Neil Young

At 78 years old, Neil Young has this physical status:

Young and his mother settled into the working-class area of Fort Rouge, Winnipeg, where he enrolled at Earl Grey Junior High School. It was there that he formed his first band, the Jades, and met Ken Koblun. While attending Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, he played in several instrumental rock bands, eventually dropping out of school in favor of a musical career. Young's first stable band was the Squires, with Ken Koblun, Jeff Wuckert and Bill Edmondson on drums, who had a local hit called "The Sultan". Over a three-year period the band played hundreds of shows at community centers, dance halls, clubs and schools in Winnipeg and other parts of Manitoba. The band also played in Fort William (now part of the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario), where they recorded a series of demos produced by a local producer, Ray Dee, whom Young called "the original Briggs". While playing at The Flamingo, Young met Stephen Stills, whose band The Company was playing the same venue, and they became friends. The Squires primarily performed in Winnipeg and rural Manitoba in towns such as Selkirk, Neepawa, Brandon and Giroux (near Steinbach), with a few shows in northern Ontario.

After leaving the Squires, Young worked folk clubs in Winnipeg, where he first met Joni Mitchell. Mitchell recalls Young as having been highly influenced by Bob Dylan at the time. Young said Phil Ochs was "a big influence on me," telling a radio station in 1969 that Ochs was "on the same level with Dylan in my eyes." Here he wrote some of his earliest and most enduring folk songs such as "Sugar Mountain", about lost youth. Mitchell wrote "The Circle Game" in response. The Winnipeg band The Guess Who (with Randy Bachman as lead guitarist) had a Canadian Top 40 hit with Young's "Flying on the Ground is Wrong", which was Young's first major success as a songwriter.

In 1965, Young toured Canada as a solo artist. In 1966, while in Toronto, he joined the Rick James-fronted Mynah Birds. The band managed to secure a record deal with the Motown label, but as their first album was being recorded, James was arrested for being AWOL from the Navy Reserve. After the Mynah Birds disbanded, Young and the bass player Bruce Palmer decided to pawn the group's musical equipment and buy a Pontiac hearse, which they used to relocate to Los Angeles. Young admitted in a 2009 interview that he was in the United States illegally until he received a "green card" (permanent residency permit) in 1970.

Once they reached Los Angeles, Young and Palmer met up with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay after a chance encounter in traffic on Sunset Boulevard. Along with Dewey Martin, they formed Buffalo Springfield. A mixture of folk, country, psychedelia, and rock, lent a hard edge by the twin lead guitars of Stills and Young, made Buffalo Springfield a critical success, and their first record Buffalo Springfield (1966) sold well after Stills' topical song "For What It's Worth" became a hit, aided by Young's melodic harmonics played on electric guitar. According to Rolling Stone, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other sources, Buffalo Springfield helped create the genres of folk rock and country rock.

Distrust of their management, as well as the arrest and deportation of Palmer, worsened the already strained relations among the group members and led to Buffalo Springfield's demise. A second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, was released in late 1967, but two of Young's three contributions were solo tracks recorded apart from the rest of the group.

From that album, "Mr. Soul" was the only Young song of the three that all five members of the group performed together. "Broken Arrow" features snippets of sound from other sources, including opening the song with a soundbite of Dewey Martin singing "Mr. Soul" and closing it with the thumping of a heartbeat. "Expecting to Fly" featured a string arrangement that Young's co-producer for the track, Jack Nitzsche, dubbed "symphonic pop".

In May 1968, the band split up for good, but to fulfill a contractual obligation, a final studio album, Last Time Around, was released. The album was primarily composed of recordings made earlier that year. Young contributed the songs "On the Way Home" and "I Am a Child", singing lead on the latter. In 1997, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Young did not appear at the ceremony. The three surviving members, Furay, Stills, and Young, appeared together as Buffalo Springfield at Young's annual Bridge School Benefit on October 23–24, 2010, and at Bonnaroo in the summer of 2011.

Young played as a studio session guitarist for some 1968 recordings by The Monkees which appeared on the Head and Instant Replay albums. Young had known Monkee Mike Nesmith since their folk shows at The Troubadour in 1965.

After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, Young signed a solo deal with Reprise Records, home of his colleague and friend Joni Mitchell, with whom he shared a manager, Elliot Roberts. Roberts managed Young until Roberts' death in 2019. Young and Roberts immediately began work on Young's first solo record, Neil Young (January 22, 1969), which received mixed reviews. In a 1970 interview, Young deprecated the album as being "overdubbed rather than played." The album contains songs that remain a staple of his live shows, including "The Loner."

For his next album, Young recruited three musicians from a band called the Rockets: Danny Whitten on guitar, Billy Talbot on bass guitar, and Ralph Molina on drums. These three took the name Crazy Horse (after the historical figure of the same name), and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (May 1969) is credited to "Neil Young with Crazy Horse." Recorded in just two weeks, the album includes "Cinnamon Girl", "Cowgirl in the Sand", and "Down by the River." Young reportedly wrote all three songs in bed on the same day while nursing a high fever of 103 °F (39 °C).

