Young, Neil

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Young, Neil

Young, Neil, exceptional songwriter and author of lyrically beautiful love songs, hard-edged rockers, potent sociopolitical pieces, and evocative songs, sometimes reflectively melancholic, sometimes brooding and desperate; b. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Nov. 12, 1945. Crazy Horse, backup band. Membership:Danny Whitten, gtr., voc. (d. Los Angeles, Nov. 29, 1972); Billy Talbot, bs.; Ralph Molina, drm. After the tenures of Nils Lofgren, voc, gtr. (b. Chicago, June 21, 1951) and Greg Leroy, voc, gtr., Frank Sampedro became the group’s permanent guitarist, in 1975.

Neil Young scored his biggest early success with After the Goldrush and Harvest. Recognized as a potent lead guitarist, Young subsequently embarked on an erratic solo career that gained him the reputation as one of the most enigmatic and elusive artists to emerge from the 1960s. He has often worked with the backup band Crazy Horse, who have inspired him to some of his best work on album and on stage. Often changing styles, Young has continued to record with Crazy Horse while also rejoining Crosby, Stills, and Nash from time to time, as well as working with other accompanists, including a 1995 collaboration with Pearl Jam.

Neil Young grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he formed Neil Young and the Squires while in high school. He later returned to his birthplace, Toronto, to play folk music at clubs in the city’s Yorkville district, where he met Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, and Joni Mitchell. After joining the Mynah Birds, which included bassist Bruce Palmer and later funk star Rick James, Young traveled with Palmer to Los Angeles, where he again encountered Furay and Stills and subsequently formed the Buffalo Springfield in March 1966 with them. The group became known for the exciting lead guitar duels between Stills and Young in concert, and for their involvement in the developing folk-rock movement. Although the group disbanded in May 1968, Young contributed some of their best- remembered songs, including “Flying on the Ground Is Wrong” the psychedelic “Mr. Soul” the major production effort “Broken Arrow,” and the lyrical “On the Way Home” and “I Am a Child.”

Subsequently pursuing a solo career, Young released his debut album, largely overlooked, which include two of his typical, brooding songs, “The Loner” and “I’ve Been Waiting for You,” as well as the poignant “Old Laughing Lady” and the bizarre “Last Trip to Tulsa.” His second album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, was recorded with Crazy Horse, whom Young had met in 1968. Previously known as the Rockets, Crazy Horse was comprised of Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina. During the mid-1960s the three had been members of the vocal group Danny and the Memories in the Los Angeles area before they moved to San Francisco in 1966 and took up instruments. They returned to Los Angeles and added violinist Bobby Notkoff and guitarists Leon and George Whitsell, becoming the Rockets for local engagements and one album on White Whale Records. Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, often regarded as one of his finest albums, yielded the minor hit “Cinnamon Girl” and included the title song as well as “The Losing End” and the classics “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Down by the River.”

In June 1969 Neil Young joined David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash for touring, including their celebrated appearance at the Woodstock Festival, and the recording of DéjàVu. Adding cohesion and instrumental vitality to the otherwise remarkably subdued group, Young contributed “Helpless” and the three-part “Country Girl” to the best-selling album.

Having fired Crazy Horse because of Danny Whit-ten’s increasing dependence on heroin, Young reluctantly rehired the band for his next solo album, After the Goldrush, which featured Crazy Horse’s newest member, guitarist Nils Lofgren, and keyboardist-producer Jack Nitzsche. The album produced a moderate hit with “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and contained the potent classic “Southern Man” as well as “Tell Me Why,” “When You Dance I Can Really Love,” and Young obscurities “Birds” and “I Believe in You.”

Between May and August 1970 Young rejoined Crosby, Stills and Nash on tour. His response to the murder of four students at Kent State Univ. by National Guardsmen, “Ohio,” became a major hit at the end of June. The tour’s subsequent live album, Four Way Street, included a number of Young favorites. Young then embarked on a solo tour, but retreated into inactivity soon after to recover from a slipped disc.

