* Buffalo Springfield breaking up because, he says, Bruce Palmer kept getting deported to Canada, not because he and Stephen Stills wanted to do solo projects,Coach Outlet.
I’ve spent the last few days in Neil Young’s world -- and it is a fascinating place to be.
My trip there began when “Waging Heavy Peace,” his memoir, turned up in the mail last week. It peaked Tuesday afternoon when I watched “Neil Young Journeys,” his latest film collaboration with director Jonathan Demme, that opens Friday at the Ross Media Arts Center.
When he does “Leia,” a song about the musically inclined little daughter of a friend, well, I knew who it was about and why it was written.
Although he doesn’t specifically mention Lincoln or Farm Aid III, he talks about finding a pair of his continuing collaborators, bassist Rick Rosas and drummer Chad Cromwell, when they were playing with Joe Walsh at a Farm Aid. Walsh played Farm Aid II and Farm Aid III. It was in 1987, after Farm Aid III, that Cromwell and Rosas joined Young in the Bluenotes to record “This Note’s for You,” a song he debuted in Lincoln.
It is that effort, which some have seen as an attack on Apple and iTunes, that provides the title of Young’s book. He’s not waging war on Apple, he’s “waging heavy peace” on behalf of music. Here’s hoping he wins.
While not designed as such, the film, which has been out since late June, and the book that was released a week ago, are companion pieces, together providing a rich glimpse into Young, his life and music.
Since I started “Waging Heavy Peace,” I’ve been listening to Young’s music -- old and new -- primarily on Spotify, one of the streaming services he endorses. I’d love to hear it at its highest quality via Pono, which was used for “Neil Young Journeys.”
Similarly, Young talks about writing “Ohio,” the Kent State song he does in powerful fashion in the film’s Toronto concert, and putting together “Hey Hey My My,” his rock-and-roll-will-never-die anthem, another movie highlight.
* Claiming his “endorsement” of Ronald Reagan was designed as a rebuff to a pair of journalists who began deriding the then-President at the start of an interview,www.coachoutletfactory-sale.com. Contrarian Young said Reagan had some good qualities and by the time the article came out, he had endorsed Reagan. That’s one of the reasons he now rarely does interviews.
If you’re a Young fan, “Waging Heavy Peace” is a must-read and “Neil Young Journeys” a must-see. But get ready to get lost in his world, a fascinating place with music always at its center.
There’s a small note of local interest in the book as well.
An MP3, the most common digital music format, Young writes, has about 5 percent of the data that can be found on a recording’s master file or even a vinyl record. Young’s system, called Pono, will deliver the highest resolution sound to its players, so, as he told David Letterman last week, "when an artist records at a certain level, that’s it, it doesn’t get dummied down to CD or MP3.”
Those bits are examples of the insights Young provides in his rambling memoir, which bounces around in time and place -- from the Canada of his childhood, which is seen in the movie,Coach Factory Online, to his Broken Arrow Ranch in California and beach home in Hawaii, where he wrote most of the book last year when his musical muse was absent, perhaps because, at age 65, he quit drinking and smoking pot.
For example, when Young is singing in the film about still working while someone is up in heaven, I knew that was about Larry Johnson, his longtime assistant and friend who was one of the primary members of the team that cares for Ben Young, Neil’s son with cerebral palsy. A photo of Larry and Ben pops up on the screen during the song, but without the book, I would not have? known their connection.
Along the way, Young talks about his music and bands (Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Crazy Horse); his Nashville collaborators; his collection of big old cars; his projects from model railroads to Lincvolt, his electronic car; his friends, famous, like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, and not,Coach Factory Outlet; and his family.
Across the 497 pages, Young repeatedly returns to his on-going project to “rescue my art form, music,http://www.coachoutletfactory-sale.com/, from the degradation in quality that I think is at the heart of the decline of music sales and ultimately music itself in popular culture.”
* Admitting that he deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd hit him with in “Sweet Home Alabama” after his insulting “Southern Man.”
Together, Young’s ruminations and the movie provide a portrait of an artist who is honest in his self-evaluation and generous in his praise of those close to him. He is a blazing, fearless talent, and a man still unsettled and searching at an age when many begin to fade away.
There are, of course, some revelations in the book. Three of them include:
