Special Deluxe
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:
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
