BNB RSS

  • BNB RSS

BNB mailing list

  • BNB mailing list

Archives

‘Book Info’ Articles

Young Neil – The Sugar Mountain Years

Young NeilOur Zuman and Rustie sister Sharry Wilson has been getting a lot of publicity as her new book “Young Neil, the Sugar Mountain Years,” makes the rounds.

In the latest interview by Winnipeg Free Press, book reviewer Cheryl Girard writes:

“In Young Neil, first-time author Sharry Wilson attempts to have us do just that, taking us back to Neil Young’s early years, his childhood in and around Toronto and his teen years in Winnipeg.

The subtitle The Sugar Mountain Years is taken from one of Young’s songs written, Wilson tells us, on his 19th birthday. He had left home and was looking nostalgically back at his childhood.

A lifelong fan and a professional proofreader, Wilson, who lives just north of Toronto, interviewed many of Young’s old school chums and fellow band members from Ontario and Winnipeg. She offers many previously unseen photos and includes material gathered from letters, documents, biographies and other memorabilia.”

Read the whole review at: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/youngs-early-years-detailed-to-a-fault-287401111.html

 

Rolling Stone wrote: “A supremely compelling chronicle of Young’s first 20 years.  Wilson, who painstakingly tracked down childhood friends and early band mates, recounts Young’s often difficult upbringing — from his parents’ divorce to the challenges he faced changing schools as he moved from town to town with his mother – as he relentlessly pursues his musical dreams and develops his songwriting voice.”

 

She was also interviewed by Thornhill Liberal reporter Simone Joseph a few weeks ago. Her article about “Young Neil: The Sugar Mountain Years” appeared in the New Year’s Day edition of the Thornhill Liberal.

Check it out here: http://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/5238057-thornhill-fan-authors-new-book-on-neil-young/

For the whole scoop, check Wilson’s website for the book: http://www.youngneil.com/

 

Ah Sharry, we can say we knew you when…….The Baron brought you on board. 😉

 

Sharry_Wilson_04715___Content

Young named Toronto Star Wheels’ Newsmaker of the Year

Freelance writer and former editor of Toronto Star Wheels Mark Richardson writes about Neil Young being named Toronto Star Wheels’ Newsmaker of the year.

“For playing concerts in January, writing a book and spreading his message through the year, and for actively promoting alternative fuel — while never forgetting that cars are really cool — Neil Young is Wheels’ Newsmaker of 2014,” Richardson writes.

He quotes Young:

“I’ve had a lot of cars and I bought cars as rewards for projects that I did . . . They were all old cars so they already had a history. And the designs reflected the culture of the time,” Young told the Star’s Ben Rayner in an interview this year.

Richardson writes about  Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars and the stories about the cars Young has owned, “all of them bought used and all of them interesting.”

“His new book is a chronicle of his experiences as told by the memories his cars invoke, everything from a Mini and a Citroen 2CV to a Corvette and a Hummer H1. Throughout it, he details the fuel consumption and the exhaust emissions of the vehicles. His family’s 1951 road trip to Florida in their new Monarch sedan, for example, spewed about 1,296 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere each way; that Route 66 drive to L.A. in the hearse would have emitted 4,900 pounds of CO2.”

Eventually, in 2003, a friend of his daughter’s called him a hypocrite for being an environmentalist who drove such gas-guzzlers, and the accusation stuck. He resolved to find alternatives to gasoline for his cars and diesel for his tour buses.

Richardson writes: “His message is not against cars, which he loves passionately, but against the fuel that powers them. ‘We can have as many cars as we want, as long as the highways can hold them,’ he told the Star, “but we have to think smart about how they run.”

 

Special Deluxe

1957-Eldorado-Biarritz-Convertible-'Aunt-Bee'

Artwork by Neil Young from ‘Special Deluxe’ 1957 Eldorado Biarritz Convertible ‘Aunt Bee’

Since we are still catching up on BNB, and people are shopping for Christmas gifts, and the Neil Young store is pushing Cyber Monday today –  let’s visit a review of Young’s latest book: “Special Deluxe.”

BNB first wrote about the book’s release back in March.

This review appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel back in October.

→Neil Young takes winding road in his automotive memoir ‘Special Deluxe’

Writer Jon Gilbertson calls Young’s writing: “rambling and winding.” Some like this style, stating it feels just like sitting down with Neil on the front porch, talking.  Others lose interest with the rambling and walk away. Same with his last book: “Waging Heavy Peace.”

