young and Crazy Horse’s Americana: I love the guy. I came of age in the late 1960s, early ’70s listening to my buddies Jeff Tynjala, Mike Schiltz, Evan Wingness, Wayne Johnson, and Steve Cordes (can’t remember the name of their garage band but that doesn’t matter here) playing “Cinnamon Girl”, “Down by the River”, “Broken Arrow”, “Ohio”, and “Southern Man” at dances around West Duluth. I wasn’t musically talented enough to be part of a band: I tried a few times, always inspired by Young and my pals, but I didn’t have the chops and I don’t play an instrument. So I spent my nights, in my basement bedroom, listening to Four Way Street, Harvest, and Everybody Knows this is Nowhere until the tape on my cassettes wore thin. Over the years, I’ve stayed interested in this Canadian import’s career and life so that when I received a copy of Waging Heavy Peace as a Christmas gift, I was pretty sure I’d enjoy Young’s effort at autobiography. Well, I finally got around to reading the big book last week and I was sorely disappointed.

Here’s the thing: Though Young has some genetic writerly roots (His father Scotty was a noted Canadian journalist) and uses his native talent to great advantage in the short form, crafting song lyrics, he doesn’t have the ability to create interesting, memorable prose. His style, matter-of-fact, stream-of-consciousness dictation presenting disorganized and unrelated snippets of life without theme or direction, while perhaps fine in an album of ten songs, can’t carry a two pound book. I also think there’s a disconnect here that has manifested itself in Young’s attempts at film making. Back in the early 1970s, he tried to pull together Journey Through the Past, a film built around his more “Southern” influenced music. (Think “Alabama” and “Southern Man“.) It didn’t make it to the theaters. There have been, as related in this book, other serious efforts by Young at movie making over the years. None of them has ever made money or found critical success. It seems that this memoir fits in the same category as Young’s films and his attempts to experiment with long form story in music, as in Greendale, one of the worst albums Young ever made.

Another criticism of Waging Heavy Peace is the title. I love the word order. Love it. But my impression, naive, I now admit, was that the title had something to do with Young’s musical stands against the Vietnam and Iraq wars, sort of a follow up to his great documentary film and the music behind Living with War. That film was, in my view, a success because it wasn’t an attempt to tell a fictional story, the genre where Young usually falls flat on his face, but simply a memorialization of CSNY back out on the road, singing their songs, old and new, in protest against unnecessary war. But the title to this thick brick of a book has nothing to do with hippies or protests or veterans or peace in the world at large: it comes from Young’s attempt to create a more authentic sounding digital recording that preserves music for listeners the way musicians hear it in the studio. The “war” Young is speaking of is against MP3 players and Apple over the quality of the music.Which leads to another criticism of the book: While a chapter about PureTone and another about LincVolt (Young’s attempt to electrify a gas guzzling Lincoln Continental) would have been enlightening, the constant, non-sequential sermons on his experiments are distracting and, quite frankly, not all that interesting.

There are snippets of stories and scenes from Young’s life, from his youth in Winnipeg, his early days on the road, his domestic life, and from his tours and albums with Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, the Stray Gators, and Crazy Horse that are compelling. His devotion to Pegi, his wife of 35 years, and their two children, as well as his love for his son by another woman, all shine through and put the face of humanity on what otherwise seems to be a very self-absorbed and narcissistic tale. Someone else wrote that, whereas Shakey, the seminal biography of Young’s life, portrays the man in all his complexities including his ruthless protection of his music to the point of discarding longtime associates, band mates, and friends to keep the musical bus rolling, this effort is not nearly as revelatory. I have to agree. There is little “writing as if your parents are dead” here, the admonition that first year MFA students hear when they begin their writerly journeys and far too many attempts to justify actions or to name drop. There is also the simplistic tone of Young’s prose. While his song lyrics have been praised for their sparse beauty, Young’s creative genius in songwriting doesn’t carry over to his attempts at prose. Consider this scene from a visit Young and friends made to a Costco store in Hawaii:

My first big purchase was a set of replacement brushes for my Sonicare toothbrush, a product I am very pleased with. I really needed those and had been wondering how to find them. We wandered on through aisles of myriad products before we reached the book department, where Marc purchased several books for his little daughter, Leia. She is a beautiful and bright child who calls me Uncle Neil and asks me where my guitar is. We made a note to look for a guitar for her, but found only ukuleles at Costco. A plan was made to locate a music store. There were no records for sale at Costco except for local Hawaiian. I was happy for the locals.

Really? Did Young’s fans and the readers of what is supposed to be the definitive expose of his life really need to learn the brand of toothbrush Young prefers or his th0ughts as he walked through Costco? Or, ask yourself this: If it wasn’t Neil Young’s face on the cover of this very bland, disconnected, repetitive, unorganized ramble, would any publisher, including Cloquet River Press have released this book? I think not. The only positive I can really say about this memoir is that I didn’t toss it into the garbage can. I did that once with a book, with Until I Find You by John Irving. Irving’s novel was so terribly written, I didn’t get past the first 150 pages before I hurled it away in indignation. At least this memoir was something I was able to stomach to the last page. But that’s about it. Save your money. Buy Shakey instead. Better yet, if you want to really understand Neil Young and want a glimpse into his genius, do what I did while I was writing this piece. Listen to his latest CD with Crazy Horse, Psychedelic Pill (review to follow) and revel in the genius that, from time to time, surfaces from this Rock and Roll legend.

 

2 stars out of 5.

About Mark

I'm a reformed lawyer and author.
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