About: Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian
singer-songwriter and musician. He began performing in a group covering Shadows
instrumentals in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he
co-founded the band Buffalo Springfield together with Stephen Stills and Richie
Furay, and later joined Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1969. He released his
first album in 1968 and has since forged a successful and acclaimed solo career,
spanning over 45 years and 35 studio albums, with a continuous and
uncompromising exploration of musical styles. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
website describes Young as "one of rock and roll's greatest songwriters
and performers". He was inducted into the Hall of Fame twice, first as a
solo artist in 1995, and second as a member of Buffalo Springfield in 1997.
Young's music is characterized by his distinctive guitar
work, deeply personal lyrics and characteristic alto or high tenor singing
voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments,
including piano and harmonica, his idiosyncratic electric and acoustic guitar
playing are the defining characteristics of a varyingly ragged and melodic
sound.
While Young has experimented with differing music styles
throughout a varied career, including electronic music, most of his best known
work is either acoustic folk-rock and country rock or electric, amplified hard
rock (most often in collaboration with the band Crazy Horse). Musical styles
such as alternative rock and grunge also adopted elements from Young. His
influence has caused some to dub him the "Godfather of Grunge".
Young has directed (or co-directed) a number of films using
the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust
Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), Greendale (2003), and CSNY/Déjà Vu
(2008). He has also contributed to the soundtracks of films including
Philadelphia (1993) and Dead Man (1995).
Young is an environmentalist and outspoken advocate for the
welfare of small farmers, having co-founded in 1985 the benefit concert Farm
Aid. He is currently working on a documentary about electric car technology,
tentatively titled LincVolt. The project involves his 1959 Lincoln Continental converted
to hybrid technology as an environmentalist statement.
In 1986, Young helped found The Bridge School, an
educational organization for children with severe verbal and physical
disabilities, and its annual supporting Bridge School Benefit concerts,
together with his ex-wife Pegi Young (née Morton).
Young has three children: sons Zeke (born during his
relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress) and Ben, who were diagnosed with
cerebral palsy, and daughter Amber Jean who, like Young, has epilepsy. Young
lives on his ranch near La Honda, California. Although he has lived in northern
California since the 1970s and sings as frequently about U.S. themes and
subjects as he does about his native country, he has retained his Canadian
citizenship. On July 14, 2006, Young was awarded the Order of Manitoba, and on
December 30, 2009, was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Early Years: 1945 to 1966
Neil Percival Young was born on November 12, 1945 in
Toronto, Ontario.[6] His father, Scott Alexander Young (1918–2005), was a
journalist and sportswriter who would later rise to prominence in Canada for
his work. His mother, Edna Blow Ragland "Rassy" Young (1918–1990) was
a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. His mother was an
American of French ancestry. They married in 1940 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and
their first son, Robert 'Bob' Young, was born in 1942.
Shortly after Neil's birth in 1945, the Young family moved
to the rural town of Omemee, Ontario, which Neil would later fondly describe as
a "sleepy little place". (The Youngtown Museum in Omemee (recently
moved to Lindsay as part of Old Gaol Museum) is a tribute to Young.) Young
suffered from a bout of polio in 1951, in what was the last major outbreak of
the disease in Ontario. Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, then aged nine, also
contracted the virus in this epidemic.
After his recovery, the Young family vacationed to Florida
in the United States in 1952, and upon returning to Canada soon decided to move
away from Omemee and into the city of Toronto, before relocating to Pickering,
which is just east of Toronto, and then again to north Toronto soon afterward.
It was during this period that Young began to take an interest in popular music
that he heard on the radio, and also began to raise chickens in order to sell
their eggs.
When Young was twelve, his father, who had been having a
number of extra-marital affairs, left his mother, and she asked for and
received a divorce some years later, in 1960. Due to the breakup of the family,
Neil went to live with his mother, who moved back to Winnipeg, while his
brother Bob stayed with his father in Toronto. It was then that his musical
drive really kicked in.
During the mid-fifties, at around the age of ten or eleven,
Young was drawn to a variety of musical genres including rock and roll,
rockabilly, doo-wop, R&B, country, and western pop. He would listen to pop
music broadcast on the CHUM radio station via his transistor radio. Young has
stated in interviews that he grew up idolizing Elvis Presley and strove to be
just like him. He later referred to him in a number of his lyrics. Other early
musical influences included Link Wray, Chuck Berry, Hank Marvin, Little
Richard, Fats Domino, The Chantels, The Monotones, Ronnie Self, The Fleetwoods,
Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Gogi Grant. Young first began to
play music himself on a plastic ukulele, before, as he would later relate,
going on to "a better ukulele to a banjo ukulele to a baritone ukulele –
everything but a guitar."
Young and his mother settled into the working class area of
Fort Rouge, Winnipeg, where the shy, dry-humoured youth enrolled at Earl Grey
Junior High School. It was there that he formed his first band, The Jades, and
met Ken Koblun, later to join him in The Squires. While attending Kelvin High
School in Winnipeg, he played in several instrumental rock bands. Young's first
stable band was called The Squires, with Ken Koblun, Jeff Wuckert and Bill
Edmondson on drums, who had a local hit called "The Sultan". Young
dropped out of high school and also played in Fort William (now part of the
city of Thunder Bay, Ontario), where they recorded a series of demos produced
by a local producer named Ray Dee, whom Young called "the original
Briggs". While there, Young first encountered Stephen Stills. In the 2006
film Heart of Gold, Young relates how he used to spend time as a teenager at
Falcon Lake, Manitoba, where he would endlessly plug coins into the jukebox to
hear Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds". The Squires played in as many
dance halls and clubs in Winnipeg and Ontario as they could.
After leaving the Squires, Young worked folk clubs in
Winnipeg, where he first met Joni Mitchell. Mitchell recalls Young as having
been highly influenced by Bob Dylan at the time. Here he wrote some of his
earliest and most enduring folk songs such as "Sugar Mountain", about
lost youth. Mitchell wrote "The Circle Game" in response. The
Winnipeg band The Guess Who (with Randy Bachman as lead guitarist) had a
Canadian Top 40 hit with Young's "Flying on the Ground is Wrong",
which was Young's first major success as a songwriter.
In 1965 Young toured Canada as a solo artist. In 1966, while
in Toronto, he joined the Rick James-fronted Mynah Birds. The band managed to
secure a record deal with the Motown label, but as their first album was being
recorded, James was arrested for being AWOL from the Reserve. After the Mynah
Birds disbanded, Young and the bass player Bruce Palmer relocated to Los
Angeles. Young admitted in a 2009 interview that he was in the United States
illegally until he received a green card in 1970.
Buffalo Springfield (1966 - 1968)
Once they reached Los Angeles, Young and Palmer met up with
Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, and Dewey Martin to form Buffalo Springfield. A
mixture of folk, country, psychedelia, and rock, lent a hard edge by the twin
lead guitars of Stills and Young, made Buffalo Springfield a critical success,
and their first record Buffalo Springfield (1966) sold well after Stills'
topical song "For What It's Worth" became a hit, aided by Young's
melodic harmonics played on electric guitar. According to Rolling Stone, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other sources, Buffalo Springfield helped create
the genres of folk rock and country rock.
Distrust of their management, as well as the arrest and
deportation of Palmer, exacerbated the already strained relations among the
group members and led to Buffalo Springfield's demise. A second album, Buffalo
Springfield Again, was released in late 1967, but two of Young's three contributions
were solo tracks recorded apart from the rest of the group.
