Neil Young Biography

Neil Young moved to Winnipeg with his mother following her divorce from his sports-journalist father and began playing music in high school. Not only did he play in garage-rock outfits like The Esquires, but he also played in local folk clubs and coffeehouses, where he eventually met Joni Mitchell and Stephen Stills.

He was a founding member of the folk-rock band Buffalo Springfield (1966-68) in Los Angeles and worked with the groups Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills and Nash, before pursuing a solo career. Although Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were a very successful act, they were also volatile, and they had split by the spring 1971 release of the live 'Four Way Street'. The following year, Young had his first number one album with the mellow country-rock, 'Harvest', which also featured his first (and only) number one single, 'Heart of Gold'.

Instead of embracing his success, he spurned it, following it with the noisy, bleak live film 'Journey Through the Past'. Both the movie and the soundtrack received terrible reviews, as did the live album 'Time Fades Away', a record recorded with the Stray Gators that was released in 1973.

Both 'Journey through the Past' and 'Time Fades Away' signalled that Young was entering a dark period in his life, but they only scratched the surface of his anguish. Inspired by the overdose deaths of Danny Whitten in 1972 and his roadie Bruce Berry the following year, Young wrote and recorded the bleak, druggy 'Tonight's the Night' late in 1973, but declined to release it at the time. Instead, he released 'On the Beach', which was nearly as harrowing. 'Tonight's the Night' finally appeared in the spring of 1975. By the time of its release, Young had recovered, and began a prolific song-writing career, releasing over 30 albums.

His ballad 'Philadelphia' from the soundtrack of the film was Oscar-nominated in 1994, and he also wrote the music for the 1995 film ‘Dead Man’.

The Canadian singer-songwriter was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1982. He was recognised by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame first in 1995 for his work as a solo artist, and then in 1997 for his partnership with members of the band Buffalo Springfield. Young is sometimes as the Godfather of Grunge as a result of his influence on Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who cited him as a big influence when he inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

It was recently announced that Young would once again be recognised for his charity work, as the singer-songwriter is to be the recipient of the Juno Humanitarian Award 2011. This will be the sixth time he has been recognised for his work by Juno, who have previously given the artist recognition for co-founding Farm Aid.

Young started the charity along with Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young, when the singers put together a benefit concert designed to raise money for farmers in the US.

In May 2010 NME revealed that Neil Young would be working on a new album which would be produced by Daniel Lanois who had previously worked on Bob Dylan's ‘Time Out of Mind’ album and U2's ‘Achtung Baby’.