Shortly after the release of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Young reunited with Stephen Stills by joining Crosby, Stills & Nash, who had already released one album Crosby, Stills & Nash as a trio in May 1969. Young was originally offered a position as a sideman, but agreed to join only if he received full membership, and the group – winners of the 1969 Best New Artist Grammy Award – was renamed Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The quartet debuted in Chicago on August 16, 1969, and later performed at the famous Woodstock Festival, during which Young skipped the majority of the acoustic set and refused to be filmed during the electric set, even telling the cameramen: "One of you fuckin' guys comes near me and I'm gonna fuckin' hit you with my guitar". During the making of their first album, Déjà Vu (March 11, 1970), the musicians frequently argued, particularly Young and Stills, who both fought for control. Stills continued throughout their lifelong relationship to criticize Young, saying that he "wanted to play folk music in a rock band." Despite the tension, Young's tenure with CSNY coincided with the band's most creative and successful period, and greatly contributed to his subsequent success as a solo artist.

Young wrote "Ohio" following the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970. The song was quickly recorded by CSNY and immediately released as a single, even though CSNY's "Teach Your Children" was still climbing the singles charts.

Later in the year, Young released his third solo album, After the Gold Rush (August 31, 1970), which featured, among others, Nils Lofgren, Stephen Stills, and CSNY bassist Greg Reeves. Young also recorded some tracks with Crazy Horse, but dismissed them early in the sessions. The eventual recording was less amplified than Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, with a wider range of sounds. Young's newfound fame with CSNY made the album his commercial breakthrough as a solo artist, and it contains some of his best known work, including "Tell Me Why" and "Don't Let It Bring You Down"; the singles "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "When You Dance I Can Really Love"; and the title track, "After the Gold Rush", played on piano, with dreamlike lyrics that ran a gamut of subjects from drugs and interpersonal relationships to environmental concerns. Young's bitter condemnation of racism in the heavy blues-rock song "Southern Man" (along with a later song entitled "Alabama") was also controversial with southerners in an era of desegregation, prompting Lynyrd Skynyrd to decry Young by name in the lyrics to their hit "Sweet Home Alabama." However, Young said he was a fan of Skynyrd's music, and the band's front man Ronnie Van Zant was later photographed wearing a Tonight's the Night T-shirt on the cover of an album.

In the autumn of 1970, Young began a solo acoustic tour of North America, during which he played a variety of his Buffalo Springfield and CSNY songs on guitar and piano, along with material from his solo albums and a number of new songs. Some songs premiered by Young on the tour, like "Journey through the Past", would never find a home on a studio album, while other songs, like "See the Sky About to Rain", would only be released in coming years. With CSNY splitting up and Crazy Horse having signed their own record deal, Young's tour, now entitled Journey Through the Past, continued into early 1971, and its focus shifted more to newer songs he had been writing; he famously remarked that having written so many, he could not think of anything to do but play them. Many gigs were sold out, including concerts at Carnegie Hall and a pair of acclaimed hometown shows at Toronto's Massey Hall, which were taped for a planned live album. The shows became legendary among Young fans, and the recordings were officially released nearly 40 years later as an official bootleg in Young's Archive series.

Near the end of his tour, Young performed one of the new acoustic songs on the Johnny Cash TV show. "The Needle and the Damage Done", a somber lament on the pain caused by heroin addiction, had been inspired in part by Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten, who eventually died while battling his drug problems. While in Nashville for the Cash taping, Young accepted the invitation of Quadrafonic Sound Studios owner Elliot Mazer to record tracks there with a group of country-music session musicians who were pulled together at the last minute. Making a connection with them, he christened them The Stray Gators, and began playing with them. Befitting the immediacy of the project, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor were brought in from the Cash taping to do background vocals. Against the advice of his producer David Briggs, he scrapped plans for the imminent release of the live acoustic recording in favor of a studio album consisting of the Nashville sessions, electric-guitar oriented sessions recorded later in his barn, and two recordings made with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barking (credited as Barking Town Hall and now the Broadway Theatre) during March 1971. The result was Young's fourth album, Harvest (February 14, 1972), which was also the best selling album of 1972 in the US. The only remnant left of the original live concept was the album's live acoustic performance of "Needle and the Damage Done."

After his success with CSNY, Young purchased a ranch in the rural hills above Woodside and Redwood City in Northern California ("Broken Arrow Ranch", where he lived until his divorce in 2014). He wrote the song "Old Man" in honor of the land's longtime caretaker, Louis Avila. The song "A Man Needs a Maid" was inspired by his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress. "Heart of Gold" was released as the first single from Harvest, the only No. 1 hit in his career. "Old Man" was also popular, reaching No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, marking Young's third and final appearance in the chart's Top 40 as a solo artist.

The album's recording had been almost accidental. Its mainstream success caught Young off guard, and his first instinct was to back away from stardom. In the Decade (1977) compilation, Young chose to include his greatest hits from the period, but his handwritten liner notes famously described "Heart of Gold" as the song that "put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."

