The most distinctive voice, of course, belongs to Young himself it's one of Shakey is what restaurateurs like to call the 'full-meal deal.' While the hardcore Young aficionado isn't going to find much new here, the sheer welter of research and plethora of voices it contains give Young's story a texture, richness and context previous efforts have lacked. and the MGs for his most recent CD,īy the time you finish it, though, you won't be quibbling.

Because it bumps to a halt circa 1998, right around the time its subject stopped co-operating, there's nothing about Young's last four years, including his reunion with Crosby, Stills and Nash, and his post-Sept. Unsurprisingly, the book bears the scars of its troubled birth. Matters were finally resolved via an out-of-court settlement last year and now, voila,

When nothing happened, McDonough filed a $2-million (U.S.) lawsuit against Young in May, 2000, seeking to block publication of the book and charging Young with fraud and breach of contract. The next 18 months were spent trying to placate the moody singer-songwriter. However, in 1998, after McDonough had delivered an 800-page manuscript, Young's lawyers said they intended to block publication. Young seemingly agreed, circa 1991, to make McDonough's production the official, approved-but-warts-included version of his life. Almost 10 years in the preparation, beribboned with the results of some 300 interviews with friends, family, long-forgotten acquaintances and associates, this is about as definitive a take on rock's ultimate survivor as we're likely to get for the next few decades. Shakey, the long-awaited Young biography by Village Voice-Mojo contributor Jimmy McDonough. And a lot of the strangeness is captured in Strange guy, Neil Percival Young, born Nov. Well, Neil Young would have been the village eccentric, living across the railroad tracks in some shotgun shack, shambling around in plaid flannel shirts, scuffy boots and messy hair, singing to himself in that voice that seems to combine the moan of a 22-year- old who wants to be 10 and innocent again (but knows that can't happen) and the bleat of an old man on the threshhold of the extended-care residence. If you can conceive of the rock-and-roll universe that came to fruition in the late sixties as a village, then Bob Dylan would had to have been its wise man/oracle, Grace Slick the town harridan, Mick Jagger the playboy, Jim Morrison the wiseacre Bad Boy, Janis Joplin the acne-scarred Bad Girl, Paul McCartney the genial town administrator to John Lennon's acerbic mayor, and Neil Young.

Shakey by Jimmy McDonough