Neil Young

Neil Young was born in Canada and started his career in various going-nowhere garage bands in Winnipeg, before moving to Toronto to try his luck on the folk circuit. When he decided to saddle up Mort, his hearse, and drive it all the way to California. A chance meeting with old acquaintance Stephen Stills led to the formation of Buffalo Springfield. Two albums later the band exploded in a clash of talent and ego, and Young went his own way, making an underwhelming solo debut. Unhappy with the countless overdubs and strings added by producer Jack Nitzsche, Young began jamming with L.A. group The Rockets, eventually poaching several of their members. This became Crazy Horse, touted by Young as “the American Stones”, the band which would back him on many of his greatest albums. The 1969 album “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” introduced the world to Young’s incendiary guitar style, but instead of consolidating on the success of the album, a phone call from his old buddy Stills led to one of Young’s customary U-turns, as he joined him in the “super-group” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

His guitar sat uncomfortably with CS&N’s harmony-laced folk-rock, but Young’s songwriting contributions to “Déjà Vu” were easily the strongest on the record. He built on the huge success of CSN&Y with his next two folk-inflected solo albums, “After The Gold Rush” and his biggest hit, “Harvest”, which featured the hits “Heart Of Gold” and “Old Man”. However, Young was far from happy with the huge success “Harvest” brought him, complaining that the record was too M.O.R. Instead, as he would do countless more times in his long career, Young “headed for the ditch”. The death of original Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten led Young to record some of his darkest and most critically acclaimed work. The so-called “Doom Trilogy” consisted of ragged live album “Time Fades Away”, “Tonight’s The Night” and the critics favourite, “On The Beach” which Young, perversely, refused to reissue on CD until recently. These raw, uncompromising albums sealed Young’s reputation as a defining voice of the 1970s. At the end of the decade, when others of his generation were being dismissed as dinosaurs, Young was singing about Johnny Rotten and playing the loudest rock’n’roll of his career on “Rust Never Sleeps”.

However, the 80s proved an uncomfortable time for the mercurial songwriter, as he produced a series of poorly-received experimental albums, from the synth-rock of “Trans” through the rockabilly pastiche “Everybody’s Rockin’” to the Reaganite country of “Old Ways”. 1989’s “Freedom” signalled a return to form which he built upon by employing Crazy Horse for his amped-up 1990 classic “Ragged Glory” and the subsequent world tour. A new generation of fans looked to Young as “the Godfather of Grunge”, a title he later embraced by recording with Pearl Jam.

Restless as always, in 1992 he rediscovered his acoustic muse and recorded his oft-promised “Harvest” sequel, “Harvest Moon”, which was massively successful, if not always massively interesting. Since then, Young’s output has been patchy, ranging from the sublime (1994’s “Sleeps With Angels”) to the ridiculous (2003’s bizarre concept album/theatrical musical “Greendale”). Nevertheless, Neil Young remains one of the only talents of his generation who remains relevant today. Indeed, his inconsistency is a big part of his appeal because, crucially, though into his seventh decade, Young is still willing to take chances younger performers baulk at.