Although a new tour with The Stray Gators (now augmented by Danny Whitten) had been planned to follow up on the success of Harvest, it became apparent during rehearsals that Whitten could not function due to drug abuse. On November 18, 1972, shortly after he was fired from the tour preparations, Whitten was found dead of an apparent alcohol/diazepam overdose. Young described the incident to Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe in 1975: "[We] were rehearsing with him and he just couldn't cut it. He couldn't remember anything. He was too out of it. Too far gone. I had to tell him to go back to L.A. 'It's not happening, man. You're not together enough.' He just said, 'I've got nowhere else to go, man. How am I gonna tell my friends?' And he split. That night the coroner called me from L.A. and told me he'd OD'd. That blew my mind. I loved Danny. I felt responsible. And from there, I had to go right out on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and ... insecure."

On the tour, Young struggled with his voice and the performance of drummer Kenny Buttrey, a noted Nashville session musician who was unaccustomed to performing in the hard rock milieu; Buttrey was eventually replaced by former CSNY drummer Johnny Barbata, while David Crosby and Graham Nash contributed rhythm guitar and backing vocals to the final dates of the tour. The album assembled in the aftermath of this incident, Time Fades Away (October 15, 1973), has often been described by Young as "[his] least favorite record", and was not officially released on CD until 2017 (as part of Young's Official Release Series). Nevertheless, Young and his band tried several new musical approaches in this period. Time Fades Away, for instance, was recorded live, although it was an album of new material, an approach Young would repeat with more success later on. Time was the first of three consecutive commercial failures which would later become known collectively to fans as the "Ditch Trilogy", as contrasted with the more middle-of-the-road pop of Harvest. These subsequent albums were seen as more challenging expressions of Young's inner conflicts on achieving success, expressing both the specific struggles of his friends and himself, and the decaying idealism of his generation in America at the time.

In the second half of 1973, Young formed The Santa Monica Flyers, with Crazy Horse's rhythm section augmented by Nils Lofgren on guitar and piano and Harvest/Time Fades Away veteran Ben Keith on pedal steel guitar. Deeply affected by the drug-induced deaths of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, Young recorded an album specifically inspired by the incidents, Tonight's the Night (June 20, 1975). The album's dark tone and rawness led Reprise to delay its release and Young had to pressure them for two years before they would do so. While his record company was stalling, Young recorded another album, On the Beach (July 16, 1974), which presented a more melodic, acoustic sound at times, including a recording of the older song "See the Sky About to Rain", but dealt with similarly dark themes such as the collapse of 1960s folk ideals, the downside of success and the underbelly of the Californian lifestyle. Like Time Fades Away, it sold poorly but eventually became a critical favorite, presenting some of Young's most original work. A review of the 2003 re-release on CD of On the Beach described the music as "mesmerizing, harrowing, lucid, and bleary".

After completing On the Beach, Young reunited with Harvest producer Elliot Mazer to record another acoustic album, Homegrown. Most of the songs were written after Young's breakup with Carrie Snodgress, and thus the tone of the album was somewhat dark. Though Homegrown was reportedly entirely complete, Young decided, not for the first or last time in his career, to drop it and release something else instead, in this case, Tonight's the Night, at the suggestion of Band bassist Rick Danko. Young further explained his move by saying: "It was a little too personal ... it scared me". Most of the songs from Homegrown were later incorporated into other Young albums while the original album was not released until 2020. Tonight's the Night, when finally released in 1975, sold poorly, as had the previous albums of the "ditch" trilogy, and received mixed reviews at the time, but is now regarded as a landmark album. In Young's own opinion, it was the closest he ever came to art.

Young reunited with Crosby, Stills, and Nash after a four-year hiatus in the summer of 1974 for a concert tour which was partially recorded; highlights were ultimately released in 2014 as CSNY 1974. It was one of the first ever stadium tours, and the largest tour in which Young has participated to date.

In 1975, Young reformed Crazy Horse with Frank Sampedro on guitar as his backup band for his eighth album, Zuma (November 10, 1975). Many of the songs dealt with the theme of failed relationships; "Cortez the Killer", a retelling of the Spanish conquest of Mexico from the viewpoint of the Aztecs, may also be heard as an allegory of love lost. Zuma's closing track, "Through My Sails", was the only released fragment from aborted sessions with Crosby, Stills and Nash for another group album.

In 1976, Young reunited with Stephen Stills for the album Long May You Run (September 20, 1976), credited to The Stills-Young Band; the follow-up tour was ended midway through by Young, who sent Stills a telegram that read: "Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil."

In 1976, Young performed with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and numerous other rock musicians in the high-profile all-star concert The Last Waltz, the final performance by The Band. The release of Martin Scorsese's movie of the concert was delayed while Scorsese unwillingly re-edited it to obscure the lump of cocaine that was clearly visible hanging from Young's nose during his performance of "Helpless". American Stars 'n Bars (June 13, 1977) contained two songs originally recorded for the Homegrown album, "Homegrown" and "Star of Bethlehem", as well as newer material, including the future concert staple "Like a Hurricane". Performers on the record included Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Young protégé Nicolette Larson along with Crazy Horse. In 1977, Young also released the compilation Decade, a personally selected set of songs spanning every aspect of his work, including a handful of previously unreleased songs. The record included less commercial album tracks alongside radio hits.

