Neil Young

Biography
Neil Young was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to sportswriter and
novelist Scott Young and Rassy Ragland, who had moved to Toronto from
their family home of Manitoba to pursue a sport journalism career. Neil
spent his early years in the small country town of Omemee, in southern
Ontario (130 km northeast of Toronto). He was diagnosed with diabetes as a
childand a bout of polio at the age of 6 left him with a weakened left
side; he still walks with a slight limp.

In 1965 Young toured Canada as a solo artist and composing music for
commercial advertisements. In 1966, he joined Rick James-fronted Mynah
Birds. The band managed to secure a record deal with the Motown label.
Unfortunately, as their first album was being recorded James was arrested
for being AWOL from the army.[9] After the Mynah Birds disbanded, Young
and bass player Bruce Palmer relocated to Los Angeles. Young has admitted
in an interview that he was in the United States illegally until receiving
a green card in 1970.

In May 1968, the band split up for good, but in order to fulfill a
contractual obligation, a final album, Last Time Around, was recorded,
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.

Also that year, Young released his third solo album, After the Gold Rush
(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. Aided by his
newfound fame with CSNY, the album was a commercial breakthrough for Young
and contains some of his best known work. Notable tracks include the title
track, with dream-like lyrics that run a gamut of subjects from drugs and
interpersonal relationships to environmental concerns, as well as Young’s
controversial and acerbic condemnation of racism in "Southern Man," which,
along with a later song entitled "Alabama," later prompted Lynyrd Skynyrd
to decry Young by name in the lyrics to "Sweet Home Alabama."

On September 8, 1972, the Academy Award-nominated actress Carrie
Snodgress, with whom he had been living, gave birth to Neil Young's first
child. The boy, Zeke, was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Young fell
in love with Snodgress after seeing her in a movie on television after
which Young wrote the song "A Man Needs a Maid" from the Harvest album,
featuring the lyric "I fell in love with the actress/she was playing a
part that I could understand."

In the second half of 1973, Young formed The Santa Monica Flyers, with
Crazy Horse's rhythm section augmented by Nils Lofgren on guitar. Deeply
affected by the drug-induced deaths of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry,
Young recorded Tonight's the Night. The album's dark tone and rawness
caused Reprise to delay the release until two years later and only after
being pressured by Young to do so.[17] The album received mixed reviews at
the time, but is now regarded by some as a precursor to punk rock. In
Young's own opinion, it was the closest he ever came to art.

In 1976, Young performed with The Band, Joni Mitchell, and other rock
musicians in the high profile all-star concert The Last Waltz. The release
of Martin Scorsese's movie of the concert was delayed while Scorsese
unwillingly re-edited it to deemphasize the lump of cocaine that was
clearly visible hanging from Young's nose during his performance of
"Helpless."[23] Young later said, "I'm not proud of that," according to
one of his biographers.

The 1980s were a lean time for Young both critically and commercially.
After providing the incidental music to a biopic of Hunter S. Thompson
entitled Where the Buffalo Roam, he recorded Hawks & Doves (1980), a
folk/country record. Re-ac-tor (1981), once again with Crazy Horse, was a
façade of distortion and feedback obscuring a relatively weak selection of
songs, but his strangest record of the decade came with Trans (1982).
Recorded partially with vocoders, synthesizers, and other devices that
modified instruments and vocals with electronic effects, it is sometimes
considered an experiment related to finding a technology that would become
a means to communicate for Young’s son (with his wife Pegi), Ben, who has
severe cerebral palsy and cannot speak. Many fans were baffled by the
radical forms of this album and rockabilly-styled Everybody's Rockin'
(1983), and record company head David Geffen even sued Young for making
"unrepresentative" music—i.e. music that did not sound like Neil Young—
that deliberately lacked commercial appeal.[24] Young later stated that he
would have preferred to release the songs featuring the synclavier and
vocoder as an EP, and that their inclusion with the Hawaiian-themed
rockabilly was a mistake. Also premiered at this time though little seen
was an eclectic full-length comedy film Human Highway starring, co-
directed and co-written by Young.
In 1983, Young worked with British video director Tim Pope, making two
videos - "Wonderin'" and "Cry, Cry, Cry."

Old Ways (1985) saw a return to country music, recorded with a group of
friends and session musicians. Landing on Water (1986) is entertaining for
the blending of synthesizers and other instruments related to the 80's
into Young’s own style, with lyrics that take pot shots at some favourite
targets, including CSN in "Hippie Dream," with a chorus that goes: "But
the wooden ships/Were just a hippie dream," and David Geffen in "Drifter,"
with the line: "Don’t try to tell me what I gotta do to fit." The
resumption of his partnership with Crazy Horse on Life (1987) fulfilled
his contract with Geffen, and Young was finally able to switch labels.