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Neil Young Bio
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Neil Young
Neil Young is a singer, songwriter, and composer with a reputation for creating experimental music and challenging establishment views. His musical skills extend to playing the guitar, banjo, keyboards, and harmonica. Young has also worked as an actor, director, and producer.
Neil Percival Kenneth Robert Ragland Young was born on November 12, 1945, in Toronto, Canada. His father, Scott Young, was a novelist and sports journalist. He grew up in the rural town of Omemee, where, at the age of six, he caught polio. The disease left him with permanent weakness on the left side of his body and a noticeable limp.
When Young was twelve years old his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he attended Kelvin High School. It was there that Young first became involved in music, playing with a number of small bands including The Squires, whose song The Sultan was a hit on the local rock scene. When he was older Young began to play on the local folk club circuit, where he met Joni Mitchell and Stephen Stills.
In 1966, Young was offered a record contract by Motown, playing with Rick James's Mynah Birds, but the deal fell through. He and the bass player, Bruce Palmer, then moved to Los Angeles and formed Buffalo Springfield along with Stills, Richie Furay, and Dewey Martin. Their psychedelic country-tinged rock proved popular and resulted in a selftitle hit album.
Later, after Palmer was arrested and deported, relations between the remaining group members began to sour. Their second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, failed to match the success of the first, and after just one more, Last Time Around, Young departed to pursue a solo career with backing band Crazy Horse. His first solo album, Neil Young, was only a moderate success, but he built from it successfully and his second, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, was much more successful, containing several songs which remain fan favorites today. Young then united with Crosby, Stills and Nash to record another album and play at Woodstock. Later that same year, he released After the Gold Rush, which featured Nils Lofgren and Greg Reeves.
From that point on, Young’s success was assured. Experimenting with a wide range of different musical styles, he has since recorded over sixty successful albums and has collaborated with artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam, Booker T. and the MGs, Linda Ronstadt, Social Distortion and Emmylou Harris.
Young has also worked in film, contributing to the soundtracks of movies including Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (which starred Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington), Valerie Solanis biopic I Shot Andy Warhol (with Lili Taylor and Jared Harris) and Almost Famous (with Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, Kate Hudson, and Anna Paquin). Several films have been made of his concerts, including one by Martin Scorsese, and he has also directed and produced a few of his own. He has appeared as an actor in Made in Heaven (with Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis), Steven Kovacs' '68, Love at Large (with Tom Berenger and Elizabeth Perkins) and his own project Greendale (with Sarah White and Eric Johnson) which also launched an album.
Since his earliest days, Young has been politically outspoken, writing his famous song Ohio in response to the Kent State Massacre. Later, he dedicated the track to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. His condemnation of ingrained racism in the southern United States led to an ongoing feud with Lynyrd Skynyrd. He had one of his teeth knocked out by overzealous police during the Sunset Strip riots of 1967, but this did nothing to deter him, and Young has recently campaigned against America's involvement in Iraq.
Young lives in northern California with his wife Pegi Morton and three children, Zeke (from his previous relationship with actress Carrie Snodgrass), Ben, and Amber. Both of his sons suffer from cerebral palsy and Young and his daughter both have epilepsy; Young has also suffered a brain aneurysm. This has led him to take an interest in neurological disabilities and every year he hosts a series of concerts to fund the Bridge School which helps children with such problems. These have featured artists such as Sir Paul McCartney, The Who, Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie.
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