Comes a Time (October 2, 1978), Young's first entirely new solo recording since the mid-1970s, marked a return to the commercially accessible, Nashville-inspired sound of Harvest while also featuring contributions from Larson and Crazy Horse. The album also marked a return to his folk roots, as exemplified by a cover of Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds", a song Young associated with his childhood in Canada. Another of the album's songs, "Lotta Love", was also recorded by Larson, with her version reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1979. In 1978, much of the filming was done for Young's film Human Highway, which took its name from a song featured on Comes a Time. Over four years, Young would spend US$3,000,000 of his own money on production (US$12,463,776 in 2021 dollars). This also marked the beginning of his brief collaboration with the art punk band Devo, whose members appeared in the film.

Young set out in 1978 on the lengthy Rust Never Sleeps tour, in which he played a wealth of new material. Each concert was divided into a solo acoustic set and an electric set with Crazy Horse. The electric sets, featuring an abrasive style of playing, were influenced by the punk rock zeitgeist of the late 1970s and provided a stark contrast from Comes a Time. Two new songs, the acoustic "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and electric "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" were the centerpiece of the new material. During the filming of Human Highway, Young had collaborated with Devo on a cacophonous version of "Hey Hey, My My" at the Different Fur studio in San Francisco and would later introduce the song to Crazy Horse. The lyric "It's better to burn out than to fade away" was widely quoted by his peers and by critics. The album has also widely been considered a precursor of grunge music and many grunge artists have said they were inspired by Young's distorted guitars on the B side to this album. Young also compared the rise of Johnny Rotten with that of the recently deceased "King" Elvis Presley, who himself had once been disparaged as a dangerous influence only to later become an icon. Rotten returned the favor by playing one of Young's songs, "Revolution Blues" from On the Beach, on a London radio show, an early sign of Young's eventual embrace by a number of punk-influenced alternative musicians.

Young's two accompanying albums Rust Never Sleeps (July 2, 1979; new material culled from live recordings, but featuring studio overdubs) and Live Rust (November 19, 1979; a genuine concert recording featuring old and new material) captured the two sides of the concerts, with solo acoustic songs on side A, and fierce, uptempo, electric songs on side B. A movie version of the concerts, also called Rust Never Sleeps (1979), was directed by Young under the pseudonym "Bernard Shakey". Young worked with rock artist Jim Evans to create the poster art for the film, using the Star Wars Jawas as a theme. Young's work since Harvest had alternated between being rejected by mass audiences and being seen as backward-looking by critics, sometimes both at once, and now he was suddenly viewed as relevant by a new generation, who began to discover his earlier work. Readers and critics of Rolling Stone voted him Artist of the Year for 1979 (along with The Who), selected Rust Never Sleeps as Album of the Year, and voted him Male Vocalist of the Year as well. The Village Voice named Rust Never Sleeps as the year's second best album in the Pazz & Jop Poll, a survey of nationwide critics, and honored Young as the Artist of the Decade. The Warner Music Vision release on VHS of Rust Never Sleeps in 1987 had a running time of 116 minutes, and although fully manufactured in Germany, was initially imported from there by the markets throughout Europe.

At the start of the 1980s, distracted by medical concerns relating to the cerebral palsy of his son, Ben, Young had little time to spend on writing and recording. After providing the incidental music to the 1980 film Where the Buffalo Roam, Young released Hawks & Doves (November 3, 1980), a short record pieced together from sessions going back to 1974.

Re·ac·tor (1981), an electric album recorded with Crazy Horse, also included material from the 1970s. Young did not tour in support of either album; in total, he played only one show, a set at the 1980 Bread and Roses Festival in Berkeley, between the end of his 1978 tour with Crazy Horse and the start of his tour with the Trans Band in mid-1982.

The 1982 album Trans, which incorporated vocoders, synthesizers, and electronic beats, was Young's first for the new label Geffen Records (distributed at the time by Warner Bros. Records, whose parent Warner Music Group owns most of Young's solo and band catalog) and represented a distinct stylistic departure. Young later revealed that an inspiration for the album was the theme of technology and communication with Ben, who could not speak. An extensive tour preceded the release of the album, and was documented by the video Neil Young in Berlin, which saw release in 1986. MTV played the video for "Sample and Hold" in light rotation.

Young's next album, 1983's Everybody's Rockin', included several rockabilly covers and clocked in at less than 25 minutes in length. Young was backed by the Shocking Pinks for the supporting US tour. Trans (1982) had already drawn the ire of label head David Geffen for its lack of commercial appeal, and with Everybody's Rockin' following seven months later, Geffen Records sued Young for making music "unrepresentative" of himself. The album was also notable as the first for which Young made commercial music videos – Tim Pope directed the videos for "Wonderin'" and "Cry, Cry, Cry". Also premiered in 1983, though little seen, was the long-gestating Human Highway. Co-directed and co-written by Young, the eclectic comedy starred Young, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, David Blue, Sally Kirkland, Charlotte Stewart and members of Devo.

Young did not release an album in 1984, his first unproductive year since beginning his career with Buffalo Springfield in 1966. Young's lack of productivity was largely due to the ongoing legal battle with Geffen, although he was also frustrated that the label had rejected his 1982 country album Old Ways. It was also the year when Young's third child was born, a girl named Amber Jean, who was later diagnosed with inherited epilepsy.

