“Halliwell knows what he’s talking about, and writes with real enthusiasm and know-how. . . . Authors of books in which the star subject hasn’t been in direct contact with the writer in interviews, and trying to get to get to the bottom of things face-to-face, really have to know what they’re on about, lest the books become a Hades of hazy speculation and guesswork. Halliwell avoids this problem by truly, relentlessly knowing his stuff. It also helps that he writes in a way that doesn’t hinge on having the reader’s approval, and also that he doesn’t claim to have some kind of mystical truth of the subject that was overlooked by everyone else.”

Juliette Jones | PopMatters

“An insightful cultural study of the often-turbulent times in which Young’s artistry evolved. This carefully documented work includes a chronological summary of Young’s life, a discography, a filmography, and an extensive bibliography. Of interest to both fans and scholars.”
 

Choice

“All of Neil Young’s changes are expertly accounted for here under the sign of the drifter, with its associated features of mobility, flight, and rootlessness. Halliwell unfolds a detailed map stretching from Thunder Bay to Topanga Canyon of a musical career with plenty of scenic drives and detours. Neil Young: American Traveller beckons us to stick out our thumbs and hitch a ride on the ongoing journey.”

Gary Genosko, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

“In a half-century of music, Neil Young has been a sort of ‘mindful drifter,’ offering wistful glimpses of the North American landscape from the tour bus window or behind the wheel of a retired hearse. In one moment, he’ll nostalgically invoke his Canadian past in a piano ballad and, in another, conjure searing guitar rock about racial injustice in the US. If Young creates a musical map of North America in his songs, then Halliwell has done a wonderful job of annotating it. Neil Young: American Traveller is a pithy work that’s perceptive to the biographical undercurrents, cultural clashes, and thematic motifs that run through Young’s long, eventful music journey.” 

Kevin Chong, author of Neil Young Nation

“Halliwell’s study of Neil Young is a superb cultural history and a highly informed piece of music criticism. By situating Young’s songs and films in specific locations, as well as the deterritorialised realms of time and space, Halliwell explores the boundary-smashing nature of a fifty-year career that has transformed the history of North American music.”

Will Kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie, American Radical