Product Description

Neil Young is one of rock and roll’s most important and enigmatic figures, a legend from the sixties who is still hugely influential today. He has never granted a writer access to his inner life – until now. Based on six years of interviews with more than three hundred of Young’s associates, and on more than fifty hours of interviews with Young himself, Shakey is a fascinating, prodigious account of the singer’s life and career. Jimmy McDonough follows Young from his childhood in Canada to his cofounding of Buffalo Springfield to the huge success of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to his comeback in the nineties. Filled with never-before-published words directly from the artist himself, Shakey is an essential addition to the top shelf of rock biographies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22758 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-13
• Released on: 2003-05-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 816 pages

Amazon.com Review
Cantankerous and secretive, Neil Young has banished authors from his inner sanctum--until now. In Shakey, Jimmy McDonough distills more than 300 interviews (including guarded yet revealing interrogations of Young himself) into the definitive biography: the skyrocket success, willful disasters, health horrors and triumphs, stunning comebacks, and highly colorful scuffles with equally impossible characters like Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and the incompetent yet brilliant musicians of Crazy Horse. Young is not quite the noble soul some thought--he's an astounding control freak. But he is never less than fascinating. "As ruthless as I may seem to be," Young tells McDonough, "you gotta do what ya gotta do. Just like a f-----' vampire. Heh heh heh." --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal

More than a biography, this work from journalist McDonough (Village Voice, Variety, Spin) is the re-creation of an era.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
?Jimmy McDonough?s fat, teeming, obsessive, and revelatory biography of Young is a pure shot of all-access pleasure. . . . Hugely original.? ?Los Angeles Times Book Review

?Just as unmanageable, hard-headed, overzealous, and ultimately endearing as Young himself . . . A maddening, beguiling portrait of an elusive maverick . . . A glorious mess.? ?San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

?An exhilarating match-up of author and subject makes Shakey a great, gripping read. . . . A must-read for anyone who cares about Neil Young.? ?Rolling Stone

?Staggeringly thorough . . . McDonough gets it all: the chaos, the grandeur, the good times and dreary deaths, the alcohol- and drug-besotted recording sessions, the broken hearts, and the sheer unfettered joy of a seriously gifted artist.? ?Salon

?The definitive book on the subject.? ?The Washington Post

?Exhaustive, quarrelsome, and sometimes maddening . . . there are revelations in abundance.? ?The New York Times Book Review

?Where the average rock-star biography is a tepid, toothless thing, McDonough has approached his task like a literary Terminator, steaming ahead with lethal thoroughness. One of the most penetrative studies of a rock icon ever written.? ?Times (London)

?A mammoth portrait of the artist and lively exhumation of rock n roll history. . . . [McDonough] traces a rich turbulent career in vivid detail.? ?The New York Times

?Imaginatively written...not only is Shakey an extraordinary literary feat of research and affection and endurance, it's an insight into the art of biography itself.??Fort Worth Star-Telegram

?Delves further into the life and motives of one of music's most private individuals than anything previously released. . . surprisingly comprehensive and thoroughly enjoyable. . . .The most detailed portrait of this shrouded artist to date.? ?San Jose Mercury News

?Exhaustively researched, impressively detailed. . . The long passages in which McDonough steps aside to let Young talk are the most revealing. ?One day I'm a jerk,? Young says, ?the next day I'm a genius.? This book argues artfully for the latter.??People

?Like meeting Brando's Kurtz in a cave at the end of Apocalypse Now. . . . Young comes across as a Jekyll-and-Hyde loner whose life has unfolded like a reckless chemistry experiment -- a control freak on an endless quest for the uncontrolled moment.? ?Macleans (Canada)

?McDonough is an avid fan, music critic and impartial journalist all in one. . . . [He] deftly weaves Young's life, actions and art together. . . . What was known of Young's life before was akin to a series of rough demos. In Shakey, McDonough delivers a full double-album.? ?Rocky Mountain News

?Does what most rock bios don?t: It fails to fawn, it delivers the juice, it subjects the hero to the scrutiny and disappointment of a fan. . . A page-turning good read..??Houston Chronicle

?Fascinating reading. . . McDonough gives us as good a look at [Young?s] cards as we?re likely to get.? ?The Tampa Tribune

?[Shakey's] unprecedented access makes for an entertaining read: McDonough, more than any music journalist since Peter Guralnick in his authoritative Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, has succeeded in stripping a star of his iconography.??The Observer (London)

?Crammed with razor-sharp insights and mind-boggling detail, Shakey is a rock-solid literary triumph, as inspired and inspiring as the eccentric figure it evokes with such frustrated devotion.? ? The Guardian (London)

?McDonough . . . pores through Young?s life with vivid prose and blunt detail, and he is unashamed to insert some stinging opinions. In his probing conversations with Young, . . . he challenges the formidable artist in ways that few others would dare.? ?Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

?It?s hard to imagine anyone trying to better this book. . . It has what Young values above all else. . . passion.??Evening Standard (London) -- Review

Customer Reviews

Well researched, but poorly edited and in the end, bombastic
For Neil Young fans only. Read with patience.

