NEIL YOUNG

Born: Toronto, Ontario, 12 November 1945

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Harvest Moon (1992)

One of contemporary music's most enduring artists and songwriters, Neil Young remains as much a part of today's scene as he was of the burgeoning electric folk/rock era of the late 1960s, from which he emerged. His diverse musical vocabulary and inclination for drastic genre change is anchored by an identifiably edgy and emotional voice that is strikingly high-pitched. Through five decades Young has woven music that continues to surprise and in some cases confound listeners and critics. His impressive body of work includes country, blues, rock-a-billy, grunge rock, rhythm and blues, movie soundtracks, and the signature lyrical folk style from which many of his most acclaimed songs have emerged.

Young was raised in Toronto, Ontario, before moving to Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, with his mother when he was fourteen following her divorce from his father, Scott Young, a Toronto journalist. His interest in music was already in full swing, and he assembled several bands made up mostly of schoolmates. The last of these, the Squires, began playing professional dates throughout central Canada over the next two years until the band dissolved in June 1965.

Young journeyed to New York, where he located Stephen Stills and was introduced to Richie Furay. After an opportunity fell through to play guitar for a rhythm-and-blues band called the Mynah Birds, which featured Rick James on vocals, Young left for Los Angeles. Stills and Furay persuaded him to join a new band called Buffalo Springfield, made up of various refugees from the 1960s pop music scene. Young immediately became a central creative force within the band, and Buffalo Springfield released five albums over the next three years. Despite the band's success, Young yearned for a different musical path and sought out his fellow Canadian artist and friend Joni Mitchell, who put him in touch with her manager. He soon negotiated a deal with Reprise Records for a solo album, and the result, titled Neil Young (1968), began to confer superstar status on a reluctant artist.

Young's career peaked with the platinum-selling Harvest (1972). This sweet, poignant recording contains what many consider to be his signature songs. Hits off the album include "Heart of Gold" and "Old Man." Young followed Harvest with a series of musical departures that challenged his audience with continual reinvention. One example was an eerie soundtrack for a rarely seen film titled Journey Through the Past (1972) and another was the dark world of death and drugs Young explored on the haunting Tonight's the Night (1975). During the 1980s Young's output, often viewed as erratic, confused and alienated many of his fans. Each album called forth a radically different aesthetic: he was a country balladeer with a band called the International Harvesters and a techno-buzz rocker on Trans (1983); he turned to rock-a-billy with the Shocking Pinks on Everybody's Rockin (1983) and to a pure country sound with turns from Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson on Old Ways (1985); the slick bluesman on This Note's for You (1988) yielded to the hard-rock wielding axe-man on Ragged Glory (1990) and then to the pied piper of a much younger grunge-rock sound in Weld (1991) and Arc (1991).

Wedged between his first solo efforts and Harvest was another considerable musical kinship, begun when Young was asked to join the talented trio of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash in 1969. Originally recruited to be a support member of the band, he held out for a more substantial partnership, and the trio agreed to form a quartet named Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Although their time together was stormy and short, about two years, CSN&Y compiled a list of popular songs and enjoyed tremendous popularity as the group's essence mirrored the country's political turmoil. Many songs, such as "Ohio," "Woodstock," "Find the Cost of Freedom," and "Almost Cut My Hair" stand as 1960s anthems to this day. CSN&Y reunited briefly for a 1988 release of the album American Dream and the subsequent tour, but Young's participation was small, and he left the tour midway. In 1999 CSN&Y assembled yet again and have since enjoyed a renewed success on two tours.

Although Young's years after 1990 still carry his trademark unpredictability, his popularity is more robust than ever. He returned to the tuneful folk of earlier fame by finally releasing Harvest Moon (1992), a sequel to Harvest. In his usual contrary fashion, Young began performing the songs for Harvest Moon in concert well before the album was released. More than twenty years removed from some of his classic material, Young would often tire of audience members' impatience with the new material, lamenting that the old songs were distracting listeners from letting him do what he's always done—introduce new songs. He prevailed, and Harvest Moon was a giant success, his best-selling album in thirteen years. The songs reflect a shift toward writing more about areas of life that are closer to his home and heart.

Like the sharp changes in his music, Young's political views, usually identified with grassroots efforts, have sometimes flabbergasted his fans. For instance, in 1984 he once expressed his support for Ronald Reagan, the Republican presidential candidate. On the other hand Young revived a sixties impulse in the late 1980s as he fervently took sides against corporations for using classic contemporary music to advertise products. His R&B offering, "This Note's for You," a takeoff on Budweiser advertising phraseology, was made into a music video to emphasize his antisponsorship point. Ironically—and prophetically—it was banned by MTV out of fear that it would offend their corporate sponsors.

