Special Deluxe

November 3, 2014
In this flat-as-pavement second installment of his memoirsâfollowing on last year's best-selling Waging Heavy PeaceâYoung invites us to ride along in the many cars he's owned over the past fifty years, telling us how those cars drove him through various phases of his musical life and his relationships with family and friends. "I have collected many cars and have had lots of experiences with every one of themâ¦I just loved the way they looked and got a lot of joy from just observing them from every angleâ¦they talked to me. And I talked to them." Young recalls the 1985 Ford Econoline van that provided enough space for his son, Ben, to look out the window as the Youngs traveled, but it also brings back the memories of his good friend Larry Johnson's death. Young now owns a number of cars in various states of repair: "The unfinished cars mean something. They represent broken dreams, lost loves, and abandoned ideas. This is the sad part." Looking back, though, Young regrets the heavy carbon footprint his cars have made; in 1976, he drives his 1975 Dodge Power Wagon about 380 miles and deposits about "411 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere." Young devotes the final chapter of this uneven memoir to a long discussion of the value of biofuels and his attempts to turn a classic car into an environmentally friendly one.