Young spent most of 1984 and all of 1985 touring for Old Ways (August 12, 1985) with his country band, the International Harvesters. The album was finally released in an altered form midway through 1985. Young also appeared at that year's Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, collaborating with Crosby, Stills and Nash for the quartet's first performance for a paying audience in over ten years.

Young's last two albums for Geffen were more conventional in the genre, although they incorporated production techniques like synthesizers and echoing drums that were previously uncommon in Young's music. Young recorded 1986's Landing on Water without Crazy Horse but reunited with the band for the subsequent year-long tour and final Geffen album, Life, which emerged in 1987. Young's album sales dwindled steadily throughout the eighties; today Life remains his all-time-least successful studio album, with an estimated four hundred thousand sales worldwide.

Switching back to his old label Reprise Records, Young continued to tour relentlessly, assembling a new blues band called The Bluenotes in mid-1987 (a legal dispute with musician Harold Melvin forced the eventual rechristening of the band as Ten Men Working midway through the tour). The addition of a brass section provided a new jazzier sound, and the title track of 1988's This Note's For You became Young's first hit single of the decade. Accompanied by a video that parodied corporate rock, the pretensions of advertising, and Michael Jackson, the song was initially unofficially banned by MTV for mentioning the brand names of some of their sponsors. Young wrote an open letter, "What does the M in MTV stand for: music or money?" Despite this, the video was eventually named best video of the year by the network in 1989.

Young reunited with Crosby, Stills, and Nash to record the 1988 album American Dream and play two benefit concerts late in the year, but the group did not embark upon a full tour.

Young attracted criticism from liberals in the music industry when he supported President Ronald Reagan and said he was "tired of people constantly apologising for being Americans". In a 1985 interview with Melody Maker, he said about the AIDS pandemic: “You go to a supermarket and you see a faggot behind the fuckin' cash register, you don't want him to handle your potatoes." In the same interview, Young also complained about welfare beneficiaries, saying: "Stop being supported by the government and get out and work. You have to make the weak stand up on one leg, or half a leg, whatever they've got." Rolling Stone wrote in 2013 that Young "almost certainly regrets that horrific statement" and that he "quickly moved away from right-wing politics".

Young's 1989 single "Rockin' in the Free World", which hit No. 2 on the US mainstream-rock charts, and accompanying the album, Freedom, returned Young to the popular consciousness after a decade of sometimes-difficult genre experiments. The album's lyrics were often overtly political; "Rockin' in the Free World" deals with homelessness, terrorism, and environmental degradation, implicitly criticizing the government policies of President George H. W. Bush.

The use of heavy feedback and distortion on several Freedom tracks was reminiscent of the Rust Never Sleeps (1979) album and foreshadowed the imminent rise of grunge. The rising stars of the subgenre, including Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, frequently cited Young as a major influence, contributing to his popular revival. A tribute album called The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young was released in 1989, featuring covers by a range of alternative and grunge acts, including Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, Soul Asylum, Dinosaur Jr, and the Pixies.

Young's 1990 album Ragged Glory, recorded with Crazy Horse in a barn on his Northern California ranch, continued this distortion-heavy aesthetic. Young toured for the album with Orange County, California country-punk band Social Distortion and Sonic Youth as support, much to the consternation of many of his old fans. Weld, a two-disc live album documenting the tour, was released in 1991. Sonic Youth's influence was evident on Arc, a 35-minute collage of feedback and distortion spliced together at the suggestion of Thurston Moore and originally packaged with some versions of Weld.

1992's Harvest Moon marked an abrupt return (prompted by Young's hyperacusis in the aftermath of the Weld tour) to the country and folk-rock stylings of Harvest and reunited him with some of the musicians from that album, including the core members of the Stray Gators and singers Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. The title track was a minor hit, and the record was well received by critics, winning the Juno Award for Album of the Year in 1994. Young also contributed to lifelong friend Randy Bachman's nostalgic 1992 tune "Prairie Town", and garnered a 1993 Academy Award nomination for his song "Philadelphia", from the soundtrack of the Jonathan Demme movie of the same name. An MTV Unplugged performance and album emerged in 1993. Later that year, Young collaborated with Booker T. and the M.G.s for a summer tour of Europe and North America, with Blues Traveler, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam also on the bill. Some European shows ended with a rendition of "Rockin' in the Free World" played with Pearl Jam, foreshadowing their eventual full-scale collaboration two years later.

In 1994, Young again collaborated with Crazy Horse for Sleeps with Angels, a record whose dark, somber mood was influenced by Kurt Cobain's death earlier that year: the title track in particular dealt with Cobain's life and death, without mentioning him by name. Cobain had quoted Young's lyric "It's better to burn out than fade away" (a line from "My My, Hey Hey") in his suicide note. Young had reportedly made repeated attempts to contact Cobain prior to his death. Young and Pearl Jam performed "Act of Love" at an abortion rights benefit along with Crazy Horse, and were present at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner, sparking interest in a collaboration between the two. Still enamored with the grunge scene, Young reconnected with Pearl Jam in 1995 for the live-in-the-studio album Mirror Ball and a tour of Europe with the band and producer Brendan O'Brien backing Young. 1995 also marked Young's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he was inducted by Eddie Vedder.

