Neil Young

Neil Young was born in Toronto in 1945, the son of the writer Scott Young, and he started playing in Winnipeg in the '60s before heading to Los Angeles and forming the folk rock group Buffalo Springfield. From there he went two ways at once, and he's been going two ways at once ever since. With Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young he was the part-timer on Déjà Vu, which topped the charts in 1970. On his own, with Crazy Horse slouching behind him, he was something rawer.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, in 1969, was the first proof, and that year's "Cinnamon Girl" crunched like a boot on gravel while "Down by the River" let the guitar run on until it turned ugly and gorgeous at once. After the Gold Rush in 1970 and Harvest in 1972 showed the other face, that high, fragile tenor over piano and harmonica, folk and country bleeding together, and 1972 brought the gentle ache of "Heart of Gold" and "Old Man".

The lyrics were always deeply personal, and on On the Beach in 1974 and Tonight's the Night in 1975 they cut close to the bone. Zuma came the same year, and by 1977 there was "Like a Hurricane", which is basically what it says: a storm of distorted guitar with a lovesick howl in the eye of it. Rust Never Sleeps followed in 1979.

That distorted guitar sound, especially with Crazy Horse, eventually got him tagged the Godfather of Grunge, and in 1995 he made Mirror Ball with Pearl Jam. He's directed films under the name Bernard Shakey, won Grammys and Junos, been named an Officer of the Order of Canada, and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: in 1995 on his own and in 1997 with Buffalo Springfield. "Rockin' in the Free World", in 1989, proved he could still start a riot whenever he felt like it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.