McDonough deserves credit for researching Neil Young's life, particularly his early days. His early days in Canada are particularly revealing, showing how Neil's hard-driven personality propelled into great success.

McDonough also deserves credit for getting the always obscure Neil to be about as open as he gets. The interviews are at their best when Neil is describing events in the past. Neil is at times very candid about his failings in his personal life (two divorces) and in his professional life (over-producing "Mr. Soul").

Unfortunately, the book suffers on a few fronts.

First of all, it is poorly edited. The length of the book could have easily been cut 200 pages without much loss. Several times the book will describe events, then have length quotes from Neil exactly describing the same event.

Second, McDonough's status as a hard-core Neil Young fan makes some of his prose rather silly. His exhaltations of "Tonight's the Night" just seem silly. For Pete's sake, Jimmy, it's just Rock and Roll, not the second coming of Jesus.

Finally, the last 100 pages or so are really regrettable. McDonough inserts himself into the biography. Suddenly, it's Jimmy teaching Neil about Nirvana, Jimmy trying to save Neil from the evils of being a Lionel Trains Tycoon. Most annoying is McDonough's whining about Neil giving lots of interviews. Oh, boo hoo, Jimmy's interviews with Niel aren't that exclusive.

But, for a Neil Young fan, this book is indispensible. After reading this book, I have a better understanding of the folks in Neil's sometime backup band, "Crazy Horse". I understand more what is involved with producing an album, and what impact producer David Briggs had on Neil's work. I now know that Neil's unique sound is the result of an ancient guitar dubbed "Ol' Black".

I now have an idea of who Carrie Snodgrass is, although, to be honest, I think McDonough is very unfair with her, along with Neil's first wife. Neil himself seems to be more even-handed with his ex-wives. McDonough seems to hold any woman in who didn't put up with Neil's shenanigans in contempt.

A Whole Lot of "Shakey" Goin' On
I'm a huge Neil Young fan, with over two dozen of his albums in my collection. But I'm not a fanatic, and as a result I found his biography, "Shakey" to be as stimulating, but as frustratingly erratic as the artist himself. One thing Neil Young could never be accused of is self-censorship, and author Jimmy McDonough writes about him in the same vein, telling in nearly 800 pages a stoory that could have been more succinctly and powerfully conveyed in about half that number. McDonough spent over ten years working on the book, however, and I guess he felt that his huge investment of time justifies the book's length.

The book is a rambling narrative of Young's life, mainly as seen through the eyes of his closest associates, but is told in the Hunter S. Thompson "gonzo" style of journalism as McDonough frequently inserts himself into the story. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this approach, in may have in fact been necessary, but it ends up padding the length. The main story is interspersed with a hundred or so pages of text from McDonough's various interviews with Young in which the artist is quoted verbaitim. It is a fascinating and unprecedented look into Young's mind, but again it starts to become wearing after awhile. Lengthy passages about such relatively uninteresting subjects as Young's passion for model trains slow things down even further.

Ultimately, "Shakey" is likely to be endured only by Young's most ardent fans and will not win the artist any new converts. But I get the feeling that Young would prefer it that way. As McDonough recounts, the quickest way to get Young to drop a song from an album is to tell him its going to be a surefire hit. He is that rare rock star who actually eschews popularity. Young remains a startlingly original talent after nearly four decades in the recording busines and for all of its flaws, "Shakey" manages to capture his essence.

A mediocre biography at best
Although I did enjoy reading a lot of Shakey, I ended up disappointed. The early chapters which describe Neil's battles with polio, his parents divorce, and epileptic seizures I found extremely interesting. Unfortunately once you get to his professional music career, Jimmy McDonough spends more time trying to psychoanalyze what Neil's intentions were instead of just focusing on how things came about. He offers up his personal reviews of albums (many of which I disagree with) that seem like they were taken from his archives as a journalist for Spin magazine. He also picks apart lyrics describing his great interpretation of the heavy symbolism in the songs. Dude, "Homegrown" isn't about man's struggle with the universe, it's about pot! I also found his constant returning to the "Tonight's The Night" album as Neil's greatest accomplishment and the measurment of everything else he's ever done annoying. Also, according to McDonough, Neil Young must be the worst performer of all time since he spends so much time ripping every live performance to shreds describing how out of tune the band was, how much feedback there was, how they couldn't keep the beat, etc. The end of the book finds McDonough complaining to Neil about how much time he's been spending on TV, at the RnR Hall of Fame, at the Academy Awards. Yeah, one thing I hate as a fan is seeing too much of a performer I like! But most of all what I felt the book accomplished was showing Neil as a very unlikeable character. Someone who has temper tantrums, is impossible to work with, doesn't care about the quality of the work he puts out, fires band members on a whim only to call them back years later when he needs to use them, then dump them again, on and on. Well, if you're a Neil fan you may want to check this out, but be aware that at times you will be annoyed.