In 1995, Young and his manager Elliot Roberts founded a record label, Vapor Records. It has released recordings by Tegan and Sara, Spoon, Jonathan Richman, Vic Chesnutt, Everest, Pegi Young, Jets Overhead, and Young himself, among others.

Young's next collaborative partner was filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who asked Young to compose a soundtrack to his 1995 black-and-white western film Dead Man. Young's instrumental soundtrack was improvized while he watched the film alone in a studio. The death of longtime mentor, friend, and producer David Briggs in late 1995 prompted Young to reconnect with Crazy Horse the following year for the album and tour Broken Arrow. A Jarmusch-directed concert film and live album of the tour, Year of the Horse, emerged in 1997. From 1996 to 1997 Young and Crazy Horse toured extensively throughout Europe and North America, including a stint as part of the H.O.R.D.E. Festival's sixth annual tour.

In 1998, Young renewed his collaboration with the rock band Phish, sharing the stage at the annual Farm Aid concert and then at Young's Bridge School Benefit, where he joined headliners Phish for renditions of "Helpless" and "I Shall Be Released". Phish declined Young's later invitation to be his backing band on his 1999 North American tour.

The decade ended with the release in late 1999 of Looking Forward, another reunion with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. The subsequent tour of the United States and Canada with the reformed quartet earned US$42.1 million, making it the eighth largest grossing tour of 2000.

Neil Young continued to release new material at a rapid pace through the first decade of the new millennium. The studio album Silver & Gold and live album Road Rock Vol. 1 were released in 2000 and were both accompanied by live concert films. His 2001 single "Let's Roll" was a tribute to the victims of the September 11 attacks, and the effective action taken by the passengers and crew on Flight 93 in particular.

In 2003, Young released Greendale, a concept album recorded with Crazy Horse members Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. The songs loosely revolved around the murder of a police officer in a small town in California and its effects on the town's inhabitants. Under the pseudonym "Bernard Shakey", Young directed an accompanying film of the same name, featuring actors lip-synching to the music from the album. He toured extensively with the Greendale material throughout 2003 and 2004, first with a solo, acoustic version in Europe, then with a full-cast stage show in North America, Japan, and Australia. Young began using biodiesel on the 2004 Greendale tour, powering his trucks and tour buses with the fuel. "Our Greendale tour is now ozone friendly", he said. "I plan to continue to use this government approved and regulated fuel exclusively from now on to prove that it is possible to deliver the goods anywhere in North America without using foreign oil, while being environmentally responsible."

In March 2005, while working on the Prairie Wind album in Nashville, Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. He was treated successfully with a minimally invasive neuroradiological procedure, performed in a New York hospital on March 29, but two days afterwards he passed out on a New York street from bleeding from the femoral artery, which radiologists had used to access the aneurysm. The complication forced Young to cancel his scheduled appearance at the Juno Awards telecast in Winnipeg, but within months he was back on stage, appearing at the close of the Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario, on July 2. During the performance, he debuted a new song, a soft hymn called "When God Made Me". Young's brush with death influenced Prairie Wind's themes of retrospection and mortality. The album's live premiere in Nashville was recorded by filmmaker Jonathan Demme in the 2006 film Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

Young's renewed activism manifested itself in the 2006 album Living with War, which like the much earlier song "Ohio", was recorded and released in less than a month as a direct result of current events. Most of the album's songs rebuked the Bush administration's policy of war by examining its human costs to soldiers, their loved ones, and civilians, but Young also included a few songs on other themes and an outright protest song entitled "Let's Impeach the President", in which he asserted that Bush had lied to lead the country into war.

While Young had never been a stranger to eco-friendly lyrics, themes of environmentalist spirituality and activism became increasingly prominent in his work throughout the 1990s and 2000s, especially on Greendale (2003) and Living with War (2006). The trend continued on 2007's Chrome Dreams II, with lyrics exploring Young's personal eco-spirituality.

Young remains on the board of directors of Farm Aid, an organization he co-founded with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp in 1985. According to its website, it is the longest running concert benefit series in the US and it has raised $43 million since its first benefit concert in 1985. Each year, Young co-hosts and performs with well-known guest performers who include Dave Matthews and producers who include Evelyn Shriver and Mark Rothbaum, at the Farm Aid annual benefit concerts to raise funds and provide grants to family farms and prevent foreclosures, provide a crisis hotline, and create and promote home grown farm food in the United States.

In 2008, Young revealed his latest project, the production of a hybrid-engine 1959 Lincoln called LincVolt. A new album loosely based on the Lincvolt project, Fork in the Road, was released on April 7, 2009.

A Jonathan Demme concert film from a 2007 concert at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, called the Neil Young Trunk Show premiered on March 21, 2009, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. It was featured at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2009, and was released in the US on March 19, 2010, to critical acclaim.

In 2009, Young headlined the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, England, at Hard Rock Calling in London (where he was joined onstage by Paul McCartney for a rendition of "A Day in the Life") and, after years of unsuccessful booking attempts, the Isle of Wight Festival.

