Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
I have read other reviews of this book that panned it. I listened to the audio version with Keith Carradine narrating. Keith's work was very believable as Neil's voice to his story. I really enjoyed it. Yes, it rambles a bit. But it covers everything that is Neil Young. I think the audio book works well for his style. I felt like Neil was riding shotgun with me :). Give the audio book a try. As few as ten years ago, I could never have imagined that this most cryptic and insular of rock stars would've done it, laying his life out with explication (well, as much explication as you could expect from Neil Young, anyway) on the page. I put off reading it for a while, not being impressed by most authorized entertainment biographies and memoirs, and feeling I might already have read as much about my hero as I should. But they are the thing today, as Neil himself admits, and I have gone there, and I mostly wish I hadn't. There's a lot of interesting stuff that clears up events in Young's life and those surrounding his best and not-so-best work, but as I've increasingly suspected over the years, Neil Young is one case where the mystery is more interesting than the reality. Not that the man himself is any less impressive; I respect his art just as much, and this book makes me realize I'd really neglected to give him credit for living with and overcoming tragedy in his personal life. Of course, I'd never heard about his personal life in his own words until now, and reading his always ambivalent grappling with his history of fortune and failing, both in his career and private life is the mortar in the foundation of respect I'll never lose for the guy.But Neil is a man who does what he wants at any particular time, and what he wants to do here is feel publicly guilty over the state of a world that he's had less impact on than he seems to imagine. It's okay if Neil Young wants to try to do his thing to move his beloved automobile into the progressive future it has to occupy in order to survive, but I don't want to read much about the LincVolt, and I sure don't want to read a whole lot about it. And maybe it's partly because I don't understand True Tone and doubt that I could even appreciate it that I'm skeptical about it (or maybe it's because it's technology as interpreted by the mind of Neil Young), but ONE BRIEF CHAPTER on it would've been prudent for me.Still and all, when Neil talks about his hippie dream, and what it was like to be there--the nights with Buffalo Springfield that were never recorded, the days in Laurel Canyon during the '60s, all the moonlight drives on the west coast--Waging Heavy Peace is just worth the effort for a fan.
What do You think about Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream (2012)?
Love Neil Young, thought it full of great stories from his life and career!
—jokersdraw
A conversation with Neil Young. Too cool!
—gordonv
