I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined. I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and færies, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine. The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me. Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.

Neil Young has had one of the most remarkable careers in the history of music. He hasn't just outlived many of his contemporaries - some of whom were great inspirations for him (From Hank to Hendrix, as one of his own songs says); his artistry lives on through those he has inspired (Pearl Jam, Radiohead), and he remains relevant and vital well into his fifth decade of making music. Young also continues to crank out records at a rate that would kill most artists half his age. Between his solo and live albums, and his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, his remarkable career has spanned well over 50 albums. Although he has experimented in genres from syntho-pop to rockabilly, Neil Young is best known for the fully cranked, feedback-laden noise he makes with Crazy Horse ("Rust Never Sleeps" and "Ragged Glory") and the more introspective folk-pop ("Harvest"). The glue that binds his work together is the songwriting. Because when it comes to writing great, timeless songs, Neil Young has few equals. "Neil Young FAQ" is the first definitive guide to the music of this mercurial and methodical, enduring, and infuriating icon. From the Archives to Zuma and from the "Ditch Trilogy" to the Geffen years, this book covers every song and album in painstaking detail - including bootlegs and such lost recordings as "Homegrown", "Chrome Dreams", "Toast", and "Meadow Dusk". Obscure facts and anecdotes from the studio to the road, along with dozens of rare images, make this book a must-have for Young fans.

Neil Young has been described as brilliant, cantankerous, enigmatic, and vexing. Regardless, his generation-spanning fan base and his profound musical influence cannot be denied. While a number of narrative titles have chronicled Neil Young in one manner or another, this is the first illustrated history to span his 41 studio albums, 6 live releases, and 40-plus years as a recording and touring musician. From Young's earliest days in the Canadian rock scene through his tenures with Buffalo Springfield and CSNY and on to his varied solo career, each aspect of the musician's career is covered. Photography from rock photographers of the 1960s to the present, as well as concert posters and memorabilia from around the world, are complemented by commentary from notable musicians around the world and a discography.

Neil Young’s Harvest is one of those strange albums that has achieved lasting success without ever winning the full approval of rock critics or hardcore fans. Even Young himself has been equivocal, describing it in one breath as his “finest” album, dismissing it in the next as an MOR aberration. Here, Sam Inglis explores the circumstances of the album’s creation and asks who got it right: the critics, or the millions who have bought Harvest in the 30 years since its release? Excerpt The White Falcon’s split pickup might have been just a gimmick from the early days of stereo, but the way Neil Young uses it on ‘Alabama’ is remarkable. His muted picking brings stabbing notes first from one speaker, then the other, as though we were hearing not one but two guitarists, playing with an unnatural empathy. The electric guitar has seldom sounded so menacing, and Young’s growling rhythm and piercing lead notes are tracked perfectly by Kenny Buttrey’s bare-bones drumming. The build to the chorus is beautifully judged, and when Young and his celebrity backing singers let rip, there’s an almost physical sense of release.

Iconoclast, innovator, and influence on generations of musicians, Neil Young has recorded more than 40 albums in a 35+ year career. Nigel Williamson explores Young's entire repertoire, from the early days with Buffalo Springfield to the plaintive troubadour of After the Gold Rush to his latest work. With detailed accounts of the creation of his classic songs, this is an essential companion for Young's devoted fans.

Scott Young chronicles his son’s early years in and around Toronto and Winnipeg and his rise from journeyman, musician to superstar in the 1960s and 1970s. The frequent occasions when Scott and Neil’s paths have crossed – from backstage meetings and family get-togethers to a sold-out appearance at Carnegie Hall – give a fascinating portrait of an enigmatic star.From the Paperback edition.

Neil Young is known as one of rock’s great artists, his influence extending far beyond his own generation. Being Young looks at a lifetime of love, humor, disappointment, and proud moments, picking up where Scott Young’s book Neil and Me left off in 1984. The book is a testament to a Woodstock-generation rocker whose independence and determination have seen him through his life as a prolific musician who is still producing to this day. Being Young by Neil Young’s sister, Astrid Young, offers a fresh perspective on one of rock’s most recognized cultural icons. Astrid goes deep inside the motivations that shaped their family unit, exploring all the ways it came apart and how, in the end, a tenacious and undeniable kindred spirit was able to pull it back together. The story is in part a celebration of the legacy of a family that many of us grew up feeling we knew and in part the meaningful and intimate reflection of one who experienced it all. Astrid Young started writing creatively at an early age. A musician by trade, her career has taken her around the world, both on her own and singing backup for her brother Neil Young. Astrid lives in Toronto.

In 1966, Neil Young drove a battered funeral car two thousand miles from his native Toronto to Los Angeles to seek his fortune in the music business. Nearly forty years of continuous writing and performing later, he is firmly established as one of the most influential and idiosyncratic singer-songwriters of his generation. His restless and innovative spirit ensures that he is one of the few rock veterans as vital in his old age as he was in his youth. Simmons provides fresh insights into Young's life so far. She also uncovers new facts about his friendship with Charles Manson, and closely examines his schizophrenic eighties output and musical return to form as the "Godfather of Grunge" in the nineties.

William Butler Yeats has cast his long shadow over the history of both modern poetry and modern Ireland for so long that his preeminence is taken for granted. Now, in the first authorized biography of Yeats to appear in over fifty years, leading Irish historian R.F. Foster travels beyond Yeats's towering image as arguably the century's greatest poet to restore a real sense of Yeats's extraordinary life as Yeats himself experienced it--what he saw, what he did, the passions and the petty squabbles that consumed him, and his alchemical ability to transmute the events of his crowded and contradictory life into enduring art. In the first volume of this long-awaited biography, Foster covers the poet's first fifty years, bringing new light to bear on Yeats's heroic and often ruthless efforts to invent himself as a poet and public figure. Drawn from a fascinating archive of personal and contemporary documents with the cooperation of surviving members of the Yeats family, it dramatically alters long-held assumptions about the poet's background, his relationship with Maud Gonne and other women, and his roles in the great cultural and political upheavals that transformed Ireland in his lifetime. A rich and entertaining account of Yeats's boyhood days amidst the talented but troubled members of the Yeats and Pollexfen clans provides important insight into the poet's deep and lifelong connection to the Irish landscape, his early, impassioned embrace of the nationalist cause, and his later retreat to the traditions of the once grand Protestant aristocracy. In his own day Yeats attracted enemies and admirers with equal passion, and Foster vividly recreates the friendships, love affairs, and simmering rivalries that swirled about the poet's circles in London, Dublin, and Coole Park. Complementing his meticulous scholarship with a shrewd wit and a novelist's eye for detail, he chronicles the romantic disappointments, financial difficulties, experimentation with hashish and mescal, and the growing preoccupation with the occult that prefaced Yeats's attempt to unite Irish politics with high culture and his creation of an Irish national theater. Here are the poet's memorable encounters with many of the most interesting people of his time, including Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and the wildly diverse leaders of the Irish independence movement. And here at last is a full accounting of the complex bond between Yeats and the incomparable Maud Gonne, revealed as an influence eternally recreated 'like the phoenix,' affecting almost everything he did. Poet, playwright, mystic and revolutionary; lover, confidant, and friend. This brilliant account of the public and private lives of William Butler Yeats illuminates not only the wellspring of his artistic vision, but the modern Irish identity he helped to create. It is essential reading for anyone intrigued by one of the most original and influential voices of the twentieth century.