(TV) Interesting neil young biography advertorial

["christopher hollow" <doughboy@netspace.net.au>]

| > From globeandmail.com, Thursday, May  9, 2002
| >
| > The impossible Neil Young
| > A long-delayed biography paints a portrait of a lot
| > of drugs and too much tragedy along the road taken by the erratic
Canadian rock star, writes JAMES ADAMS


| > Robbie Robertson says Neil Young got him involved in
| > the "most expensive" cocaine deal of his life. Yet
| > for all the expense, the Canadian-born mainstay of
| > the Band never actually got to sample what he paid
| > for.
| >
| > This anecdote shows up about three-quarters of the
| > way through Shakey, the proverbially long-delayed,
| > much-anticipated biography of Canadian rock
| > superstar Neil Young, written by U.S. journalist
| > Jimmy McDonough. All 800 pages of it land in the
| > nation's bookstores this week.
| >
| > Work on the biography started a decade ago, with the
| > understanding that it would be official and
| > authorized, done with both Young's co-operation and,
| > in some respects, his approval. But Young got cold
| > feet in 1998, repudiating the deal; McDonough -- a
| > contributor to The Village Voice, Spin, Mojo and
| > other periodicals -- responded two years later with
| > a $2-million (U.S.) fraud suit against the rocker.
| > Five years after McDonough's last face-to-face chat
| > with his subject, an arrangement to permit
| > publication was finally reached last year.
| >
| > The cocaine deal was, in fact, a non-cocaine deal.
| > In November, 1976, Young participated with Robertson
| > and his Bandmates as well as Bob Dylan, Van
| > Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and others in
| > the San Francisco concert that would become the
| > Martin Scorsese film The Last Waltz. Before he went
| > on-stage to sing his classic ode to his Ontario
| > homeland, Helpless, Young snorted a great wad of
| > cocaine, a sizable portion of which was still locked
| > in his nasal cavity when he approached the
| > microphone.
| >
| > In assembling the film the next year, Scorsese and
| > Robertson, its executive producer, were insistent
| > that the "huge white M&M" of cocaine be left in
| > Young's close-ups. Young's veteran manager, Elliot
| > Roberts, was just as insistent that it be edited
| > out. "Martin Scorsese is going, 'Yes, Elliot, it's
| > perfect, it's rock 'n' roll, it's the real thing.'
| > Robbie's going, 'The moment -- is it captured or
| > isn't it captured?' They're giving me the rap, the
| > rap, the rap and I'm going, 'Oh my God. No. I want
| > it out. Period.' "
| >
| > Roberts eventually won the fight. However, since
| > this was the predigital era, McDonough reports that
| > "the offending nugget [had to be] rotoscoped away at
| > a cost of thousands of dollars." Hence, Robertson's
| > remark that it was the most expensive coke deal of
| > his life.
| >
| > Unsurprisingly, drugs of many kinds are snorted,
| > smoked, swallowed and injected on the pages of
| > Shakey, with Young often setting the pace. "I'm a
| > bad druggie," Young tells McDonough at one point.
| > "When I do drugs, I do too many and I'm all fucked
| > up and then I don't do them for a long time. Drugs
| > don't play that important a part, really. They
| > really don't. They were there, and a lotta people
| > did drugs and I did drugs and there's nights where I
| > did way too many drugs and I was stupid. Now I'm
| > glad I'm still here and I realize how stupid I was.
| > It would be even better to be here and think I was
| > smart, but y'know, you gotta take it as it comes."
| >
| > Yet for all his appetites, there were things Young
| > would not touch -- heroin, in particular, and LSD --
| > and things he would do but forsake, like cocaine.
| > Marijuana and tequila were the man's favourite
| > sources of derangement, Jose Cuervo being the
| > primary fuel for perhaps his greatest recording,
| > 1975's Tonight's the Night, and "honey slides" --
| > high-grade marijuana fried in a skillet, then mixed
| > with honey and formed into balls -- firing up the
| > sessions for his second best LP, On the Beach, from
| > 1974.
| >
| > And now? In one interview, Young confesses to being
| > addicted to marijuana, "but I can stop if I want
| > to."
| >
| > As the father of three children -- son Zeke and Ben
| > and daughter Amber Jean -- he says he tries not to
| > smoke too much because, "I don't wanna set a bad
| > example for the kids."
| >
| > Inconsistent? Eccentric? You bet. McDonough's Neil
| > Young is a reclusive loner in flannel shirt and
| > workboots, a stubborn changeling and zig-zag
| > wanderer whose erratic genius and pursuit of the
| > muse has made him a potent force in popular music
| > for 35 years at the same time as he's left lovers,
| > business associates, friends and fellow musicians
| > puzzled, angry and disillusioned.
| >
| > "Could be innaresting" -- that seems to be the man's
| > motivating principle.
| >
| > Young thinks all this has a lot to do with having
| > been born and raised in Canada. "Canadians? They're
| > very resolute about some things," he tells
| > McDonough. "They're conservative, they're liberal.
| > People speak out, say what they think to a great
| > degree. They don't seem to be quite as worried about
| > how they look or what people think about 'em."
| >
| > "The far North and the deep South are not very
| > different," he adds.
| >
| >     "They're extremes. Look at Robbie Robertson --
