Neil Young

One of the most influential singer and songwriters in rock ‘n’ roll history, Neil Percival Young was born Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on November 12, 1945. Since his days with Buffalo Springfield in the ‘60s, Young has remained one of the most critically-adored artists of his generation. Musically, his recorded output has embraced rock, folk, country, Americana, blues, rockabilly, and even new wave and synthpop. His outspoken views on everything from politics to the music industry has also caused controversy over the years. Young’s career began in Winnipeg, Canada in 1963 when he dropped out of school to pursue a music career. He played in a number of local bands, meeting singer/songwriter Stephen Stills, along the way. In 1966, he joined a band by the name of Mynah Birds. The band was fronted by future funk star Rick James and featured bassist Bruce Palmer. When the band split up, Young and Palmer sold their musical equipment, bought a hearse, and headed to Los Angeles. They joined forces with Stills, Dewey Martin, and Richie Furay and formed Buffalo Springfield. By 1968, Buffalo Springfield had split, and Neil Young pursued a solo career. By his second album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), he had formed Crazy Horse, a band that would record with him, on and off, for the next 50 years. At the end of 1969, he joined his old bandmate Stephen Stills’ trio Crosby, Stills & Nash and became Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The quartet released the album Déjà Vu in early 1970. Young then recorded two extremely successful folk-rock albums: After the Gold Rush (1970) and Harvest (1972). Harvest featured the single “Heart of Gold”, which was the only Number 1 single of his career. He moved away from the commercial folk sound and embraced a looser rock feel on subsequent albums including On the Beach (1974), Tonight’s the Night (1975), and Zuma (1975) before reuniting with Stills for 1976’s Long May You Run (billed as the Stills-Young Band). He returned to the commercial folk rock sound with 1978’s Comes a Time, but kicked back into rock mode on 1979’s album and concert film Rust Never Sleeps, a critical and commercial success. The album introduced one of his career-defining songs to the world: “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”. Due to issues with record labels, Young then spent the next decade releasing albums that moved away from the norm. He recorded a hard rock album (Re*ac*tor), a new wave album (Trans), a rockabilly album (Everybody’s Rockin’), a straight country album (Old Ways), a then-modern alt-rock album (Landing on Water), and a blues album (This Note’s for You) before sliding back into folk and rock mode again in 1989 with Freedom. Another one of Young’s career-defining songs was featured on Freedom: “Rockin’ in the Free World”. He then recorded a belated sequel to Harvest entitled Harvest Moon (1992), which was a huge commercial and critical success. By this time, a new generation of fans began reappraising his career and Young was embraced by the grunge generation in the 1990s. His 1995 album, Mirror Ball, featured Young backed by Pearl Jam. Young has continued to record a series of well-received albums, and continues to throw curveballs at fans and critics – his 2002 album Are You Passionate? featured Booker T & The M.G.s as his backing band – and he continues to command deep respect from fans, critics, and fellow musicians. He’s even dipped back into his catalog, releasing hours of archive recordings on his website, and has issued some legendary unreleased albums including Hitchhiker (2017, recorded in 1976) and Homegrown (2020, recorded in 1974). During his career, he’s been nominated for many Grammy Awards, winning 3. He’s won 7 Juno Awards and even an MTV Video of the Year Award (for “This Note’s for You”). His later period work saw him traveling down different musical roads on his own, with Crazy Horse – Americana (2012), Psychedelic Pill (2012), Colorado (2019), and Barn (2021) – and several albums recorded with Promise of the Real including The Monsanto Years (2015) and The Visitor (2017). Ever since he began his solo career in 1969, Neil Young has remained one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed artists of the rock and roll generation. While not always commercially successful, there has been no other artist willing to take the same musical chances that Neil Young has. Outside of his solo work, he has reunited with CSNY on occasion and has collaborated with many others. And if he wasn’t busy enough, Young, a true audiophile, developed Pono, a high-quality digital download service.