For over four decades,
Neil Young has been one of America’s premier folk/country rock icons, rivaled only by
Bob Dylan in terms of his critical praise and prodigious output.
Neil Percival Young was born on November 12, 1945, in Toronto, Ontario,
Canada, and started playing the guitar at an early age, eventually dropping out of high school to form a band that played in local clubs. In the mid 1960s Young helped form
Buffalo Springfield, which turned out to be one of the most important of the new folk-country-rock bands. They recorded such Neil Young songs as “Broke
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n Arrow,” “I Am a Child,” “Mr. Soul,” and “Nowadays Clancy Can’t
Even Sing.” But friction developed: Young quit the band, only to rejoin and quit again, and in May 1968, after recording three albums, the band split up permanently. Young started jamming with a band called Crazy Horse, which backed him on the album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (#34, 1969), recorded in two weeks. The album includes three of Young’s most famous songs: “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down by the River,” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” which, Young later said, were all written in one day while he was stricken with the flu. The album went gold (and much later, platinum), but Young decided to split his time between Crazy Horse and
Crosby, Stills and Nash whom he joined in June. In March 1970 his presence was first felt on CSN&Y’s Déjà Vu.
Neil Young broke out as a solo artist with the release of his third album, After the Gold Rush, which bore the massive hit,” Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and his fourth studio album, Harvest, which included the chart topper, “Heart of Gold.” Harvest peaked at #1 on the charts in 1972 and made Young a superstar. Young has maintained a large following since that time with music in three basic styles - solo acoustic ballads, sweet country rock, and lumbering garage rock (with some experimental music side trips), all topped by his high voice - and he veers from one to another in unpredictable phases. His subject matter also shifts from personal confessions to allusive stories to bubbly throwaways. Despite his enormous catalog and influence, Young continues to move forward, writing new songs and exploring new music. That restless spirit ensures that he is one of the few rock veterans as vital in his old age as he was in his youth.