In many ways, these three songs on Buffalo Springfield
Again, "Mr. Soul", "Expecting to Fly", and "Broken
Arrow", are harbingers of much of Young's later work in that, although
they all share deeply personal, almost idiosyncratic lyrics, they also present
three very different musical approaches to the arrangement of what is
essentially an original folk song. "Mr. Soul" is the only Young song
of the three that all five members of the group performed together. In
contrast, "Broken Arrow" was confessional folk-rock of a kind that
would characterize much of the music that emerged from the singer-songwriter
movement. Young's experimental production intersperses each verse with snippets
of sound from other sources, including opening the song with a soundbite of
Dewey Martin singing "Mr. Soul" and closing it with the thumping of a
heartbeat. "Expecting to Fly" was a lushly produced ballad similar to
the baroque pop of the mid-1960s, featured a string arrangement that Young's
co-producer for the track, Jack Nitzsche, would dub "symphonic pop".
In May 1968, the band split up for good, but in order to
fulfill a contractual obligation, a final album, Last Time Around, was
released, primarily from recordings made earlier that year. Young contributed
the songs "On the Way Home" and "I Am a Child", singing
lead on the latter. In 1997, the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame; Young did not appear at the ceremony. The three surviving
members, Furay, Stills and Young, appeared together as Buffalo Springfield at
Young's annual Bridge School Benefit on October 23–24, 2010, and at Bonnaroo in
the summer of 2011.
Going Solo, Crazy Horse (1968 - 1969)
After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, Young signed a
solo deal with Reprise Records, home of his colleague and friend Joni Mitchell,
with whom he shared a manager, Elliot Roberts, who manages Young to this day.
Young and Roberts immediately began work on Young's first solo record, Neil
Young (November 12, 1968), which received mixed reviews. In a 1970 interview,
Young deprecated the album as being "overdubbed rather than played",
and the quest for music that expresses the spontaneity of the moment has long
been a feature of his career. Nevertheless, the album contains some songs that
remain a staple of his live shows, most notably "The Loner".
For his next album, Young recruited three musicians from a
band called The Rockets: Danny Whitten on guitar, Billy Talbot on bass guitar,
and Ralph Molina on drums. These three took the name Crazy Horse (after the
historical figure of the same name), and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (May
1969), is credited to "Neil Young with Crazy Horse". Recorded in just
two weeks, the album opens with one of Young's most familiar songs,
"Cinnamon Girl", and is dominated by two more, "Cowgirl in the
Sand" and "Down by the River", that feature improvisations with
Young's distinctive electric guitar solos billowing out over the hypnotic Crazy
Horse backing. Young reportedly wrote all three songs on the same day, while
nursing a high fever of 103 °F (39 °C) in bed.
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (1969–1970)
Shortly after the release of Everybody Knows This Is
Nowhere, Young reunited with Stephen Stills by joining Crosby, Stills &
Nash, who had already released one album Crosby, Stills & Nash as a trio in
May 1969. Young was originally offered a position as a sideman, but agreed to
join only if he received full membership, and the group – winners of the 1969
"Best New Artist" Grammy Award – was renamed Crosby, Stills, Nash
& Young. The quartet debuted in Chicago on August 16, 1969, and later
performed at the famous Woodstock Festival, during which Young skipped the
majority of the acoustic set and refused to be filmed during the electric set,
even telling the cameramen: "One of you fuckin' guys comes near me and I'm
gonna fuckin' hit you with my guitar". During the making of their first
album, Déjà Vu (March 11, 1970), the musicians frequently argued, particularly
Young and Stills, who both fought for control. Stills continued throughout
their lifelong relationship to criticize Young, saying that he "wanted to
play folk music in a rock band." Despite the tension, Young's tenure with
CSN&Y coincided with the band's most creative and successful period, and
greatly contributed to his subsequent success as a solo artist.
Young wrote "Ohio" following the Kent State
massacre on May 4, 1970. The song was quickly recorded by CSN&Y and
immediately released as a single, even though CSN&Y's "Teach Your
Children" was still climbing the singles charts.
After the Gold Rush, acoustic tour and Harvest (1970–1972)
Later in the year, Young released his third solo album,
After the Gold Rush (August 31, 1970), which featured, among others, a young
Nils Lofgren, Stephen Stills, and CSNY bassist Greg Reeves. Young also recorded
some tracks with Crazy Horse, but dismissed them early in the sessions. The
eventual recording was less amplified than Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,
with a wider range of sounds. Young's newfound fame with CSNY made the album
his commercial breakthrough as a solo artist, and it contains some of his best
known work, including "Tell Me Why" and "Don't Let It Bring You
Down", the country-influenced singles "Only Love Can Break Your
Heart" and "When You Dance I Can Really Love", and the title
track, "After the Gold Rush", played on piano, with dream-like lyrics
that ran a gamut of subjects from drugs and interpersonal relationships to
environmental concerns. Young's bitter condemnation of racism in the heavy
blues rock song "Southern Man" (along with a later song entitled
"Alabama") was also controversial with southerners in an era of
desegregation, prompting Lynyrd Skynyrd to decry Young by name in the lyrics to
their hit "Sweet Home Alabama". However, Young said he was a fan of
Skynyrd's music, and the band's front man Ronnie Van Zant was later
photographed wearing a Tonight's the Night T-shirt on the cover of an album.
In the autumn of 1970, Young began a solo acoustic tour of North
America, during which he played a variety of his Buffalo Springfield and CSNY
songs on guitar and piano, along with material from his solo albums and a
number of new songs. Some songs premiered by Young on the tour, like
"Journey through the Past", would never find a home on a studio
album, while other songs, like "See the Sky About to Rain", would
only be released in coming years. With CSNY splitting up and Crazy Horse having
signed their own record deal, Young's tour, now entitled "Journey Through
the Past", continued into early 1971, and its focus shifted more to newer
songs he had been writing; he famously remarked that having written so many, he
could not think of anything to do but play them. Many gigs were sold out,
including concerts at Carnegie Hall and a pair of acclaimed hometown shows at
Toronto's Massey Hall, which were taped for a planned live album. The shows
became legendary among Young fans, and the recordings were officially released
nearly 40 years later as an official bootleg in Young's Archive series.
Near the end of his tour, Young performed one of the new
acoustic songs on the Johnny Cash TV show. "The Needle and the Damage
Done", a somber lament on the pain caused by heroin addiction, had been
inspired in part by Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten, who eventually died while
battling his drug problems. While in Nashville for the Cash taping, Young
accepted the invitation of Quadrafonic Sound Studios owner Elliot Mazer to
record tracks there with a group of country-music session musicians who were
pulled together at the last minute. Making a connection with them, he
christened them The Stray Gators, and began playing with them. Befitting the
immediacy of the project, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor were brought in from
the Cash taping to do background vocals. Against the advice of his producer
David Briggs, he scrapped plans for the imminent release of the live acoustic
recording in favor of a studio album consisting of the Nashville sessions,
electric-guitar oriented sessions recorded later in his barn, and two
recordings made with the London Symphony Orchestra. The result was Young's
fourth album, Harvest (February 14, 1972), which would prove to be a massive
hit. The only remnant left of the original live concept was the album's live acoustic
performance of the harrowing "Needle".
Young's more settled personal life was reflected in the rest
of the Harvest album's mellow, pastoral tone. After his success with CSNY,
Young had been able to purchase a ranch in rural Northern California (where he
has lived since), writing the song "Old Man" in honor of the land's
longtime caretaker, Louis Avila. The song "A Man Needs a Maid" was
inspired by his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress. "Heart of
Gold" was released as the first single from Harvest, the only No. 1 hit in
his long career. "Old Man" was also immensely popular.
