As a straight male I could have done without some of the gay passages, I could have also done without some of Milligan's stepbrother's sick and twisted admissions--and yet, having said that, what was the author supposed to do? Cover up the less than pleasant parts of his subject's background? I think not. It's a facinating tale that will haunt you long after you have finished the book. Extremely well done; unputdownable. If you're interested in low-budget filmmaking and appreciate what these filmmakers have to go through to make their dreams happen on zero budgets...this is the book for you. The other would be on Al Adamson, and, of course, Ed Wood.

Jimmy McDonough does a superlative job of bringing the fascinating life of the late and almost completely unmissed misanthropic sexploitation/schlock horror movie maker Andy Milligan to light. Reader be warned, this is an unflinching look at life in the nightmarish rough trade underworld of New York. Milligan started in amateur theater before helping to create the boiling milieu that birthed the Off-Broadway Theater movement in the early sixties. Then he moved to the 42nd street grindhouses, making exploitation 'classics' that are eye scalding in their badness and impossible to forget, no matter how hard you try. Yet McDonough continually points out that, as bad as Milligan's movies were, they could only be made by Andy, being infused with the writer/director's utter contempt for women, family, and just about everything else humanity offered. Being a recalcitrant and secretive subject for McDonough, Milligan (as the author warns) sometimes fades from the narrative, but never from the world he inhabits. By the time Milligan leaves theater for the exploitation movie business we can fully understand why McDonough found Milligan such a hypnotically fascinating figure. For fans of exploitation movies, The Ghastly One is an essential book. Highest recommendation.

...since when are biographies required to provide HEROES? If you are interested in film, art, people, sex, insanity, the politics of pornography and 42nd Street, BUY THIS BOOK. It is unforgettable and even made me cry at the end. A TRUE CLASSIC. Rarely has an artist (however "bad") gotten such an incisive, loving--yet brutal--tribute.

Neil Young's bio "Shakey" is written like 2 books, the first part, covering most of Neil's career up to the early 90's is "Shakey", and is an engrossing read, containing some insightful, shocking, and hilarious anecdotes about one of rock's true iconoclasts. Once the 90's roll around, and author Jimmy McDonough begins the interview process, it becomes "My Life With Shakey, by Jimmy McDonough" I must admit, I learned much about Neil's life and career from this book, and it filled in a lot of holes in the creative process of the artist. Once McDonough enters the picture, though, the book becomes almost unreadable, due to McDonough's incessant whining as to why Neil follows the path he does, which is NOT the path Mr. McDonough WANTS him to follow. Well, what did he expect? The entire book up to that point is of an artist who follows his muse, with little or no regard to trends, common sense, friendships, whatever. All of a sudden, when he does it in front of the author, it's a terrible thing. Also, stick with telling us how a song was recorded, inspiration, anectdotes, whatever, but I don't care whether Jimmy McDonough thinks a song is weak or strong. One of Neil Young's strongest suits is for his songs to be interpreted in a multitude of ways to different people, and a biographer should allow the reader the freedom to decide. Like it or not, we buy the book because it's about Neil Young, not because Jimmy McDonough wrote it. It gets 4 stars because the first 80% is very good, but the ending needs some work.

Indubitably, hardcore fans have been waiting for the ultimate biography on Neil Young, and this is without a doubt the closest we'll ever get.

On the plus side, this book is hard to put down once you pick it up. It covers just about everything, and there is a lot to cover. Jimmy portrays Neil as very human, very much the tempermental artist.

On the down side, I have to agree with other reviewers that Jimmy's personal opinion should have been left out. If he were to call it something like... oh I don't know, maybe "Neil and Me," then I could understand his interjecting himself into the story so much. But his part was to be the unbiased biographer, and he didn't keep his end of that bargain. Granted, a couple of scenes reflected Neil's personality, but overall, the inclusion of Jimmy into Neil's story seemed a bit self serving.

But, before I give him too much crap about that, I have to give him credit for spending about the right amount of text for the various times in Neil's life. He focuses a lot of attention from the early Buffalo Springfield years to the late 70's, where Neil's life is truly the most interesting. By the 80's Neil had established himself, and by the mid-80's Neil started talking to the press with more frequency, and while the whole Geffen debacle was intensely interesting, there wasn't much else to focus on. Same with the 90's.

So, on the whole, it's a great biography, and while there are certainly some flaws, it's worth the read.

It's been quite some time since I tore through a book like I did Jimmy McDonough's "Shakey: Neil Young's Biography." This is almost everything a Neil fan could hope for: almost 800 pages of prose on one of rock and roll's most enigmatic artists. Although the book starts off a little slow and perhaps spends a bit too much time on Neil's childhood, it quickly approaches crusing speed and takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of Young's recording life. It's fascinating to read about the origins of Young's records interspersed with comments from Shakey himself. By the time I finished reading, I felt like I knew Neil a bit more than before, and my respect for him had increased greatly. I have even considered buying some of his oft-maligned albums from the 1980s. My only beef with the book is that it's a bit outdated; McDonough finished the manuscript mid-1998 only to suffer through a long legal hassle with Mr. Young himself, and because of this, there's nothing in Shakey about Neil's post-Broken Arrow work. But we know whose fault that is. :)