Of course, in moving forward, Young has created an unparalleled body of work as a solo artist, as leader of the irascible and unpredictable Crazy Horse, and as a member of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as well as with various other musical combos. Whenever you move forward, you leave a fuckin’ wake.”
“But it’s not that I can’t sense people’s feelings. “I’m just brutally fuckin’ honest about going ahead and doin’ what I have to do,” he tells McDonough. Much to his credit, Young is not unaware of his shortcomings. Gary Burden, who has art-directed some of Young’s album covers, cuts to the chase and calls him a “ruthless motherfucker.” Pages and pages catalogue Young’s temperamental transgressions against friends, employees and associates, suggesting he may be the world’s most impassioned control freak. “Neil just throws everybody away like old tissue paper,” moans his longtime producer, the late David Briggs, one of many who were drawn in and cast out of Young’s orbit numerous times.
Shakey (the title derives from a Young pseudonym) is a sometimes staggeringly unflattering portrait of the artist that makes him seem cruel and cavalier, abandoning people and projects with as little as a hastily scrawled note - “Eat a peach,” he wrote to tourmate Stephen Stills before leaving him in the dust - and sometimes even less than that. Why would Young change his mind? Perhaps in part just because he’s Neil Young, the most mercurial rock star ever, whose ability to change his mind and change direction in the blink of an eye is at once his greatest asset and his most vexing fault. Then, as the book neared completion, he tried to pull the plug, forcing McDonough to sue in order to publish. Young agreed to participate in the biography, and gave author Jimmy McDonough hours of interviews and access to family members, friends, and acquaintances. It’s somehow appropriate that Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography would see the light of day only after the same sort of high-wire act undertaken by any number of projects released over the years by Young himself.
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