The album's recording had been almost accidental. Its
mainstream success caught Young off guard, and his first instinct was to back
away from stardom. In the Decade (1977) compilation, Young chose to include his
greatest hits from the period, but his handwritten liner notes famously
described "Heart of Gold" as the song that "put me in the middle
of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A
rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."
The "Ditch" Trilogy and personal struggles
(1972–1974)
Although a new tour had been planned to follow up on the
success of Harvest (1972), it became apparent during rehearsals that Danny
Whitten could not function due to drug abuse. On November 18, 1972, shortly
after he was fired from the tour preparations, Whitten was found dead. Young
described the incident to Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe in 1975: "[We]
were rehearsing with him and he just couldn't cut it. He couldn't remember
anything. He was too out of it. Too far gone. I had to tell him to go back to
L.A. 'It's not happening, man. You're not together enough.' He just said, 'I've
got nowhere else to go, man. How am I gonna tell my friends?' And he split.
That night the coroner called me from L.A. and told me he'd OD'd. That blew my
mind. I loved Danny. I felt responsible. And from there, I had to go right out
on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and ... insecure."
On the tour, Young struggled with his voice and the
performance of drummer Kenny Buttrey, a noted Nashville session musician who
was unaccustomed to performing in the hard rock milieu; Buttrey was eventually
replaced by former CSNY drummer Johnny Barbata, while David Crosby and Graham
Nash contributed rhythm guitar and backing vocals to the final dates of the
tour. The album assembled in the aftermath of this incident, Time Fades Away
(October 15, 1973), has often been described by Young as "[his] least
favorite record", and it is one of only two of Young's early recordings
that has yet to be officially re-released on CD (the other being the soundtrack
album Journey Through the Past). Nevertheless, Young and his band tried several
new musical approaches in this period. Time Fades Away, for instance, was
recorded live, although it was an album of new material, an approach Young
would repeat with more success later on. Time was the first of three
consecutive commercial failures which would later become known collectively to
fans as the "Ditch Trilogy", as contrasted with the more
middle-of-the-road pop of Harvest (1972). These subsequent albums were seen as
more challenging expressions of Young's inner conflicts on achieving success,
expressing both the specific struggles of his friends and himself, and the
decaying idealism of his generation in America at the time.
In the second half of 1973, Young formed The Santa Monica
Flyers, with Crazy Horse's rhythm section augmented by Nils Lofgren on guitar
and piano and Harvest/Time Fades Away veteran Ben Keith on pedal steel guitar.
Deeply affected by the drug-induced deaths of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry,
Young recorded an album specifically inspired by the incidents, Tonight's the
Night (June 20, 1975). The album's dark tone and rawness led Reprise to delay
and Young had to pressure them for two years before they would release it.
While his record company delayed the release, Young recorded another album, On
the Beach (July 16, 1974), which presented a more melodic, acoustic sound at
times, including a recording of the older song "See the Sky About to
Rain", but dealt with similarly dark themes such as the collapse of 1960s
folk ideals, the downside of success and the underbelly of the Californian
lifestyle. Like Time Fades Away, it sold poorly but eventually became a
critical favorite, presenting some of Young's most original work. A review of
the 2003 re-release on CD of On the Beach described the music as
"mesmerizing, harrowing, lucid, and bleary".
After completing On the Beach, Young reunited with Harvest
producer Elliot Mazer to record another acoustic album, Homegrown. Most of the
songs were written after Young's breakup with Carrie Snodgress, and thus the
tone of the album was somewhat dark. Though Homegrown was reportedly entirely
complete, Young decided, not for the first or last time in his career, to drop
it and release something else instead, in this case, Tonight's the Night, at
the suggestion of Band bassist Rick Danko. Young further explained his move by
saying: "It was a little too personal ... it scared me". Most of the
songs from Homegrown were later incorporated into other Young albums, but the
original album never surfaced. Tonight's the Night, when finally released in
1975, sold poorly, as had the previous albums of the "ditch" trilogy,
and received mixed reviews at the time, but is now regarded as a landmark
album. In Young's own opinion, it was the closest he ever came to art.
Reunions, retrospectives and Rust Never Sleeps (1974–1979)
Young reunited with Crosby, Stills, and Nash after a
four-year hiatus in the summer of 1974 for a concert tour.
In 1975, Young reformed Crazy Horse with Frank Sampedro on
guitar as his backup band for his eighth album, Zuma (November 10, 1975). Many
of the songs dealt with the theme of failed relationships; "Cortez the
Killer", a retelling of the Spanish conquest of Mexico from the viewpoint
of the Aztecs, may also be heard as an allegory of love lost. Zuma's closing
track, "Through My Sails", was the only released fragment from
aborted sessions with Crosby, Stills and Nash for another group album.
In 1976, Young reunited with Stephen Stills for the album
Long May You Run (September 20, 1976), credited to The Stills-Young Band; the
follow-up tour was ended midway through by Young, who sent Stills a telegram
that read: "Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way.
Eat a peach, Neil."
In 1976, Young performed with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and
numerous other rock musicians in the high profile all-star concert The Last
Waltz, the final performance by The Band. The release of Martin Scorsese's
movie of the concert was delayed while Scorsese unwillingly re-edited it to
obscure the lump of cocaine that was clearly visible hanging from Young's nose
during his performance of "Helpless". American Stars 'N Bars (June
13, 1977) contained two songs originally recorded for the Homegrown album,
"Homegrown" and "Star of Bethlehem", as well as newer
material, including the future concert staple "Like a Hurricane".
Performers on the record included Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Young
protégé Nicolette Larson along with Crazy Horse. In 1977, Young also released
the compilation Decade, a personally selected set of songs spanning every
aspect of his work, including a handful of previously unreleased songs. The
record included less commercial album tracks alongside radio hits.
Comes a Time (October 2, 1978), Young's first entirely new
solo recording since the mid-1970s, also featured Larson and Crazy Horse. The
album became Young's most commercially accessible album in quite some time and
marked a return to his folk roots, including a cover of Ian Tyson's "Four
Strong Winds", a song Young associated with his childhood in Canada.
Another of the album's songs, "Lotta Love", was also recorded by
Larson, with her version reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February
1979. In 1978, much of the filming was done for Young's film Human Highway,
which took its name from a song featured on Comes a Time. Over four years,
Young would spend $3,000,000 of his own money on production. This also marked
the beginning of his brief collaboration with the post-punk band Devo, whose
members appeared in the film.
Young set out in 1978 on the lengthy "Rust Never
Sleeps" tour, in which he played a wealth of new material. Each concert
was divided into a solo acoustic set and an electric set with Crazy Horse. The
electric sets, featuring an aggressive style of playing, were later seen as a
response to punk rock.[citation needed] Two new songs, the acoustic "My
My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and electric "Hey Hey, My My (Into the
Black)" were the centerpiece of the new material. Their lyrics have been
among Young's most widely quoted.[citation needed] Young also compared the rise
of Johnny Rotten with that of the recently deceased "King" Elvis
Presley, who himself had once been disparaged as a dangerous influence only to
later become an icon. Rotten returned the favour by playing one of Young's
records on a London radio show, an early sign of Young's eventual embrace by a
number of punk-influenced alternative musicians.
