Biography of Neil Young

With the exception only of Bob Dylan, Neil Young is the most acclaimed and accomplished singer/songwriter of his generation. Born in Toronto, Young learned to play ukulele and then guitar in his teens, and played in a variety of groups. He moved to Los Angeles with his friend, bassist Bruce Palmer, and hooked up with Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, and Dewey Martin to form Buffalo Springfield in 1966. After The Springfield split in 1968, Young went solo, releasing his first album, Neil Young, an acoustic effort with strings, in January 1969. Characteristically, Young followed it only four months later with the hard rock Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, backed by the electric three-piece band Crazy Horse; it became his first gold-selling album. Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash in June 1969, and combined solo and group careers until the band split the following summer. His third solo album, After the Gold Rush (August 1970), reached the Top Ten and included his first Top 40 hit, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart." But Young's commercial peak came early in 1972, when he released the number one, three-million-selling album Harvest, which contained the chart-topping gold single "Heart of Gold."Instead of following up such success, Young worked on the documentary film Journey through the Past (and its accompanying soundtrack album) for the rest of the year, then launched a concert tour in early 1973, by which time Crazy Horse's guitarist Danny Whitten had died of a heroin overdose. The tour was a ragged affair chronicled on the live album Time Fades Away. After it, Young recorded (but did not release) Tonight's the Night, which memorialized Whitten and Bruce Berry, a Young roadie who had also overdosed.Young's first new studio album in 18 months, On the Beach, was released in the summer of 1974. Much of it was acoustic, and it expressed dire sentiments. He finally put out Tonight's the Night in the summer of 1975, and the hard-rocking Zuma the following autumn. In the spring of 1976, Young toured with Stephen Stills, and the two recorded the duo album Long May You Run. Young's next solo album was 1977's American Stars 'n' Bars, made up of studio tracks dating back three years. In the fall of 1977, he released Decade, a three-album (later two-CD) career retrospective. 1978 saw the release of Comes a Time, Young's most country-folk-oriented album since Harvest, and his first since Harvest to reach the Top Ten. In 1979 Young launched a tour with Crazy Horse under the banner Rust Never Sleeps, including a critically acclaimed album of the same name and, eventually, a tour film and a live album called Live Rust.Young spent the better part of the '80s veering from one musical style to another, as his commercial fortunes declined. He turned to electronic music on Trans, to rockabilly on Everybody's Rockin', to country on Old Ways, and to horn-backed R&B on This Note's for You. In 1989, however, Young returned to his more familiar folk and rock styles for Freedom, and was rewarded with critical hosannas and his first gold album in a decade. The hard-rocking Ragged Glory was even more rapturously received, topping the Village Voice critic's poll for Best Album of 1990. In late 1991, Young issued a double live album, Weld, as well as Arc, an album of instrumental guitar feedback. He was said to be working on a boxed-set retrospective follow-up to Decade.In 1992, Young was being hailed as "the Godfather of Grunge," as dozens of new rock & roll bands from Pearl Jam to The Jayhawks were claiming him as an influence. Naturally, Young backed away from the hard, overdriven rock of Weld and Ragged Glory, releasing the quiet Harvest Moon, the sequel to his country-rock landmark, Harvest. In 1993, he released a live album (Unplugged) while he worked on his long-awaited box set; he released another album recorded with Crazy Horse, Sleeps With Angels, in late summer of 1994. The following summer Young released Mirror Ball, which was recorded with Pearl Jam. In the summer of 1996, Young released Broken Arrow, which was recorded with Crazy Horse. The Year of the Horse, a double-live album recorded on the supporting tour for Broken Arrow, was released in the summer of 1997. ~ William Ruhlmann