Crazy Horse, comprised of Whitten, Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and Jack Nitzsche, recorded their debut album for Reprise. Released in 1971, the album included Lof-gren’s “Beggar’s Day,” Young’s “Dance, Dance, Dance,” and Whitten’s “I Don’t Want to Talk About It” and “Come On Baby, Let’s Go Downtown.” However, by the end of 1971 Lofgren had left the group and Whitten had become useless. With Talbot and Molina as mainstays, neither Loose nor At Crooked Lake fared well for Crazy Horse. Danny Whitten died of a heroin overdose on Nov. 29, 1972, in Los Angeles. That, coupled with the overdose death of road crew member Bruce Berry, severely affected Neil Young.

Neil Young’s next album, 1972’s Harvest, featured a new backup group, the Stray Gators, with pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith, pianist Nitzsche, bassist Tim Drummond, and drummer Kenneth Buttrey. It became Young’s best-selling album, yielding a top hit with “Heart of Gold” and a moderate hit with the reflective “Old Man” while containing the resigned “Out on the Weekend,” “A Man Needs a Maid” (recorded with the London Symphony Orch.), and the ironically prophetic “The Needle and the Damage Done.” After touring again in fall 1972 with the Stray Gators, Young issued Journey Through the Past as the soundtrack to the retrospective film premiered five months later. The album, an odd collection of performances by Young, the Buffalo Springfield, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and the frankly incoherent movie were not well received.

Mounting a massive American tour in early 1973, Neil Young recorded his next album, Time Fades Away, on tour. The album featured “Journey Through the Past,” “Last Dance,” and “Don’t Be Denied,” and sold modestly. Young reassembled Crazy Horse with Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot, Nils Lofgren, and Ben Keith for extensive touring in 1973-1974, with recordings from the tour eventually issued in 1975 as Tonight’s the Night. Dedicated to Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, the album was a highly personal, starkly harrowing, and decidedly anti-music business album. It included Whit-ten’s “Come On Baby, Let’s Go Downtown” and Young’s own antidrug title song as the album’s opening and closing tracks. The rather somber and restrained studio album On the Beach had intervened. It contained several surreal songs, such as “Vampire Blues” and “Ambulance Blues,” as well as “See the Sky About to Rain” and the minor hit “Walk On By.”

Neil Young toured extensively with Crosby, Stills and Nash in 1974-1975, subsequently recording Zuma with Crazy Horse, now comprised of Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot, and new guitarist Frank Sampedro. Without yielding a hit single, the album marked the beginning of Young’s return to public favor. It contained the seven-minute “Cortez the Killer” and “Pardon My Heart.” Young and Stephen Stills reunited for Long May You Run, which included Young’s title song and “Midnight on the Bay,” but the concurrent tour was aborted when Young developed throat problems. Young next planned to release the three record-set anthology Decade, but it was deferred in favor of American Stars ’n’ Bars, which featured Crazy Horse on one side and the vocal assistance of Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Nicolette Larson. The album contained the potent “Like a Hurricane” and the humorous “Homegrown.” Decade followed in 1978, compiling material from Young’s days with both the Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills and Nash, as well as Young solo material and five previously unreleased songs, including “Love Is a Rose,” later popularized by Linda Ronstadt.

Neil Young mounted his first major tour in nearly two years with Crazy Horse in fall 1978 in support of Comes a Time, his most accessible album since Harvest, and Crazy Horse’s Crazy Moon on RCA Records. The tour, filmed and recorded, yielded the flawed 1979 movie Rust Never Sleeps and the double-record set Live Rust, which includes Young’s “Lotta Love,” a near-smash hit for Nicolette Larson in 1978-1979. The studio album Rust Never Sleeps contains one acoustic side and one side recorded with Crazy Horse. It yielded a minor hit with the anthemic “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” reprised in “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” as a tribute to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, while containing “Thrasher,” “Powderfinger,” and the unusual social commentary “Welfare Mothers.” Hawks and Doves, recorded with session musicians, was followed by Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s re-ac-tor in late 1981.