Young's two accompanying albums Rust Never Sleeps (July 2,
1979; new material, culled from live recordings, but featuring studio overdubs)
and Live Rust (November 19, 1979) (a mixture of old and new, and a genuine
concert recording) captured the two sides of the concerts, with solo acoustic
songs on side A, and fierce, uptempo, electric songs on side B. A movie version
of the concerts, also called Rust Never Sleeps (1979), was directed by Young
under the pseudonym "Bernard Shakey". Young worked with rock artist
Jim Evans to create the poster art for the film, using the Star Wars Jawas as a
theme. Young's work since Harvest (1972) had alternated between being rejected
by mass audiences and being seen as backward-looking by critics, sometimes both
at once, and now he was suddenly viewed as relevant by a new generation, who
began to discover his earlier work. Readers and critics of Rolling Stone voted
him Artist of the Year for 1979 (along with The Who), selected Rust Never
Sleeps as Album of the Year, and voted him Male Vocalist of the Year as well.
The Village Voice named Rust Never Sleeps as the year's winner in the Pazz
& Jop Poll, a survey of nationwide critics, and honored Young as the Artist
of the Decade. The Warner Music Vision release on VHS of Rust Never Sleeps in
1987 had a running time of 116 minutes, and although fully manufactured in
Germany, was initially imported from there by the markets throughout Europe.
Experimental years (1980–1988)
At the start of the decade, distracted by domestic medical
concerns relating to his second disabled son, Ben, Young had little time to
spend on writing and recording. After providing the incidental music to a 1980
biographical film of Hunter S. Thompson entitled Where the Buffalo Roam, Young
released Hawks & Doves (November 3, 1980)', a short record pieced together
from sessions going back to 1974.
1981's Re-ac-tor, an electric album recorded with Crazy
Horse, also included material from the 1970s.[64] Young did not tour in support
of either album; in total, he played only one show, a set at the 1980 Bread and
Roses Festival in Berkeley,[65] between the end of his 1978 tour with Crazy
Horse and the start of his tour with the Trans Band in mid-1982.
The 1982 album Trans, which incorporated vocoders,
synthesizers, and electronic beats, was Young's first for the new label Geffen
Records (distributed at the time by Warner Bros. Records, whose parent Warner
Music Group owns most of Young's solo and band catalog) and represented a
distinct stylistic departure. Young later revealed that an inspiration for the
album was the theme of technology and communication with his son Ben, who has
severe cerebral palsy and cannot speak. An extensive tour preceded the release
of the album, and was documented by the video Neil Young in Berlin, which saw
release in 1986. MTV played the video for "Sample and Hold" in light
rotation. The entire song contained "robot vocals" by Neil and Nils
Lofgren.
Young's next album, 1983's Everybody's Rockin', included
several rockabilly covers and clocked in at less than twenty-five minutes in
length. Young was backed by the Shocking Pinks for the supporting U.S. tour.
Trans (1982) had already drawn the ire of label head David Geffen for its lack
of commercial appeal, and with Everybody's Rockin' following only seven months
later, Geffen Records sued Young for making music "unrepresentative"
of himself.[68] The album was also notable as the first for which Young made
commercial music videos – Tim Pope directed the videos for
"Wonderin'" and "Cry, Cry, Cry". Also premiered in 1983,
though little seen, was the eclectic full-length comedy film Human Highway,
co-directed and co-written by Young, and starring Young, Dean Stockwell, Russ
Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper and members of Devo.
The first year without a Neil Young album since the start of
Young's musical career with Buffalo Springfield in 1966 was in 1984. Young's
lack of productivity was largely due to the ongoing legal battle with Geffen,
although he was also frustrated that the label had rejected his 1982 country
album Old Ways. It was also the year when Young's third child, this with his
second with wife Pegi, was born: his daughter Amber Jean, a child who was later
diagnosed with inherited epilepsy.
Young spent most of 1984 and all of 1985 touring for Old
Ways (August 12, 1985) with his country band, the International Harvesters. The
album was finally released in an altered form midway through 1985. Young also
appeared at that year's Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, collaborating with
Crosby, Stills and Nash for the quartet's first performance for a paying
audience in over ten years.
Young's last two albums for Geffen were more conventional in
genre, although they incorporated production techniques like synthesizers and
echoing drums that were previously uncommon in Young's music. Young recorded
1986's Landing on Water without Crazy Horse, but reunited with the band for the
subsequent year-long tour and final Geffen album, Life, which emerged in 1987.
Young's album sales dwindled steadily throughout the eighties; today Life
remains his all-time-least successful studio album, with an estimated four
hundred thousand sales worldwide.
Switching back to his old label Reprise Records, Young continued
to tour relentlessly, assembling a new blues band called The Bluenotes in
mid-1987 (a legal dispute with musician Harold Melvin forced the eventual
rechristening of the band as Ten Men Working midway through the tour). The
addition of a brass section provided a new jazzier sound, and the title track
of 1988's This Note's For You became Young's first hit single of the decade.
Accompanied by a video that parodied corporate rock, the pretensions of
advertising, and Michael Jackson, the song was initially unofficially banned by
MTV for mentioning the brand names of some of their sponsors. Young wrote an
open letter, "What does the M in MTV stand for: music or money?"
Despite this, the video was eventually named best video of the year by the network
in 1989. By comparison, the major music cable network of Young's home nation,
Muchmusic, ran the video immediately.
Young reunited with Crosby, Stills and Nash to record the
1988 album American Dream and play two benefit concerts late in the year, but
the group did not embark upon a full tour. The album was only the second-ever
studio record for the quartet.
Return to prominence (1989–1999)
Young's 1989 single "Rockin' in the Free World",
which hit No. 2 on the U.S. mainstream-rock charts, and accompanying album,
Freedom, rocketed him back into the popular consciousness after a decade of
sometimes-difficult genre experiments. The album's lyrics were often overtly
political; "Rockin' in the Free World" deals with homelessness,
terrorism, and environmental degradation, implicitly criticizing the government
policies of President George H.W. Bush.
The use of heavy feedback and distortion on several Freedom
tracks was reminiscent of the Rust Never Sleeps (1979) album, and foreshadowed
the imminent rise of grunge. The rising stars of the genre, including Nirvana's
Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, frequently cited Young as a major
influence, contributing to his popular revival. A tribute album called The
Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young was released in 1989, featuring covers by
alternative and grunge acts including Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, Soul Asylum,
Dinosaur Jr, and the Pixies.
Young's 1990 album Ragged Glory, recorded with Crazy Horse
in a barn on his Northern California ranch, continued this distortion-heavy
aesthetic. Young toured for the album with Orange County, California
country-punk band Social Distortion and alternative rock pioneers Sonic Youth
as support, much to the consternation of many of his old fans. Weld, a two-disc
live album documenting the tour, was released in 1991. Sonic Youth's influence
was most evident on Arc, a 35-minute collage of feedback and distortion spliced
together at the suggestion of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and originally
packaged with some versions of Weld.
1992's Harvest Moon marked an abrupt return to the country
and folk-rock stylings of Harvest (1972) and reunited him with some of the
musicians from that album, including singers Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor.
The title track was a minor hit and the record was well received by critics,
winning the Juno Award for Album of the Year in 1994. Young also contributed to
Randy Bachman's nostalgic 1992 tune "Prairie Town", and garnered a
1993 Academy Award nomination for his song "Philadelphia", from the
soundtrack of the Jonathan Demme movie of the same name. An MTV Unplugged
performance and album emerged in 1993. Later that year, Young collaborated with
Booker T. and the M.G.s for a summer tour of Europe and North America, with
Blues Traveler, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam also on the bill. Some European
shows ended with a rendition of "Rockin' in the Free World" played
with Pearl Jam, foreshadowing their eventual full-scale collaboration two years
later.
