Neil Young: Waging Heavy Peace - His Acclaimed Autobiography

Softcover | 13 x 3 x 20 cm | 520 pp

Penguin | 2014 | 9780241971956

Waging Heavy Peace is the remarkable memoir of rock icon Neil Young. Neil Young is a singular figure in the history of rock and pop culture, inducted not once but twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Reflective, insightful and disarmingly honest, Waging Heavy Peace is his long-awaited memoir.

From his youth in Canada to his crazy journey out to California, through Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash, to his massively successful solo career and his re-emergence as the patron saint of grunge on to his role today as one of the last uncompromised and uncompromising survivors of rock 'n' roll - this is Neil's story told in his own words.

Young presents a kaleidoscopic view of personal life and musical creativity; it's a journey that spans the snows of Ontario to the LSD-laden boulevards of 1966 Los Angeles to the contemplative paradise of Hawaii today. Along the way he writes about the music, the victims, the girls and the drugs; about his happy family life but also about the health problems he and his children have experienced; about guitars, cars and sound systems; about Canada and California and Hawaii. Candid, witty and revealing, this book takes its place beside the classic memoirs of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards. An honest and deeply moving story that will appeal to fans of Neil Young.

'Eccentric, sprawling, absorbing. Before you know it you' re at page 400... and you don't want it to end. You see rock and roll history from the inside out' Independent

'Engaging, touching, heroic' Financial Times

'Intimate and frustratingly elusive. I laughed out loud. So many rock writers have given us Young's story that Waging Heavy Peace doesn't need to. Instead it gives fans something more generous. It gives them the man. By the end of the book, you feel like you've been hanging out with him, not reading about him' Daily Telegraph

'Wildly idiosyncratic, unpredictable, bafflingly digressive, wryly funny, deeply moving, painfully honest... infuriatingly elusive and shot through with moments of rare insight and beauty ... the perfect literary counterpart to the 50-year career it describes' Guardian

'Wildly digressive, shot through with wit, insight and revelation' Time Out

'Terrific: modest, honest, funny and frequently moving' Wall Street Journal