Neil Young subsequently switched to Geffen Records for the strange, synthesizer-dominated Trans and rockabilly-style Everybody’s Rockin’, recorded with a band called the Shocking Pinks. Touring regularly in the 1980s, he next recorded the country-style Old Ways with Bela Fleck and Nashville studio veterans Ralph Mooney and Hargus “Pig” Robbins. He co-founded the Farm Aid benefit concert in 1985 with Willie Nelson, and he performed at it. Young mounted the most ambitious tour of his career with Crazy Horse in support of 1986’s Landing on Water. In 1987 Young began hosting annual benefits in the San Francisco Bay Area for the Bridge School, a program for physically disabled, nonspeaking children that regularly drew top-name performers.

After Life, Neil Young returned to Reprise Records for the big-band, blues-style This Note’s for You in 1987, which featured the satirical title song, a parody of the Budweiser beer commercial. The video for the song was at first rejected by MTV because it attacked the increasing commercialism in rock music. Two years later, his Freedom album, with “Wrecking Ball” and the anthemic “Rockin’ in the Free World,” became his best-selling album in years. In 1990 Crazy Horse recorded their first album in more than 10 years, Left for Dead, and accompanied Young on Ragged Glory, which includes “F9#in’ Up,” “Mansion on the Hill,” and “Love and Only Love.”

Freedom and Rugged Glory helped reestablish Young as a contemporary recording artist, drawing comparisons to his finest previous work. Dubbed the Godfather of Grunge, he demonstrated his interest in current music by booking Sonic Youth as his opening act during his 1991 tour with Crazy Horse. Late that year Young issued Weld, recorded on tour, and Arc, a 35-minute set comprised of feedback and electronic shrieks. The two sets were released simultaneously with a third set, ArcWeld, that combined both albums.

Neil Young enjoyed his greatest acclaim in years during the 1990s. He returned to the acoustic sound of folk rock with 1992’s Harvest Moon, inappropriately labeled the follow-up to 1972’s Harvest. Recorded with the Stray Gators, the band who helped record Harvest, the album failed to produce a hit single, although the video for the title track received wide play on both MTV and VH-1, and the album proved to be his most popular since 1979’s Live Rust. Young’s performance on the MTV show Unplugged was recorded and issued in 1993, followed a year later by Sleeps with Angels, recorded with Crazy Horse, which included his title song lament to Kurt Cobain. Young substituted for an ill Eddie Vedder at a Pearl Jam concert in San Francisco in June 1995. Only days later, Reprise issued Mirror Ball, recorded with Pearl Jam as his backing band. The album featured Vedder sharing vocals with Young on the title song, “Peace and Love/’ cowritten by Vedder, and “Throw Your Hatred Down/’ “Act of Love/’ and “I’m the Ocean.”

Discography

NEILYOUN G : N. Y.(1969); After the Goldrush (1970); Harvest (1972); Journey Through the Past (soundtrack; 1972); Time Fades Away (1973); On the Beach (1974); Tonight’s the Night (1975); Decade (1977); Comes a Time (1978); Hawks and Doves (1980); Trans (1983); Old Ways (1985); Landing on Water (1986); Lucky Thirteen (1993); Freedom (1989); Arc (1991); Harvest Moon (1992); Unplugged (1993); Mirror Ba// (1995). THE ROCKETS: The Rockets (1968). NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969); Zuma (1975); Rust Never Sleeps (1979); Live Rust (1979); re-ac-tor (1981); Li/ê (1987); Kagged G/ory (1990); Weld (1991); Arc We/á (1991); Sleeps with Angels (1994); Broken Arrow (1996). NEIL YOUNG, CRAZY HORSE, AND THE BULLETS: American Stars W Bars (1977). CRAZY HORSE: Crazy Horse (1971); Loose (1972); At Crooked Lake (1972); Crazy Moon (1978); Le/£/or Dead (1990). THE STILLS-YOUNG BAND: Long May You Run (1976). NEIL YOUNG AND THE SHOCKING PINKS: Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983). NEIL YOUNG AND THE BLUENOTES: This Note’s for You (1988).