In 1994 Young again collaborated with Crazy Horse for Sleeps
with Angels, a record whose dark, sombre mood was influenced by Kurt Cobain's
death earlier that year: the title track in particular dealt with Cobain's life
and death, without mentioning him by name. Cobain had quoted Young's lyric
"It's better to burn out than fade away" (a line from "My My,
Hey Hey") in his suicide note. Young had reportedly made repeated attempts
to contact Cobain prior to his death. Young and Pearl Jam performed "Act
of Love" at an abortion rights benefit along with Crazy Horse, and were
present at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner, sparking interest in a
collaboration between the two. Still enamored with the grunge scene, Young
reconnected with Pearl Jam in 1995 for the live-in-the-studio album Mirror Ball
and a tour of Europe with the band and producer Brendan O'Brien backing Young.
1995 also marked Young's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where
he was inducted by Eddie Vedder.
"Young has consistently demonstrated the unbridled
passion of an artist who understands that self-renewal is the only way to avoid
burning out. For this reason, he has remained one of the most significant
artists of the rock and roll era." – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website.
Young's next collaborative partner was filmmaker Jim
Jarmusch, who asked Young to compose a soundtrack to his 1995 black and white
western film Dead Man. Young's instrumental soundtrack was improvised while he
watched the film alone in a studio. The death of longtime mentor, friend, and
producer David Briggs in late 1995 prompted Young to reconnect with Crazy Horse
the following year for the album and tour Broken Arrow. A Jarmusch-directed
concert film and live album of the tour, Year of the Horse, emerged in 1997.
From 1996–97 Young and Crazy Horse toured extensively throughout Europe and
North America, including a stint as part of the H.O.R.D.E. Festival's sixth
annual tour.
In 1998, Young renewed his collaboration with the rock band
Phish, sharing the stage at the annual Farm Aid concert and then at Young's
Bridge School Benefit, where he joined headliners Phish for renditions of
"Helpless" and "I Shall Be Released". Phish declined
Young's later invitation to be his backing band on his 1999 North American
tour.
The decade ended with the release in late 1999 of Looking
Forward, another reunion with Crosby, Stills and Nash. The subsequent tour of
the United States and Canada with the reformed super quartet earned US$42.1
million, making it the eighth largest grossing tour of 2000.
Continued activism and brush with death (2000s)
Neil Young continued to release new material at a rapid pace
through the first decade of the new millennium. The studio album Silver &
Gold and live album Road Rock Vol. 1 were released in 2000 and were both
accompanied by live concert films. His 2001 single "Let's Roll" was a
tribute to the victims of the September 11 attacks, and the effective action
taken by the passengers and crew on Flight 93 in particular. At the
"America: A Tribute to Heroes" benefit concert for the victims of the
attacks, Young performed John Lennon's "Imagine" and accompanied
Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready on "Long Road", a Pearl Jam song that
was written with Young during the Mirrorball sessions. "Let's Roll"
was included on 2002's Are You Passionate?, an album mostly composed of mellow
love songs dedicated to Young's wife, Pegi, backed by Booker T. & the
M.G.s.
In 2003, Young released Greendale, a concept album recorded
with Crazy Horse members Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. The songs loosely
revolved around the murder of a police officer in a small town in California
and its effects on the town's inhabitants. Under the pseudonym "Bernard
Shakey", Young directed an accompanying film of the same name, featuring
actors lip-synching to the music from the album. He toured extensively with the
Greendale material throughout 2003 and 2004, first with a solo, acoustic
version in Europe, then with a full-cast stage show in North America, Japan,
and Australia. Young began using biodiesel on the 2004 Greendale tour, powering
his trucks and tour buses with the fuel. "Our Greendale tour is now ozone
friendly," he said. "I plan to continue to use this government
approved and regulated fuel exclusively from now on to prove that it is
possible to deliver the goods anywhere in North America without using foreign
oil, while being environmentally responsible."[80] Young spent the latter
portion of 2004 giving a series of intimate acoustic concerts in various cities
with his wife, who is a trained vocalist and guitar player.
In March 2005, while working on the Prairie Wind album in
Nashville, Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. He was treated
successfully with a minimally invasive neuroradiological procedure, performed
in a New York hospital on March 29, but two days afterwards he passed out on a
New York street from bleeding from the femoral artery, which radiologists had
used to access the aneurysm. The complication forced Young to cancel his
scheduled appearance at the Juno Awards telecast in Winnipeg, but within months
he was back on stage, appearing at the close of the Live 8 concert in Barrie,
Ontario, on July 2. During the performance, he debuted a new song, a soft hymn
called "When God Made Me". Young's brush with death influenced
Prairie Wind's themes of retrospection and mortality. The album's live premiere
in Nashville was immortalized by filmmaker Jonathan Demme in the 2006 film Neil
Young: Heart of Gold.
Young's renewed activism manifested itself in the 2006 album
Living With War, which like the much earlier song "Ohio", was
recorded and released in less than a month as a direct result of current
events. In early 2006, three years after the US invasion of Iraq, the sectarian
war and casualties there were escalating. While doing errands on a visit to his
daughter, Young had seen a newspaper photo of wounded US veterans on a
transport plane to Germany, and noticing that the same paper devoted little
actual coverage to the story, he was unable to get the image out of his head,
realizing the suffering caused to families by the war had not truly registered
to him and most Americans who were not directly affected by it. Young cried,
and immediately got his guitar out and began to write multiple songs at once.
Within a few days he had completed work and assembled a band. He later said he
had restrained himself for a long time from writing any protest songs, waiting
for someone younger, with a different perspective, but no one seemed to be
saying anything.
Most of the album's songs rebuked the Bush administration's
policy of war by examining its human costs to soldiers, their loved ones, and
civilians, but Young also included a few songs on other themes, and an outright
protest titled, "Let's Impeach the President", in which he stated
that Bush had lied to lead the country into war. Young's lyrics in another song
named Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who had not declared any intention to run
for president at the time and was widely unexpected to be able to win either
the Democratic Party nomination or a general election, as potentially a
replacement for Bush. That summer, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited
for the supporting "Freedom of Speech Tour '06", in which they played
Young's new protest songs alongside the group's older material, meeting with
both enthusiasm and anger from different fans, some of whom were supportive of
Bush politically. CSNY Déjà Vu, a concert film of the tour directed by Young
himself, was released in 2008, along with an accompanying live album.
While Young had never been a stranger to eco-friendly
lyrics, themes of environmentalist spirituality and activism became
increasingly prominent in his work throughout the 1990s and 2000s, especially
on Greendale (2003)[86] and Living with War (2006). The trend continued on
2007's Chrome Dreams II, with lyrics exploring Young's personal
eco-spirituality. Also in 2007, Young accepted an invitation to participate in
Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, contributing his version of "Walking
to New Orleans".
Young remains on the board of directors of Farm Aid, an
organization he co-founded with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp in 1985.
According to its website, it is the longest running concert benefit series in
the USA, and it has raised $43 million since its first benefit concert in 1985.
Each year, Young co-hosts and performs with well-known guest performers who
include Dave Matthews and producers who include Evelyn Shriver and Mark
Rothbaum, at the Farm Aid annual benefit concerts in order to raise funds and
provide grants to family farms and prevent foreclosures, provide a crisis hotline,
and create and promote home grown farm food in the United States.