Young also returned to movie-soundtrack work by contributing the title song to the film Philadelphia. He accompanied himself on piano and sang the song's lamenting melody live at the 1995 Academy Awards broadcast. In 1996 he arranged the movie soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch's film Dead Man.

But it was Sleeps with Angels (1994) that helped Young turn another important corner. This eclectic batch of songs offers a career retrospective of sorts with bits and pieces of Young's musical stylings through the years on one album. Its huge success was an indication that listeners were beginning to release Young from preconceptions based on his earlier work and appreciate him for his wider artistic scope.

Young collaborated with the grunge band Pearl Jam in the making of Mirror Ball (1995) and shared the stage with them and other alternative rock acts on various tours. Attired for decades in a costume of boots, jeans, and flannel shirts, he has been appropriately dubbed "the father of grunge." He performed his cynical "Rockin in the Free World" with Pearl Jam on the night he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

Spot Light: Farm Aid

In 1985 Neil Young, along with his fellow musicians Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, responded to the adversity of the family farm and the rural way of life by organizing a series of concerts to raise money. Called Farm Aid, these concerts have brought together hundreds of artists who have donated their musical talents to the effort. Farm Aid has raised more than $15 million and distributed the money to more than 100 farming organizations and agencies that serve rural communities. The organization's primary impetus was to keep farmers on their land. However, it also channels funds for long-term solutions to other challenges faced in rural America by promoting outreach and education to increase the farm community's ability to react to a changing world. The message has been the same for seventeen years: By supporting family farmers, Americans eat healthier food, challenge the domination of agribusiness, and stave off urban sprawl.

He delighted critics again with Broken Arrow (1996), and released a fierce live rock recording, Year of the Horse (1997). The personal Silver and Gold (2000) was a pliable musical offering that harked back to his Buffalo Springfield days. Are You Passionate? (2002) garnered praise for its soft, moving tones and slight Motown feel. Featured on Are You Passionate? is "Let's Roll," Young's tribute to the passengers on United Flight 93, one of the commercial airliners that was hijacked during the events of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The song's title is a reference to the phrase "Let's roll" that was uttered into a cell phone by one of the male passengers prior to his and other passengers' overtaking the hijackers, preventing them from crashing the plane into the Washington, D.C., area; the doomed flight went down in the rural Pennsylvania countryside. Young used the song's proceeds to assist families of the plane's passengers, none of whom survived.

Young has always been keenly attuned to social issues. He is a founding member of Farm Aid, an organization dedicated to rural causes to which he has lent abundant time. Another important association for Young is the Bridge School founded by his wife, Pegi Young. The Bridge School, located in the San Francisco Bay area, specializes in caring for and educating children with severe speech and physical impairments. Young has been raising money for the school since 1986 by mounting charity concerts and enlisting fellow musicians to do the same. One of his children, Ben, attends the school.

Throughout Young's career his personal life has lacked the notoriety of most of his rock-and-roll comrades. What he has achieved in fame has been the direct result of his music and not trashed hotel rooms and other binges of excess. His songs are a combination of personal memoir, emotionally driven images, and social commentary. Young's musical mosaic reflects the passion of an artist in a relentless endeavor to puzzle out the magnitude of life.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Neil Young (Reprise, 1968); Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Reprise, 1969); After the Goldrush (Reprise 1970); Harvest (Reprise, 1972); Time Fades Away (Reprise, 1973); On the Beach (Reprise, 1974); Tonight's the Night (Reprise, 1975); Zuma (Reprise, 1976); Long May You Run (Reprise, 1976); American Stars 'N Bars (Reprise, 1977); Comes a Time (Reprise, 1978); Rust Never Sleeps (Reprise, 1979); Live Rust (Reprise, 1979); Hawks and Doves (Reprise, 1980); Re-ac-tor (Reprise 1981); Trans (Geffen 1983); Everybody's Rockin' (Geffen, 1983); Old Ways (Geffen, 1985); Landing on Water (Geffen, 1986); This Note's for You (Geffen, 1988); Freedom (Reprise, 1989); Ragged Glory (Reprise, 1990); Weld (Reprise, 1991); Arc (Reprise, 1991); Harvest Moon (Reprise, 1992); Unplugged (Reprise, 1993); Sleeps with Angels (Reprise, 1994); Mirror Ball (Reprise, 1995); Broken Arrow (Reprise, 1996); Silver and Gold (Reprise, 2000); Are You Passionate? (Reprise, 2002).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

S. Young and P. Buck (ed.), Neil and Me (Ontario, 1997); J. McDonough, Shakey: Neil Young's Biography (London, 2002); S. Simmons, Neil Young: Reflections in Broken Glass (Edinburgh, 2002).

donald lowe