Young has been a vocal opponent of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would run from Alberta to Texas. When discussing the environmental impact on the oilsands of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Young asserted that the area now resembles the Japanese city of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the atomic bomb attack of World War II. Young has referred to issues surrounding the proposed use of oil pipelines as "scabs on our lives". In an effort to become more involved, Young has worked directly with the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation to draw attention to this issue, performing benefit concerts and speaking publicly on the subject. In 2014, he played four shows in Canada dedicated to the Honor the Treaties movement, raising money for the Athabasca Chipewyan legal defense fund. In 2015, he and Willie Nelson held a festival in Neligh, Nebraska, called Harvest the Hope, raising awareness of the impact of oilsands and oil pipelines on Native Americans and family farmers. Both received honors from leaders of the Rosebud, Oglala Lakota, Ponca and Omaha nations, and were invested with sacred buffalo robes.

Young participated in the Blue Dot Tour, which was organized and fronted by environmental activist David Suzuki, and toured all 10 Canadian provinces alongside other Canadian artists including the Barenaked Ladies, Feist, and Robert Bateman. The intent of Young's participation in this tour was to raise awareness of the environmental damage caused by the exploitation of oilsands. Young has argued that the amount of CO2 released as a byproduct of oilsand oil extraction is equivalent to the amount released by the total number of cars in Canada each day. Young has faced criticism by representatives from within the Canadian petroleum industry, who have argued that his statements are irresponsible. Young's opposition to the construction of oil pipelines has influenced his music as well. His song, "Who's Going to Stand Up?" was written to protest this issue, and features the lyric "Ban fossil fuel and draw the line / Before we build one more pipeline".

In addition to directly criticizing members of the oil industry, Young has also focused blame on the actions of the Canadian government for ignoring the environmental impacts of climate change. He referred to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as "an embarrassment to many Canadians ... [and] a very poor imitation of the George Bush administration in the United States". Young was also critical of Barack Obama's government for failing to uphold the promises made regarding environmental policies during his election campaign.

Young recorded "A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop" in response to Starbucks' possible involvement with Monsanto and use of genetically modified food. The song was included on his 2015 concept album The Monsanto Years.

On January 22, 2010, Young performed "Long May You Run" on the final episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. On the same night, he and Dave Matthews performed the Hank Williams song "Alone and Forsaken", for the Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief charity telethon, in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Young also performed "Long May You Run" at the closing ceremony of the 2010 Olympic winter games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In May 2010, it was revealed Young had begun working on a new studio album produced by Daniel Lanois. This was announced by David Crosby, who said that the album "will be a very heartfelt record. I expect it will be a very special record." On May 18, 2010, Young embarked upon a North American solo tour to promote his then upcoming album, Le Noise, playing a mix of older songs and new material. Although billed as a solo acoustic tour, Young also played some songs on electric guitars, including Old Black.

In September 2011, Jonathan Demme's third documentary film on the singer songwriter, Neil Young Journeys, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

On January 22, 2012, the Master Class at the Slamdance Festival featured Coffee with Neil Young & Jonathan Demme discussing their film Neil Young Journeys. Young said that he had been recording with Crazy Horse, completing one album and working on another.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse performed a version of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" for Paul McCartney's MusiCares Person of the Year dinner on February 10, 2012, in Hollywood.

Neil Young with Crazy Horse released the album Americana on June 5, 2012. It was Young's first collaboration with Crazy Horse since the Greendale album and tour in 2003 and 2004. The record is a tribute to unofficial national anthems that jumps from an uncensored version of "This Land Is Your Land" to "Clementine" and includes a version of "God Save the Queen", which Young grew up singing every day in school in Canada. Americana is Neil Young's first album composed entirely of cover songs. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, making it Young's highest-charting album in the US since Harvest. On June 5, 2012, American Songwriter also reported that Neil Young and Crazy Horse would be launching their first tour in eight years in support of the album.

On August 25, 2012, Young was mistakenly reported dead by NBCNews.com, the day when astronaut Neil Armstrong died.

On September 25, 2012, Young's autobiography Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream was released to critical and commercial acclaim. Reviewing the book for the New York Times, Janet Maslin reported that Young chose to write his memoirs in 2012 for two reasons: he needed to take a break from stage performances for health reasons but continue to generate income; and he feared the onset of dementia, considering his father's medical history and his own present condition. Maslin praised the book, describing it as frank but quirky and without pathos.

In November 2013, Young performed at the annual fundraiser for the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. Following the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he played an acoustic set to a crowd who had paid a minimum of $2,000 a seat to attend the benefit in the famous Paramour Mansion overlooking downtown Los Angeles.

Young released the album A Letter Home on April 19, 2014, through Jack White's record label, and his second memoir, entitled Special Deluxe, which was released on October 14. He appeared with White on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on May 12, 2014.

The 2014 debut solo album by Chrissie Hynde, entitled Stockholm, featured Young on guitar on the track "Down the Wrong Way".

Young released his thirty-fifth studio album, Storytone on November 4, 2014. The first song released from the album, "Who's Gonna Stand Up?", was released in three different versions on September 25, 2014.