In 2008, Young revealed his latest project, the production
of a hybrid-engine 1959 Lincoln called Lincvolt. A new album loosely based on
the Lincvolt project, Fork in the Road, was released on April 7, 2009. The
album, partly composed of love songs to the car, also commented on the economic
crisis, with one narrator attacking the Wall Street bailouts enacted in late
2008. Unfortunately, the car caught fire in November 2010, in a California
warehouse, and along the way it burned an estimated US$850,000 worth of Young's
rock and roll memorabilia collection. Initial reports suggest the fire might
have been triggered by an error in the vehicle's plug-in charging system. Young
blamed the fire on human error and said he and his team were committed to
rebuilding the car. "The wall charging system was not completely tested
and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made. It was not the fault of
the car", he said.
A Jonathan Demme concert film from a 2007 concert at the
Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, called the Neil Young Trunk Show
premiered on March 21, 2009, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference
and Festival in Austin, Texas. It was featured at the Cannes Film Festival on
May 17, 2009 and was released in the US on March 19, 2010 to critical acclaim.
Young's most recent album appearance was on the album Potato Hole, released on
April 21, 2009 by Memphis organ player Booker T. Jones, of Booker T. & the
MGs fame. Young plays guitar on nine of the album's ten instrumental tracks,
alongside Drive-By Truckers, who already had three guitar players, giving some
songs on the album a total of five guitar tracks. Jones contributed guitars on
a couple of tracks.
Young continues to tour extensively. In 2009, he headlined
the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and Glastonbury Festival in Pilton,
England, at Hard Rock Calling in London (where he was joined onstage by Paul
McCartney for a rendition of "A Day in the Life") and, after years of
unsuccessful booking attempts, the Isle of Wight Festival in addition to
performances at the Big Day Out festival in New Zealand and Australia and the
Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona.
Young has been a vocal opponent of the proposed Keystone XL
oil pipeline, which would run from Alberta to Texas. When discussing the
environmental impact on the oilsands of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Young asserted
that the area now resembles the Japanese city of Hiroshima in the aftermath of
the atomic bomb attack of World War II. Young has referred to issues
surrounding the proposed use of oil pipelines as “scabs on our lives”.[98] In
an effort to become more involved, Young has worked directly with the Athabasca
Chipewyan First nation to draw attention to this issue, performing benefit
concerts and speaking publicly on the subject.
Young participated in the Blue Dot Tour, which was organized
and fronted by environmental activist David Suzuki, and toured all 10 Canadian
provinces alongside other Canadian artists including the Barenaked Ladies,
Feist, and Robert Bateman. The intent of Young’s participation in this tour was
to raise awareness of the environmental damage caused by the exploitation of
tar sands. Young has argued that the amount of CO2 released as a byproduct of
tarsand oil extraction is equivalent to the amount released by the total number
of cars in Canada each day. Young has faced criticism by representatives from
within the Canadian petroleum industry, who have argued that his statements are
irresponsible. Young’s opposition to the construction of oil pipelines has
influenced his music as well. His song, “Who’s Going to Stand Up?” was written
to protest this issue, and features the lyric “Ban fossil fuel and draw the
line / Before we build one more pipeline”.
In addition to directly criticizing members of the oil
industry, Young has also focused blame on the actions of the Canadian
Government for ignoring the conclusions regarding the environmental impacts of
climate change. He referred to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as “an
embarrassment to many Canadians …[and] a very poor imitation of the George Bush
administration in the United States”. Young has also been critical of Barack
Obama’s government for failing to uphold the promises made regarding
environmental policies during his election campaign.
In criticism of Coffee chain Starbucks and their possible
involvement with Monsanto and use of GM food, he recorded "A Rock Star
Bucks A Coffee Shop" in protest. The song is to be included on his new
concept album called The Monsanto Years.
More recent performances (2010s)
On January 22, 2010, Young performed "Long May You
Run" on the final episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. On the
same night, he and Dave Matthews performed the Hank Williams song "Alone
and Forsaken", for the Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake
Relief charity telethon, in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Young also
performed "Long May You Run" at the closing ceremony of the 2010
Olympic winter games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In May 2010, it
was revealed Young had begun working on a new studio album produced by Daniel
Lanois. This was announced by David Crosby, who said that the album "will
be a very heartfelt record. I expect it will be a very special record." On
May 18, 2010, Young embarked upon a North American solo tour to promote his
then upcoming album, Le Noise, playing a mix of older songs and new material.
Although billed as a solo acoustic tour, Young also played some songs on
electric guitars, including Old Black. Young continued his Twisted Road tour
with a short East Coast venture during spring 2011. Young also contributed
vocals to the Elton John–Leon Russell album The Union, singing the second
stanza on the track "Gone to Shiloh" and providing backing vocals.
In September 2011, Jonathan Demme's third documentary film
on the singer songwriter, Neil Young Journeys, premiered at the Toronto
International Film Festival. Like Demme's earlier work with Young, most of the film
consists of a simply filmed live performance, in this case, Young's homecoming
show in May 2011 at Toronto's Massey Hall, four decades after he first played
at the iconic venue. Playing old songs, as well as new ones from Le Noise,
Young performs solo on both electric and acoustic instruments. His performance
is a counterpoint to Demme's footage of Young's return to Omemee, Ontario, the
small town near Toronto where he grew up, which has now become physically
unrecognizable, though he vividly recalls events from his childhood there.
As of 2008, Young lives near La Honda, California, on his
Broken Arrow Ranch, named after one of his early Buffalo Springfield songs. The
original 140-acre (0.57 km2) parcel was purchased in 1970 for US$350,000 cash
and has grown to thousands of acres.
On January 22, 2012, the Master Class at the Slamdance
Festival featured Coffee with Neil Young & Jonathan Demme for their new
film Neil Young Journeys. A report from the event by Bob & Kim C. revealed
that Neil Young has been recording with Crazy Horse. One album is complete and
they are working on another.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse performed a full-on grunge
version of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" for Paul
McCartney's MusiCares Person of the Year dinner on February 10, 2012, in
Hollywood.
Neil Young with Crazy Horse released the album Americana on
June 5, 2012. It was Young's first collaboration with Crazy Horse since the
Greendale album and tour in 2003 and 2004. The record is a tribute to
unofficial national anthems that jumps from an uncensored version of "This
Land Is Your Land" to "Clementine" and includes a version of
"God Save the Queen", which Young grew up singing every day in school
in Canada. Americana is Neil Young's first album composed entirely of cover
songs. On June 5, 2012, American Songwriter also reported that Neil Young &
Crazy Horse would be launching their first tour in eight years in support of
the album.
On August 25, 2012, Young was mistakenly reported dead by
NBCNews.com, the day when astronaut Neil Armstrong died.
Neil Young with Crazy Horse launched a new tour on August 3,
2012, in anticipation of their second album of 2012, Psychedelic Pill, which
was released in late October.
On October 3, 2012, the apparent third installment of the "Rust
Trilogy" (Essentially 1979's Rust Never Sleeps and 1991's Weld) was
announced. The album, tentatively titled Alchemy, appears to follow Neil Young
and Crazy Horse through their 2012 North American tour.
On September 25, 2012 Young's autobiography Waging Heavy
Peace: A Hippie Dream was released to critical and commercial acclaim.
Reviewing the book for the New York Times, Janet Maslin reported that Young
chose to write his memoirs in 2012 for two reasons. For one, he needed to take
a break from stage performances for health reasons but continue to generate
income. For another, he feared the onset of dementia, considering his father's
medical history and his own present condition. Maslin gives the book a higher
than average grade, describing it as frank but quirky and without pathos as it
delves into his relationships and his experience in parenting a child with
disabilities as well as his artistic and commercial activities and
associations.
