Singer, songwriter, guitarist, composer

Neil Young's career has spanned over twenty years, from his early days with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to a solo history that includes over twenty albums of extremely varied styles. "Every one of my records, to me, is like an ongoing autobiography. I can't write the same book every time," he told Cameron Crowe in What's That Sound? "My trip is to express what's on my mind. I don't expect people to listen to my music all the time. Sometimes it's too intense."

Born in Canada, he formed his first band, Neil Young and the Squires, in Winnepeg and began bashing out instrumentals by groups like the Ventures and the Shadows. After hearing Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Young began to concentrate on writing his own lyrics. In Dylan he found not only an incredible poet, but also a mysterious persona that was just as interesting as the words. In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, Dave Marsh calls Young Dylan's greatest disciple, having mastered "the art of self-mythology."

After the Squires he played with Rick (then known as Rickey) James and the Mynah Birds, working the rock and blues clubs of Toronto. In 1966 James ran into trouble with the law and the band was forced to break up. Young, just 21 years old, sold all the band's equipment, bought a Pontiac hearse, and, along with bassist Bruce Palmer, drove cross-continent to California. While driving through Los Angeles, the car was recognized by Stephen Stills and Richie Furray, who had jammed with Young back in Canada. After talking awhile the four musicians decided they should form a band together and within a few weeks they had a six-week gig at the Whiskey A' Go Go, calling themselves Buffalo Springfield (named after a lawn tractor).

The group became one of the seminal folk-rock bands of the 1960s and pioneers of the California Sound that would influence later groups, including the Eagles. Young, in the United States illegally, worked without the proper papers or a union card while recording the classic tunes "For What It's Worth," "Mr. Soul," and "Broken Arrow." Tensions and egos in the band were a problem, causing Young to quit and rejoin the band more than once, citing his own lack of maturity and tremendous pressure as the reasons. In May 1968 Stills called it quits and left to record a solo album, during which he teamed with David Crosby and Graham Nash. Young split also, heading to the hills of Topanga Canyon to start working on his own album, Neil Young, released in the beginning of 1969 and featuring "The Loner."

After hearing a stomping bar band called the Rockets playing on the West Coast, Young asked them to back him up on his follow-up LP, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Switching their name to Crazy Horse, the trio (Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot, and Danny Whitten) provided solid support for Young as some of his finest songs, "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand," began to dominate the FM airwaves. At the same time, Stills had asked Young to join his trio and in 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released Deja Vu, containing another Young pop classic, "Helpless." The group enjoyed an AM radio popularity that Young's solo work hadn't established.

Guitarist Nils Lofgren joined Crazy Horse in September of 1970 to help record Young's After the Gold Rush LP. Young broke up with his first wife just before its release and spent the next two years in and out of hospitals with back injuries, playing only a small-halls tour by himself before recording a second album with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, 4-Way Street. Hot on the heels of Gold Rush's success came Harvest, the top-selling LP of 1972. Young utilized a pickup band called the Stray Gators (Jack Nitzsche, Ben Keith, Tim Drummond, and Johnny Barbata) and Crosby and Nash's vocals to come up with his only top ten hit, the number 1 "Heart of Gold," a blueprint for future Californian light-rockers.

Young made a movie and released its soundtrack in 1973. The somber Journey Through the Past baffled viewers who tried to figure out the message Young was trying to convey. "I don't think I was trying to say that life is pointless," he told Crowe. "It does lay a lot of shit on people though. It wasn't made for entertainment. I'll admit, Young began to work on a studio LP, Time Fades Away, and an ensuing tour. During rehearsals he sent guitarist Danny Whitten home to Los Angeles because his drug habit began affecting performances. Back in L.A. Whitten overdosed. The news shocked Young, who felt responsible and became depressed for nearly two years. His next LP, On The Beach, was released in 1974 and Young performed a tour with C,S,N & Y right afterwards. Tragedy struck again as Bruce Berry, a C,S,N & Y roadie, also died from a drug overdose. Young's LP, Tonight's the Night, was dedicated to Whitten and Berry and contains some of the most haunting, albeit alcohol-induced, recordings ever made. Young had another album, Homegrown, prepared for release, but after listening to both he decided to go with the starker one (nine of the tunes were actually recorded before Beach) which won the Rolling Stone Music Award for Album of the Year.

Young emerged from his dark period with Zuma, an LP of piercing guitar licks and pounding rhythms. Crazy Horse once again was a springboard for Young's primitive, yet gut-wrenching, fretboard onslaughts. "I really get free with Crazy Horse. They let me zoom off," he told Rolling Stone. "They're the American Rolling Stones, no doubt about it." Young also began a three-month tour with Stills to support their duo effort, Long May You Run, but had to back out after two weeks due to throat problems. His guitar playing was fine, though, as his next solo LP, American Stars 'n Bars, contained the rockers "Bite the Bullet" and "Like a Hurricane."

His 1978 tour a year later featured giant stage props (amplifiers, a harmonica, and microphone) assembled for the audience by scurrying, hooded creatures with glowing red eyes called Road-eyes. Young played a child dreaming about rock and roll as he awoke atop the huge amp system. The first half of the show was acoustic while the second part was sonic warfare.

During the middle of the tour, Young's mellow Comes a Time was released, catching fans, whose ears were still ringing, off guard. The half-acoustic, half-electric Rust Never Sleeps LP followed to rave reviews. The album "tells me more about my life, my country and rock and roll than any music I've heard in years," wrote Paul Nelson in Rolling Stone. "Neil Young can outwrite, outsing, outplay, outthink, outfeel and outlast anybody in rock and roll today." Standout tracks included "Welfare Mothers," "Thrasher," "Powderfinger," "My My, Hey Hey," and its counterpart, "Hey Hey, My My."

Young followed with Live Rust, a double-LP that Tom Carson in Rolling Stone called "rock and roll emotional superspectacle." That in turn was followed by Hawks and Doves, a 30-minute collection of acoustic and electric tunes, including "Union Man" and "Homestead." For the next nine years, however, Young would release an assortment of LPs that seemed to follow current trends instead of setting them. Reactor was heavy metal, pure and simple; Trans rode the techno bandwagon with elaborate electronics like the vocoder; Everybody's Rockin' gave a half an hour's worth of pseudo rockabilly; back to the country format on Old Ways and a tour with the International Harvesters band; and then an album of blues with This Note's For You in 1988. His 1986 tour to support Landing on Water was billed as the "Third Best Garage Band in the World."

Obviously Young likes to keep his audience guessing about his next move while avoiding any chance of prejudgment. "I'd rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way," he explained in What's That Sound? "I'm convinced that what sells and what I do are two completely different things. If they meet, it's coincidence." Reportedly, Young has anywhere from ten to twenty albums worth of unreleased materials in the vaults. While his recordings in the 1980s seem to some to lack focus, the triple-LP Decade is an excellent documentation of Young's best work prior to 1978.

—Calen D. Stone