" I love the man's music and I don't regret reading this, but it's a bit of a head scratcher. Have you heard of Chris Ware's Building Stories? The book is actually a box of independent pieces, meant to be picked up and read in any order, but to form a cohesive whole in whatever order you read them in. Young's book is like that as well: more of a collection of thoughts than a journey, told in whatever order they occurred to him, without any regard for linearity or theme. Some of it comes across as a bit of an advertisement for his current projects: the Lincvolt electric car, and his crusade to restore musical fidelity (called PureTone through most of the book and then Pono in the last hundred pages). There's surprisingly little about the music itself, or songwriting. What there is of songwriting is mostly about his fear that he won't be able to write now that he's sober. Beyond that there's little introspection: most of the book is composed of tributes to friends and musicians, and tributes to well-loved vehicles. I'm pretty sure there are far more words devoted to his hearse than his guitar. Shakey: Neil Young's Biography goes into more depth in general.
But why do we read a musician's biography or autobiography? Is it for the name-dropping? For his recollections of his glory days? Salacious stories or salvation stories? If it's to get a glimpse into a mind that wrote some of my favorite songs, then this book is it, in all its rambling, ragged glory. We're used to linearity, but he's spent his whole life composing in cycles of chorus and verse. I think this book is just another song. Probably a Crazy Horse song, with meandering instrumental passages and occasional returns to theme. "
— Sarah, 2/11/2014