Storytone was followed in 2015 by his concept album The Monsanto Years. The Monsanto Years is an album themed both in support of sustainable farming, and to protest the biotechnology company Monsanto. Young achieves this protest in a series of lyrical sentiments against genetically modified food production. He created this album in collaboration with Willie Nelson's sons, Lukas and Micah, and is also backed by Lukas's fellow band members from Promise of the Real. Additionally, Young released a film in tandem to the album, (also entitled The Monsanto Years), that documents the album's recording, and can be streamed online. In August 2019, The Guardian reported Young, among other environmental activists, was being spied on by the firm.

In summer 2015, Young undertook a North America tour titled the Rebel Content Tour. The tour began on July 5, 2015, at the Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and ended on July 24, 2015, at the Wayhome Festival in Oro-Medonte, Ontario. Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real were special guests for the tour.

In October 2016, Young performed at Desert Trip in Indio, California, and announced his thirty-seventh studio album, Peace Trail, recorded with drummer Jim Keltner and bass guitarist Paul Bushnell, which was released that December.

On September 8, 2017, Young released Hitchhiker, a studio LP recorded on August 11, 1976, at Indigo Studios in Malibu. The album features ten songs that Young recorded accompanied by acoustic guitar or piano. While different versions of most of the songs have been previously released, the new album will include two never-before-released songs: "Hawaii" and "Give Me Strength", which Young has occasionally performed live.

On July 4, 2017, Young released the song "Children of Destiny" which would appear on his next album. On November 3, 2017, Young released "Already Great", a song from The Visitor, an album he recorded with Promise of the Real and released on December 1, 2017.

On December 1, 2017, Young performed live in Omemee, Ontario, Canada, a town he had lived in as a child.

On Record Store Day, April 21, 2018, Warner Records released a two-vinyl LP special edition of Roxy: Tonight's the Night Live, a double live album of a show that Young performed in September 1973 at the Roxy in West Hollywood, with the Santa Monica Flyers. The album is labeled as "Volume 05" in Young's Performance Series.

On October 19, 2018, Young released a live version of his song "Campaigner", an excerpt from a forthcoming archival live album titled Songs for Judy, which features solo performances recorded during a November 1976 tour with Crazy Horse. It will be the first release from his new label Shakey Pictures Records.

In November 2018, shortly after his home had been destroyed by the California wildfire, Young criticized President Donald Trump's stance on climate change.

In December 2018, Young criticized the promoters of a London show for selecting Barclays Bank as a sponsor. Young objected to the bank's association with fossil fuels. Young explained that he was trying to rectify the situation by finding a different sponsor.

Neil Young was among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

On August 19, 2019, Neil Young and Crazy Horse announced the forthcoming release later in August 2019 of the new song "Rainbow of Colors", the first single from the album Colorado, Young's first new record with the band in seven years, since 2012's Psychedelic Pill. Young, multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina recorded the new album with Young's co-producer, John Hanlon, in spring 2019. The 10 new songs are ranging from around 3 minutes to over 13 minutes. Colorado was released on October 25, 2019 on Reprise Records. On August 30, 2019, Young unveiled "Milky Way", the first song from Colorado, a love ballad he had performed several times at concerts – both solo acoustic and with Promise of the Real.

In February 2020, Young wrote an open letter to President Trump, calling him a "disgrace to my country". On August 4, 2020, Young filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump's reelection campaign for the use of his music at campaign rallies.

In April 2020, Young announced that he was working on a new archival album, Road of Plenty, comprising music made with Crazy Horse in 1986 and rehearsals for his 1989 Saturday Night Live appearance. On June 19, Young released a "lost" album, Homegrown. He recorded it in the mid-1970s following his breakup with Carrie Snodgress, but opted not to release it at the time, feeling it was too personal. In September, Young released a live EP, The Times. Young shared the news via his video for his new song "Lookin' for a Leader", stating: "I invite the President to play this song at his next rally. A song about the feelings many of us have about America today."

In January 2021, Young sold 50% of the rights to his back catalog to the British investment company Hipgnosis Songs Fund. The value was estimated to be at least $150 million. Young and Crazy Horse released a new album, Barn, on December 10, 2021. The first single, "Song of the Seasons", was released on October 15, followed by "Welcome Back" on December 3, along with a music video. A stand-alone will be released on Blu-ray and will be directed by Daryl Hannah. Young also confirmed that he had completed his third book, Canary, his first work of fiction.

On January 24, 2022, Young posted an open letter threatening to remove his music from the audio streaming service Spotify if it did not remove The Joe Rogan Experience podcast from the platform. Young accused the podcast of COVID-19 misinformation, writing that "Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform". On January 26, Young's music was removed from Spotify, with a spokesperson for the company stating that Spotify wanted "all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users" and that it had a "great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators". Subsequently, other artists such as Joni Mitchell and the members of Crosby, Stills, and Nash removed their music from Spotify, in agreement with Young's stance. Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also praised Young's action.

In an interview in 2008, Young discussed Toast, an album originally recorded with Crazy Horse in San Francisco in 2000 but never released.

On July 14, 2009, Young's first four solo albums were reissued as remastered HDCD discs and digital downloads as discs 1–4 of the Original Release Series of the Archives.

As of 2019, Young has launched a subscription website and application where all of his music is available to stream in high resolution audio. The Neil Young Archives also include his newspaper, The Times-Contrarian, The Hearse Theater, and photographs and memorabilia from throughout his career.

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