In November 2013, Neil Young performed at the annual
fundraiser for the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. Following after the Red
Hot Chili Peppers, he played an acoustic set to a crowd who had paid a minimum
of $2,000 a seat to attend the benefit in the famous Paramour Mansion
overlooking downtown Los Angeles.
Due to be released in October 2014, Pono is a
"high-resolution" digital music-download service, and music player
being developed by Young, designed to compete against the MP3 and other
formats. Pono promises to present songs "as they first sound during studio
recording".
The album A Letter Home was released on April 19, 2014, and
his second memoir, entitled "Special Deluxe" is tentatively scheduled
for a late 2014 release. He appeared with Jack White on The Tonight Show With
Jimmy Fallon on May 12, 2014.
The 2014 debut solo album by Chrissie Hynde, entitled
Stockholm, featured Young on guitar on the track "Down the Wrong
Way".
Young released his thirty-fifth studio album, Storytone on
November 4, 2014. The first song released from the album, "Who's Gonna
Stand Up?", was released in three different versions on September 25,
2014. This was followed in 2015 by his concept album The Monsanto Years. In
April 2015 it was announced Young will begin a tour titled the Rebel Content
Tour to support the new album. Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real are set
to be special guests for the tour. The tour will ran from July 5 to July 22.
Awards and recognition
2011 Juno Awards Artist of the Year, Adult Alternative Album
of the Year, and Allan Waters Humanitarian Award
2011 Grammy Awards Best Rock Song "Angry World"
written by Neil Young.
2010 Grammy Awards Best Art Direction on a Boxed/Special
Limited Edition Package The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972 – Neil Young, Gary
Burden, Jenice Heo
Canadian Music Hall of Fame, 1982
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame He has been inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: first in 1995 for his solo work and in 1997
as a member of Buffalo Springfield.
In 2006, Artist of the Year by the American Music
Association.
As one of the original founders of Farm Aid (1985–), he
remains an active member of the board of directors. For one weekend each
October, in Mountain View, California, he and his ex-wife host the Bridge
School Concerts, which have been drawing international talent and sell-out crowds
for nearly two decades with some of the biggest names in rock having performed
at the event including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen,
David Bowie, The Who, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails,
Tom Waits, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, R.E.M., Foo Fighters, Metallica, Pearl Jam,
Sonic Youth, The Smashing Pumpkins, Paul McCartney and Dave Matthews. The
concerts are a benefit for the Bridge School, which develops and uses advanced
technologies to aid in the instruction of children with disabilities. Young's
involvement stems at least partially from the fact that both of his sons have
cerebral palsy and his daughter, like Young himself, has epilepsy.
Young was nominated for an Oscar in 1994 for his song
"Philadelphia" from the film Philadelphia. Bruce Springsteen won the
award for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" from the same film. In
his acceptance speech, Springsteen said that "the award really deserved to
be shared by the other nominee's song." That same night, Tom Hanks, when
accepting the Oscar for Best Actor, gave credit for his inspiration to Young's
song.
He was part owner of Lionel, LLC, a company that makes toy
trains and model railroad accessories. In 2008 Lionel emerged from bankruptcy
and his shares of the company were wiped out. He was instrumental in the design
of the Lionel Legacy control system for model trains, and remains on the board
of directors of Lionel. He has been named as co-inventor on seven U.S. patents
related to model trains.
Young has twice received honorary doctorates. He received an
honorary doctorate of music from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario,
in 1992, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from San Francisco State
University in 2006. The latter honour was shared with his wife Pegi for their
creation of the Bridge School. In 2006, Young was given Manitoba's highest
civilian honour when he was appointed to the Order of Manitoba. In 2009, he was
appointed to Canada's second highest civilian order, the Order of Canada.
Rolling Stone magazine in 2000, ranked Young thirty-fourth
in its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time, and in 2003, included five
of his albums in its list of 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2000, Young
was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. In 2006, when Paste magazine compiled
a "Greatest Living Songwriters" list, Young was ranked second behind
Bob Dylan. (While Young and Dylan have occasionally played together in concert,
they have never collaborated on a song together or played on each other's records.)
He ranked thirty-ninth on VH1's 100 Greatest Artist of Hard Rock that same
year. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame explained that while Young has
"avoided sticking to one style for very long, the unifying factors
throughout Young's peripatetic musical journey have been his unmistakable
voice, his raw and expressive guitar playing, and his consummate songwriting
skill."
Young's political outspokenness and social awareness
influenced artists such as Blind Melon, Phish, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. Young is
referred to as "the Godfather of Grunge" because of the influence he
had on Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder and the entire grunge movement. Vedder
inducted Young into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, citing him as a
huge influence. Young is cited as being a significant influence on the
experimental rock group Sonic Youth, and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Yorke
recounted of first hearing Young after sending a demo tape into a magazine when
he was 16, who favourably compared his singing voice to Young's. Unaware of
Young at that time, he bought After the Gold Rush (1970), and "immediately
fell in love" with his work, calling it "extraordinary". Dave
Matthews lists Young as one of his favorite songwriters and most important
inspirations and covers his songs on occasion. The British indie band The
Bluetones named their number one debut album after the song "Expecting to
Fly" (written by Young when still with Buffalo Springfield) and have
covered the song while touring. Young also inspired the singer-songwriter Noel
Gallagher of Oasis, who covered "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" on
the live album Familiar to Millions (2000).
The Australian rock group Powderfinger named themselves
after Young's song "Powderfinger" from Rust Never Sleeps (1979). The
members of the Constantines have occasionally played Neil Young tribute shows
under the name Horsey Craze. While in Winnipeg on November 2, 2008, during the
Canadian leg of his tour, Bob Dylan visited Young's former home in River
Heights, where Young spent his teenage years. Dylan was interested in seeing
the room where some of Young's first songs were composed.
Jason Bond, an East Carolina University biologist,
discovered a new species of trapdoor spider in 2007 and named it Myrmekiaphila
neilyoungi after Young, his favorite singer.
In 2001, Young was awarded the Spirit of Liberty award by
the civil liberties group People for the American Way. Young was honored as the
MusiCares Person of the Year on January 29, 2010, two nights prior to the 52nd
Annual Grammy Awards. He was also nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Solo
Rock Vocal Performance for "Fork in the Road" and Best Boxed or
Special Limited Edition Package for Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963–1972).
Young won the latter Grammy Award. In 2010, he was ranked No. 26 in
Gibson.com's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.
Discography
1968 - Neil Young
1969 - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
1970 - After the Gold Rush
1972 - Harvest
1973 - Time Fades Away
1974 - On the Beach
1975 - Tonight's the Night
1975 - Zuma
1976 - Long May You Run
1977 - American Stars 'n Bars
1978 - Comes a Time
1979 - Rust Never Sleeps
1980 - Hawks & Doves
1981 - Re-ac-tor
1982 - Trans
1983 - Everybody's Rockin'
1985 - Old Ways
1986 - Landing on Water
1987 - Life
1988 - This Note's for You
1989 - Eldorado
1989 - Freedom
1990 - Ragged Glory
1992 - Harvest Moon
1994 - Sleeps with Angels
1995 - Mirror Ball
1996 - Broken Arrow
2000 - Silver & Gold
2002 - Are You Passionate?
