Neil Young FAQ

Everything Left to Know About the Iconic and Mercurial Rocker

Glen Boyd

• Publisher: Backbeat
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781476813509
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

Neil Young has had one of the most remarkable careers in the history of music. He hasn't just outlived many of his contemporaries – some of whom were great inspirations for him ("From Hank to Hendrix " as one of his own songs says); his artistry lives on through those he has inspired (Pearl Jam, Radiohead), and he remains relevant and vital well into his fifth decade of making music.

Young also continues to crank out records at a rate that would kill most artists half his age. Between his solo and live albums, and his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, his remarkable career has spanned well over 50 albums.

Although he has experimented in genres from syntho-pop to rockabilly, Neil Young is best known for the fully cranked, feedback-laden noise he makes with Crazy Horse (Rust Never Sleeps and Ragged Glory) and the more introspective folk-pop (Harvest). The glue that binds his work together is the songwriting. Because when it comes to writing great, timeless songs, Neil Young has few equals.

Neil Young FAQ is the first definitive guide to the music of this mercurial and methodical, enduring, and infuriating icon. From the Archives to Zuma and from the Ditch Trilogy to the Geffen years, this book covers every song and album in painstaking detail-including bootlegs and such lost recordings as Homegrown, Chrome Dreams, Toast, and Meadow Dusk.

Obscure facts and anecdotes from the studio to the road, along with dozens of rare images, make this book a must-have for Young fans.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Everybody Knows This Is Neil
• 1. I Am a Child: From Canada to California
• 2. Hello, Broken Arrow: Buffalo Springfield
• 3. A Dreamer of Pictures: Latter-Day Remembrances, Compilations, Anthologies, and Boxed Sets
• 4. Is This Place at Your Command? Neil Young, Elliot Roberts, and David Briggs
• 5. When I Saw Those Thrashers Rolling By: Neil Young and Crazy Horse
• 6. Sleeps with Angels (Too Soon): Departed Bandmates, Brothers in Arms, and Sisters in Song
• 7. You See Us Together Chasing the Moonlight: Neil Young’s Bands
• 8. We Have All Been Here Before: A Brief History of Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Sometimes Young)
• 9. An Open Letter to Neil Young (Reprinted from an article originally published at Blogcritics magazine)
• 10. There Was a Band Playing in My Head, and I Felt Like Getting High: After the Gold Rush
• 11. I’ve Been to Hollywood, I’ve Been to Redwood: Harvest, Nashville, and the Stray Gators
• 12. So I Headed for the Ditch: Time Fades Away, On the Beach, and Tonight’s the Night—Neil Young’s Ditch Trilogy
• 13. Why Do I Keep Fuckin’ Up? Neil Young’s Biggest Commercial Flops
• 14. Hey, Ho, Away We Go, We’re on the Road to Never: Neil Young’s Most Underrated Albums
• 15. Sooner or Later It All Gets Real: Zuma, The Stills-Young Band, and the Return of the Horse
• 16. Dancing on the Night from Star to Star: Chrome Dreams, American Stars and Bars, the Ducks, Decade, and Comes a Time
• 17. More to the Picture Than Meets the Eye: Human Highway, Rust Never Sleeps, and the Punk-Rock Connection
• 18. Get Off of That Couch, Turn Off That MTV: Neil Young’s Live Recordings
• 19. Piece of Crap: Five Essential Neil Young Bootlegs
• 20. A Kinder, Gentler Machine Gun Hand: Five Great Neil Young Concerts from Seattle, Washington
• 21. Why Do You Ride That Crazy Horse? Hawks and Doves, Re-ac-tor, and a Kid Named Ben
• 22. Sample and Hold: Trans, Island in the Sun, and the Geffen Years
• 23. Computer Cowboy: The Best Neil Young Websites
• 24. No Matter Where I Go, I Never Hear My Record on the Radio: The Shocking Pinks, Old Ways, and Farm Aid
• 25. Strobe Lights Flashin’ on the Overpass: Landing on Water, Life, Muddy Track, and the Bridge School
• 26. Ain’t Singin’ for Pepsi: The Bluenotes, American Dream, Ten Men Working, and the Road Back Home
• 27. What We Have Got Here Is a Perfect Track: Eldorado, Times Square, the Young and the Restless
• 28. This Shit Don’t Sell: A Brief History of Neil Young’s Unreleased Recordings
• 29. A Thousand Points of Light: Freedom and Redemption for Neil in the Nineties
• 30. Don’t Spook the Horse: Ragged Glory and Arc-Weld
• 31. From Hank to Hendrix: The Most Noteworthy Neil Young Covers, Collaborations, Send-ups, and Tributes
• 32. On This Harvest Moon: Thirty Years Later, the Sequel
• 33. Change Your Mind: Sleeps with Angels, Mirror Ball, and How the Punks Met the Godfather of Grunge
• 34. Good to See You Again: Broken Arrow, Dead Man, and Year of the Horse
• 35. Let’s Roll: Silver and Gold, Looking Forward, 9/11, Are You Passionate?, and Greendale
• 36. Falling Off the Face of the Earth: Prairie Wind and Heart of Gold
• 37. Should’ve Been Done Long Ago: Living with War, “Let’s Impeach the President,” and the Freedom of Speech Tour
• 38. Sure Enough, They’ll Be Selling Stuff: The Resurrection of the Archives
• 39. No Hidden Path: Chrome Dreams II, Linc/Volt, and Fork in the Road
• 40. I Said Solo, They Said Acoustic: Neil Young Brings Le Noise to the Twisted Road
• 41. Buffalo Springfield Again: Holding Our Breath with Our Eyes Closed
• 42. Words (Between the Lines of Age): What Other Artists Have to Say About Neil Young
• Selected Bibliography