| > an Indian from Canada who wrote a lot about the deep
| > South . . . Southerners, northerners, they're
| > extremists. I mean, look at the people who live in
| > Canada. And look at the people who live in the deep
| > South. They're out there. I love Canada, with the
| > hockey games and the fuckin' spirit -- everybody
| > gets so fuckin' into it. It's so real. And there's
| > that real family thing about the South -- everybody
| > gets together and has barbecues, ya know what I
| > mean?"
| >
| > McDonough's book offers lots of instances of Young's
| > fondness for extremes and blunt talk. He confesses,
| > for instance, to an admiration of Charlie Manson,
| > whom he knew before the infamous Tate-LaBianca
| > murders of 1969: "He was an angry man. But
| > brilliant. Wrong, but stone-brilliant. He sounds
| > like Dylan when he talks." In fact, if Manson -- to
| > Young's mind a talented songwriter -- had only
| > gotten a band together like the one Dylan had for
| > Subterranean Homesick Blues, well, says Young, he
| > wouldn't have started "wipin' people out."
| >
| > At the same time, Young's a supporter of the death
| > penalty for convicted murderers. "An eye for eye. It
| > makes absolute sense. I mean, if somebody does
| > something like that . . . okay, y'know, they're
| > crazy. They're crazy -- that's a reason why it's
| > okay? We're gonna spend the rest of their lives
| > trying to change them -- and they've already
| > committed this heinous crime, taken away somebody's
| > life? Those people don't really deserve an
| > investment."
| >
| > In the mid-eighties, Young decided he was not a
| > rocker or a folk-rocker or even a country-rocker, he
| > was a country artist. Sinking deep into a redneck
| > persona, he started to bash gays, welfare
| > recipients, Jimmy Carter and critics of U.S. foreign
| > policy while extolling the virtues of Ronald Reagan.
| > This from a man who just 11 years earlier was
| > attacking Reagan's friend Richard Nixon and his "tin
| > soldiers" in Ohio -- a song, by the way, that Young
| > tells McDonough he's "always felt funny makin' money
| > off of."
| >
| > Young is only 56, but he's had enough suffering and
| > tragedy in that span to fill three lives, it seems.
| > In 1951, he contracted polio. In 1960, his parents
| > divorced, with Young moving in the wake of the
| > breakup to Winnipeg with his domineering, alcoholic
| > mother. In 1966, he had the first of what would be
| > many epileptic seizures. (Amusingly -- and cruelly
| > -- some of his associates thought these were an
| > attention-getting device. "He'd always get some babe
| > rubbing his forehead with a cool towel," one tells
| > McDonough.) In September, 1972, his first son was
| > born, and diagnosed with cerebral palsy and
| > epilepsy. In November of that year, one of his best
| > friends, a heroin and cocaine addict, died of an
| > overdose of Valium and alcohol. In 1979, his second
| > son was born and, like the first, diagnosed with
| > cerebral palsy.
| >
| > It's the arrival of this boy, Ben, that provides
| > Shakey with its most painful and human moments. As
| > McDonough writes, "he was spastic, quadriplegic,
| > non-oral," confined to a wheelchair, constantly
| > plagued by medical problems. For the first time,
| > Young was faced with something that his formidable
| > will, talent and self-possession were powerless to
| > affect. The book chronicles Young and his wife's
| > heroic attempts both to get Ben mobile -- including
| > an 18-month, 13-hours-a-day regime of crawling
| > exercises called "patterning" -- and to help parents
| > with children in similar straits.
| >
| > The Neil Young in Shakey -- the title comes from the
| > name "Bernard Shakey," one of several aliases Young
| > has adopted over his career (others include "Phil
| > Perspective" and "Joe Yankee") -- is finally an
| > impossible, even ridiculous man. Impossible to
| > predict, impossible to categorize, impossible to
| > unreservedly love, perhaps, but just as impossible
| > to really hate. Even more than Sinatra, he's done it
| > his way on the human highway.
| >
| >     Neil Young on . . .
| >
| >
| >
| >     David Crosby
| >
| >     See, Crosby's a real person. I always liked to
| > be with him. Crosby's the heart and soul of the
| > whole thing. CSNY was at its best when Crosby was
| > right there in the middle of it. Crosby's a musical
| > guy. He loves to play music, show you his songs,
| > talk about words. It's real important to him. . . .
| > It's so refreshing, somebody so much on their trip.
| > You can count on Crosby.
| >
| >
| >
| >     Stephen Stills
| >
| >     I don't know what the hell was goin' on. See
| > that'd be it -- we'd have a tour to do and Stephen
| > would show up completely zoned. . . . Stephen just
| > has some personal torments and demons that are
| > constantly on him, and a lotta the things he's done
| > in his life are a result of that conflict he has
| > with himself. He has, in his own way, been his own
| > worst enemy.
| >
| >   Crazy Horse
| >
| >     Crazy Horse was hard for anyone to understand
| > when I was in CSNY. CSN couldn't understand. . . .
| > There was very little understanding of what the hell
| > was I doing with these people. Why would I waste my
| > time? CSN were fulfilled with what they were doing,
| > and I guess they couldn't understand why I wasn't.
| >
| >
| >
| >     From Shakey, by Jimmy McDonough
| >
| >
| >
| >
| > *ADVERTISEMENT*
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