Neil Young!!

My book on Neil,! Newly published on Jack White of White Stripes’ Third Man label.

         The first time I met Neil Young was in an underground car park in L.A  in the early '80s. There was a party nearby for his movie, Human Highway. Devo, his co-stars, were there. But Neil was hovering in a dark corner of the garage. I walked over with my cassette recorder and he hid behind a car. "I'm not here," he said. Bold young rock journalist and champion of the truth that I was, I said, "Yes you are." I asked him if he would say a few words for my column in the UK rock weekly Sounds. He did: "Don't tell anyone I'm here." Over the four and a half decades since that first encounter, I've interviewed him many times. One thing that never changes is you never know what you're going to get. Same with his approach to music. It's one of many reasons we're fans.

         At the turn of the 21st century, MOJO, the music magazine I've written for since issue one, decided to publish a small series of books under the imprint MOJO Heroes:, described as "A distinctive series of succinct, superbly-written, limited-edition volumes that profile some of the most important figures in the MOJO world, written by some of the world's finest writers."  MOJO is famous for its long, detailed articles and in-depth interviews with artists and the people who worked with them. I took a similar approach when writing Neil Young: Reflections in Broken Glass, interviewing a great many people, going deep and unearthing stories that had not back then been heard before.

         When Third Man spoke to me about publishing a new edition, it was very tempting to go back to the original and make changes, add a bit here, take out something embarrassing there. But it seemed more in the spirit of Neil Young to leave it just as it was when it came out at the threshold of the 21st century, a piece of work of its own place and time. But there is more…

I ‘ve added awhole second part to the book called: Neil Young Unfiltered. These are some of my favourite interviews with Neil from the 1990s to the 2020s, stripped down to their original uncensored form. Q&A. Some are deep, some are fun, all of them are revelatory. He definitely had more to say than "I'm not here."

 Here it is on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Neil-Young-Reflections-Updated-Revised/dp/B0DTZL2SDZ