Gilberston writes:

“He isn’t kidding about the cars: he writes about seemingly every car his parents owned, then several cars he’s owned, plus trucks and buses. He draws or traces 42 of them literally to illustrate his vehicular rhapsodies and lamentations.

Young also uses his fondness for automobiles as a reason he moved from Canada to the United States — “that was where all the cool music came from, all the great cars” — and as a springboard into an admitted obsession with carbon-dioxide emissions and cleaner alternative fuels.

Long before Young has given his 11th (and by no means final) figure for how much CO2 was pumped into the atmosphere during one of his automotive trips, the fit reader has settled into the fidgeting of a nephew or niece hoping a garrulous old uncle will hurry toward the good parts of his life story.”

And of course Young touched on the new, so-called “love of his life.” Which is different than two years ago, when he professed his endearing and undying love for Pegi Young in WHP.

“Once Young gives the last few chapters over to the aforementioned obsession with environmentally responsible cars, it’s not helpful when he mentions similarly minded activist and actor Daryl Hannah, with whom he is currently, openly consorting after filing for divorce from Pegi, his wife of 36 years (“the next love of my life,” he writes about their early encounters; “soul mate,” he writes later).

You can read more at:

http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/books/neil-young-takes-winding-road-in-his-automotive-memoir-special-deluxe-b99365785z1-278734021.html

 

 

Beam me up! Young writing sci-fi?

rust-never-sleeps-road-eyes“Sometimes what I love is not what other people love, but that’s okay. It doesn’t matter. That’s why I’m still here.” ~N.Y.

In an interview with Spin Neil Young says he is penning a Sci-fi story.

After listening to Neil’s keynote address at SXSW on March 11, 2014, SPIN sat down with Young in a suite at an out-of-the-way hotel in Austin to talk music, sound, saturation, retro-tech, new albums, and writing.

And then I’m writing another book right now, which is a science fiction book. I’m well into it, maybe 100 pages.

When do you like to write? I write on airplanes and in hotels. It keeps me off the street.

What’s the science-fiction book about?

Hmmm.

Do we have to wait? It’s great. I think it’s better to wait. It’s crazy to talk about. Too fucking weird. But it’s great, I love it. I love writing sci-fi. I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

Wow!

Read the entire interview at: http://www.spin.com/#articles/neil-young-pono-music-new-album-a-letter-home-sxsw-2014-interview/

 

Shar out!

 

 

 

Neil Young’s Agenda: Jack White Project, Second Book, ‘Full-Blown Orchestra’ Album

 neil_young at SXSWNeil Young tells Billboard we can expect to hear “A Letter Home,” the album he recorded at Jack White’s Third Man studio in Nashville, “very soon,” most likely this spring. 

The idea for “A Letter Home” appeared to be hatched by a version of Bert Jansch’s “The Needle of Death,” which Young recorded for Record Store Day 2013 in White’s 1947 Voice-o-Graph booth. “They’re songs that I love, songs that changed my life, songs that made it so that I understood what someone else was saying to me, songs by greater writers.”

Also,  if Young has his way, he’ll also do something symphonic in the near future.

“I’d like to make a record with a full-blown orchestra, live — a mono recording with one mic,” he explains. “I want to do something like that where we really record what happened, with one point of view and the musicians moved closer and farther away, the way it was done in the past. To me that’s a challenge and it’s a sound that’s unbelievable, and you can’t get it any other way. So I’m into doing that.”

Young is also in “the final editing stages” for his second book, “Special Deluxe,” a follow-up to his 2012 memoir “Waging Heavy Peace.” This book, Young says, will be out this year and “focuses on my life as regards to my transportation, as regards to my love for cars. So it’s a history through automobiles, and it’s a history of automobiles and it’s a history of the environmental impact of automobiles. And it’s a projection into the future of automobiles. It has it’s own agenda that develops over the book.”

Read story at: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5930484/neil-youngs-agenda-jack-white-project-second-book-full-blown-orchestra-album

 

 

 

Random Quote

“Down the windy halls of friendship
To the rose clipped by the bullwhip
The motel of lost companions
Waits with heated pool and bar. ”

by -- Neil Young

Neil Young on Tour

  • Neil Young on Tour

Sugar Mountain setlists

Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.

Other Neil News

  • Neil Young News

Rust Radio

  • http://www.rustradio.org/

HH-Radio + NY Info

  • http://www.neil-young.info/
  • NY-Info-Radio

Human Highway

  • http://www.human-highway.org/

Oh My Darling Clementine

BNB has 3467380 Guests, from the new start