Neil Young is a Winnipeg singer/songwriter. His work is characterized by deeply personal lyrics, distinctive guitar work, and an almost instantly recognizable nasal tenor voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments—including piano and harmonica—his style of hammer-on acoustic guitar and often idiosyncratic soloing on electric guitar are the lynchpins of a sometimes ragged, sometimes polished, yet consistently evocative sonic ambience.
Although Young has experimented widely with differing music styles, swing, jazz, rockabilly, and electronica throughout a varied career, his most accessible and best known work generally falls into either of two distinct styles: an acoustic, country-tinged folk rock, as heard in songs such as "Heart of Gold", "Harvest Moon" and "Old Man," or a grinding, lumbering form of hard rock, as in songs like "Cinnamon Girl", "Rockin' in the Free World" and "Southern Man."
After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, Young signed a solo deal with Reprise Records, home of his compatriot, Joni Mitchell, with whom he shared a manager, Elliot Roberts. Young and Nitzsche immediately began work on Young's first solo record, Neil Young (November 1968), which received mixed reviews. In a 1970 interview, Young deprecated the album as being "overdubbed rather than played," and the quest for music that expresses the spontaneity of the moment has long been a feature of his career. Nevertheless, the album contains some tunes that remain a staple of his live shows, most notably "The Loner."
Young reformed Crazy Horse with Frank Sampedro on guitar as his backup band for Zuma (1975). Many of the songs are overtly concerned with failed relationships, and even the epic "Cortez the Killer," outwardly a retelling of the Spanish conquest of South America from the viewpoint of the Aztecs, can be seen as an allegory of love lost—something that didn’t save it, however, from being banned in Franco's Spain.
The following year, Young reunited with Stephen Stills for the album Long May You Run (1976), credited to the Stills-Young band, but many of the dates on the follow-up tour were cancelled midway when Young walked out, later sending Stills a telegram that read: "Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil."
Freedom completed the return to form, a mixture of acoustic and electric rock dealing with the state of the US and the world in 1989, alongside a set of love songs and a version of the standard "On Broadway." Rockin' in the Free World, two versions of which bookended the album, again caught the mood. Some say it became a de facto anthem during the fall of the Berlin Wall, a few months after the record's release. However, most Germans don't remember the song being related to the reunification, understandably so, since the lyrics are not about political repression. Like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.", the anthemic use of this song was based on largely ignoring the verses, which evoke social problems and implicitly criticize American government policies. By 1990, grunge music was beginning to make its first inroads in the charts and many of its prime movers, including Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, were citing Young as an influence, which led elements of the press to give him the somewhat dubious title "The Godfather of Grunge."
Young's 2001 single "Let's Roll", was a tribute to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the passengers and crew on Flight 93 in particular. At the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" concert he performed a cover version of John Lennon's "Imagine". In 2002, Q magazine named Neil Young in their list of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die."
- An edited version of Young's song "Rockin' in the Free World" plays in the ending credits of the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.
- The piano Young played on After the Goldrush was later purchased by Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett and used on the album Daisies of the Galaxy.
- Young's greatest hobby is collecting model trains, and has an extensive "train barn" on his Northern California ranch.
- Other hobbies of Young include collecting and restoring classic automobiles, and attending San Jose Sharks ice hockey games with his son, Ben Young.
- Young's full birth name is reportedly Neil Percival Kenneth Robert Ragland Young. In the opening of the documentary Year of the Horse, Young identifies himself as Neil Percival Young.
- Young owns a 101-foot wooden schooner, built in 1913, the W.N. Ragland, which he named after his grandfather, Bill Ragland.
- Police knocked out one of Young's teeth in the aftermath of one of the notorious Sunset Strip riots of 1967. Comparison of modern concert footage with Buffalo Springfield footage shows that Young has had extensive dental work in the intervening years. In an interview for Jerry Hopkins' book The Rock Story in 1970, Buffalo Springfield manager Dick Davis stated that the beating sent Young to the UCLA neuropsychiatric hospital for some time for tests. He believed that Young's epilepsy was at least partly an outcome of police battery.
- When filming the motion picture The Last Waltz, Young appeared on stage with one nostril clearly filled with cocaine. Bandleader Robbie Robertson later had to pay several thousand dollars for the cocaine to be Rotoscoped out of the film, lest rock audiences be "offended." Robertson called it "the most expensive cocaine I've ever bought." When asked about the incident many years later, Young replied, "I'm not proud of that."