2003 - Greendale
2005 - Prairie Wind
2006 - Living with War
2006 - Living with War: "In the Beginning"
2007 - Chrome Dreams II
2009 - Fork in the Road
2010 - Le Noise
2012 - Americana
2012 - Psychedelic Pill
2014 - A Letter Home
2014 - Storytone
2015 - The Monsanto Years
2015 – Bluenote Café (November 2015)
2017 - Peace Trail
CONTACT: http://www.neilyoung.com/
Children of Destiny – (Single: 2017)
Peace Trail – (Album: Peace Trail – 2017)
Indian Givers – (Single: 2016)
Crime in the City - Live – (Album: Bluenote Café – 2015)
Hello Lonely Woman – Live – (Album: Bluenote Café – 2015)
Neil Young + Promise Of The Real - The Monsanto Years: The
Mission – (2015)
Neil Young + Promise Of The Real - The Monsanto Years: The
Message – (2015)
Neil Young + Promise Of The Real - Wolf Moon – (Album: The
Monsanto Years - 2015)
Neil Young + Promise Of The Real - A Rock Star Bucks A
Coffee Shop (Album: The Monsanto Years - 2015)
Who’s Going to Stand Up – (Album: Storytone - 2014)
Neil Young: The Calgary Address (Jan 19th, 2014)
Mother Earth Live – (Honour the Treaties Tour – 2014)
Plastic Flowers – (Album: Storytone – 2014)
Born in Ontario - (Album: Psychedelic Pill – 2012)
Ramada Inn - (Album: Psychedelic Pill – 2012)
Driftin Back – (Album: Psychedelic Pill – 2012)
Love and War – (Album: Le Noise – 2010)
Get Behind the Wheel – (Live @ Glastonbury 2009) - (Album:
Fork in the Road – 2009)
Light a Candle - (Album: Fork in the Road – 2009)
When Worlds Collide – (Album: Fork in the Road – 2009)
No Hidden Paths - (Album: Chrome Dreams II – 2007)
Boxcar – (Album: Chrome Dreams II – 2007)
Spirit Road - (Album: Chrome Dreams II – 2007)
Lookin for a Leader - (Album: Living with War – 2006)
Let’s Impeach the President - (Album: Living with War –
2006)
Flags of Freedom - (Album: Living with War – 2006)
Shock & Awe – (Album: Living with War – 2006)
This Old Guitar - (Album: Prairie Wind – 2005)
No Wonder (Live in Nashville) – (Album: Prairie Wind – 2005)
It’s a Dream - (Album: Prairie Wind – 2005)
Prairie Wind (Studio Sessions) - (Album: Prairie Wind –
2005)
Leave the Driving - (Album: Greendale – 2003)
Sun Green - (Album: Greendale – 2003)
Devil’s Sidewalk – (Album: Greendale – 2003)
Neil Young with Booker T & The MG’s – “Let’s Roll” Live
– (Album: Are You Passionate – 2002)
Neil Young with Booker T & The MG’s – “She’s a Healer”
Live – (Album: Are You Passionate – 2002)
Neil Young with Booker T & The MG’s - Two Old Friends -
(Album: Are You Passionate – 2002)
Silver & Gold - (Album: Silver & Gold – 2000)
Good to See You – (Album: Silver & Gold – 2000)
Buffalo Springfield Again - (Album: Silver & Gold –
2000)
Without Rings (Live, Mountainview CA - 1997) - (Album:
Silver & Gold – 2000)
Big Time – (Album: Broken Arrow – 1996)
Music Arcade – (Album: Broken Arrow – 1996)
Neil Young & Pearl Jam - Downtown - (Album: Mirror Ball
– 1995)
Neil Young & Pearl Jam - Scenery - (Album: Mirror Ball –
1995)
Neil Young & Pearl Jam – Throw Your Hatred Down –
(Album: Mirror Ball – 1995)
Change Your Mind – (Album: Sleeps with Angels – 1994)
Sleeps with Angels – (Album: Sleeps with Angels – 1994)
Harvest Moon – (Album: Harvest Moon – 1992)
Unknown Legend (Live) - (Album: Harvest Moon – 1992)
Days that Used to Be - (Album: Ragged Glory – 1990)
Country Home – (Album: Ragged Glory – 1990)
No More - (Album: Freedom – 1989)
Wrecking Ball - (Album: Freedom – 1989)
Crime in the City - (Album: Freedom – 1989)
Rockin’ in the Free World – (Album: Freedom – 1989)
Eldorado – (Albums: Eldorado & Freedom – 1989)
Heavy Love – (Album: Eldorado – 1989)
This Note’s for You – (Album: This Note’s for You – 1988)
Around the World - (Album: Life – 1987)
Long Walk Home - (Album: Life – 1987)
Mideast Vacation – (Album: Life – 1987)
Touch the Night – (Album: Landing on Water – 1986)
Bound for Glory – (Album: Old Ways – 1985)
Neil Young & The Shocking Pinks - Wonderin – (Album:
Everybody’s Rockin – 1983)
Neil Young & The Shocking Pinks - Cry, Cry, Cry – (Album:
Everybody’s Rockin – 1983)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Southern Pacific – (Album:
Re.ac.tor – 1981)
The Old Homestead – (Album: Hawks & Doves – 1980)
My My, Hey Hey, (Out of the Blue) – (Album: Rust Never
Sleeps – 1979)
Welfare Mothers - (Album: Rust Never Sleeps – 1979)
Powderfinger - (Album: Rust Never Sleeps – 1979)
Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) – (Album: Rust Never Sleeps
– 1979)
Comes a Time – (Album: Comes a Time 1978)
Lotta Love - (Album: Comes a Time 1978)
Like a Huricane – (Album: American Stars n’ Bars – 1977)
The Stills Young Band - Long May You Run – (Album: Long May
You Run – 1976)
The Stills Young Band - Let it Shine - (Album: Long May You
Run – 1976)
Cortez the Killer - (Album: Zuma – 1975)
Roll Another Number - (Album: Tonight’s the night – 1975)
Borrowed Tune - (Album: Tonight’s the night – 1975)
World on a String – (Album: Tonight’s the night – 1975)
Revolution Blues - (Album: On the Beach – 1974)
Walk On – (Album: On the Beach – 1974)
On the Beach – (Album: On the Beach – 1974)
Time Fades Away (Full Album – 1973)
Old Man (Live BBC 1972) - (Album: Harvest – 1972)
Heart of Gold - (Album: Harvest – 1972)
Needle and the Damage Done - (Album: Harvest – 1972)
Harvest – (Album: Harvest – 1972)
Don’t Let it Bring You Down (Live 1971) (Album: After the
Gold Rush - 1970)
Neil Young – Southern Man (Album: After the Gold Rush -
1970)
Neil Young – Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Album: After
the Gold Rush - 1970)
Neil Young – After the Gold Rush (Album: After the Gold Rush
- 1970)
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – Ohio (Single: 1970)
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – Helpless (Album: Déjà vu –
1970)
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – Country Girl (Album: Déjà
vu – 1970)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Cinnamon Girl – (Album: Everybody
Knows this is Nowhere – 1969)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Down By the River – (Album: Everybody
Knows this is Nowhere – 1969)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Cowgirl in the Sand – (Album:
Everybody Knows this is Nowhere – 1969)
The Loner – (Album: Neil Young – 1968)
Buffalo Springfield – On the Way Home (Album: Last Time
Around – 1968)
Buffalo Springfield – Mr. Soul (Album: Buffalo Springfield
Again – 1967)
Neil Young LINKS:
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