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The Adventures of Graham Nash 


Graham Nash’s autobiography, Wild Tales: A Rock And Roll Life, is a thoughtful and honest work documenting Nash’s personal life and fifty-plus year music career.  It highlights his childhood meeting with future Hollies-co-founder, Allan Clarke, and their discovery of their mutual love of rock and roll and performing live.  Anecdotes of his exciting early Hollies career and its intersecting with the Beatles and other titans of the British rock scene are very entertaining.  Later, Nash conveys his mixed emotions of his work within the fragile alliance and frequent dramafest that are Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young.  Numerous stories find Nash as the saner link caught between the ego-driven Stills and Young rivalry as well as Crosby’s drug addiction.  He is both hard on his band mates, but also proud of them and the work they created together. That is not to say that Nash is not also critical of himself and his sex, drugs and rock and roll life choices.  He certainly is, but, after reading this book, if you had to be trapped on a desert island with one of them, your best choice is probably Nash.  Wild Tales is not as shocking and raunchy as many other rock memoirs like Motley Crue’s The Dirt nor is it as poetic as autobiography’s like Dylan’s Chronicles or Sting’s Broken Music.  The main complaint is that the last couple chapters feel a bit rushed on content.  Nash tends to skip over much of his life over the last twenty-five years.  It would have been nice for him to discuss the creation of CSN and CSNY works like After The Storm and Looking Forward.  Wild Tales is, however, an enjoyable and gripping work that is hard to put down once you start reading. 

Neil Young's Journey Through The Past 

 

Waging Heavy Peace
, is exactly the kind of autobiography you would expect Neil Young to write. His pros are poetic without being pretentious and his words are heartfelt. Though the chapters are not chronological, they all fit together. For instance, he has a chapter about coming to California in search of Stephen Stills in the pre-Buffalo Springfield days. In the next chapter, he gives an interesting juxtaposition of past and present by skipping to how Stills and his relationship is today. Throughout the book, readers learn much about his approach to songwriting and the stories behind many of the bands he has been a part of. In addition, Young provides insights into his interests outside of music, such as film, model trains and cars. Yes, there is a lot about cars and his experiments in converting classic automobiles into eco-friendly modes of transportation. He frequently rants about how much audio quality is lost by selling music digitally and through mp3. However, he offers solutions through his music company, Pono. All in all, Waging Heavy Peace is an enjoyable read. Young has created a poignant self-portrait that really lets readers see the man behind the music.