Neil Young

''' following only 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 an eclectic full-length comedy film Human Highway, co-directed and co-written by Young, and starring Young and members of Devo.

1984 was the first year without a Neil Young album since the start of Young's musical 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. Young spent most of 1984 and all of 1985 touring for Old Ways 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, teaming up 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 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 its repeated demands that the listener "get off of that couch, turn off that MTV" before eventually being 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. The album was only the second-ever studio record for the quartet.

1990s - Return to prominence

]

Young's 1989 single "Rockin' in the Free World", which hit #2 on the U.S. charts, and accompanying album, Freedom, rocketed him back into 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 Bush-era government policies.

The use of heavy feedback and distortion on several Freedom tracks was reminiscent of the Rust Never Sleeps album, and foreshadowed the imminent rise of grunge music. The rising stars of the genre, 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 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 alternative rock elder statesmen 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 most evident on Arc, a 35-minute collage of feedback and distortion spliced together at the suggestion of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and originally packaged with some versions of Weld.

1992's Harvest Moon marked an abrupt return to the country and folk-rock stylings of Harvest and reunited him with some of the musicians from that album, including 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 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 teamed up with Booker T. and the MGs for a summer tour of Europe and North America. 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 teamed up 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 (Out of the Blue)") in his suicide note, causing Young to emphasize the line "'cause once you're gone you can't come back" in his live performances. Young had reportedly made repeated attempts to contact Cobain prior to his death. 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.

Young's next collaborative partner was filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who asked Young to compose a soundtrack to his 1995 acid western film Dead Man. Young's instrumental soundtrack was improvised 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 1996-97 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 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, however, 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 super quartet earned $42.1 million, making it the eighth largest grossing tour of 2000.

2000s - Keep on rockin' in the free world.

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, 2001 attacks, and the passengers and crew on Flight 93 in particular. At the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" benefit concert for the victims of the attacks, Young performed John Lennon's "Imagine". "Let's Roll" was included on 2002's Are You Passionate?, an album comprised mostly of mellow love songs dedicated to Young's wife, Pegi.

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. Young, under the pseudonym "Bernard Shakey", directed an accompanying film of the same name, featuring actors lip-synching to the music from the album. Young 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 spent the latter portion of 2004 giving a series of intimate acoustic concerts in various cities with his wife, who is a trained vocalist and guitar player.

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. Two days afterwards, Young passed out on a New York street from bleeding from the femoral artery, which surgeons 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 immortalized by filmmaker Jonathan Demme in the 2006 film Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

Neil Young on the CSNY "Freedom Of Speech Tour '06"

Young's renewed activism manifested itself in the 2006 album Living With War, which was hastily recorded and released in less than a month. The album's overtly political songs rebuked U.S. President George W. Bush and the War in Iraq and included the provocatively-titled "Let's Impeach the President". Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited for the supporting "Freedom Of Speech Tour '06". CSNY Déjà Vu, a concert film of the tour directed by Young was released in 2008, along with an accompanying live album.

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 and Living With War. The trend continued on 2007's Chrome Dreams II, with lyrics exploring Young's personal eco-spirituality. 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 rolled out on April 7, 2009.

A Jonathan Demme concert film from a 2007 concert 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.

Young continues to tour extensively. Most recently, he headlined the 2009 Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, England and, after years of unsuccessful booking attempts, the Isle of Wight Festival in addition to performances at the Big Day Out festival in New Zealand and Australia and the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona.

Young currently lives in La Honda, California on the 1500-acre (6 km²) Broken Arrow Ranch, purchased in 1970 and named after one of Young's early Buffalo Springfield songs.

Influence, importance and inspiration

Cleanup-section
Neil Young has been an undeniably important artist
The Australian rock group Powderfinger named themselves after Young's song "Powderfinger" from the 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps.

The members of the Constantines have occasionally played Neil Young tribute shows under the name Horsey Craze.

While in Winnipeg on November 2, 2008 during the Canadian leg of his tour, Bob Dylan visited Young's former home in River Heights, where Neil spent some of his teenage years. Dylan was interested in seeing the room where some of Neil's first songs were composed.

Achievements

Young in June 2008
Young was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1982. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: first in 1995 for his solo work, with an induction speech given by Eddie Vedder, and again in 1997 as a member of Buffalo Springfield.

He has also directed five movies under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey, and released them through his own Shakey Pictures imprint: Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979) Human Highway (1982) (starring new wave band Devo), and Greendale (2003) and the documentary, CSNY Deja Vu (2008). The bonus DVDs included in both versions of Greendale and in Prairie Wind are also directed by Young under the Bernard Shakey alias, and all of Young's home video and DVD releases have been co-released under the Shakey Pictures imprint.

As one of the original founders of Farm Aid, he remains an active member of the board of directors. For one weekend each October, in Mountain View, California, he and his wife host the Bridge School Concerts, which have been drawing international talent and sell-out crowds for nearly two decades with some of the biggest names in rock having performed at the event including Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, The Who, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth and Sir Paul McCartney. The concerts are a benefit for the Bridge School, which develops and uses advanced technologies to aid in the instruction of children with disabilities. Young's involvement stems at least partially from the fact that both of his sons have cerebral palsy and his daughter, like Young himself, has epilepsy.

Young was nominated for an Oscar in 1994 for his song "Philadelphia" from the film Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen won the award for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" from the same film). In his acceptance speech, Springsteen said that "the award really deserved to be shared by the other nominee's song." That same night, Tom Hanks accepted the Oscar for Best Actor and gave credit for his inspiration to the song "Philadelphia".

He was part owner of Lionel, LLC, a company that makes toy trains and model railroad accessories.last= Brick In 2008 Lionel emerged from bankruptcy and his shares of the company were wiped out. At this time his status with Lionel is unknown, according to Lionel CEO Jerry Calabrese he is still a consultant for Lionel. He was instrumental in the design of the Lionel Legacy control system for model trains and it is believed he will continue to develop the system. Young has been named as co-inventor on seven U.S. Patents related to model trains.

Young has twice received honorary doctorates. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario in 1992, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from San Francisco State University in 2006. The latter honour was shared with his wife Pegi for their creation of the Bridge School.

In a "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list in the June 1996 issue of Mojo magazine, Young was ranked No. 9.

In 2003, Rolling Stone listed Young at #83 in its rankings of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", describing him as a "restless experimenter...who transform[3] the most obvious music into something revelatory."

In 2000, Young was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. He ranked No. 39 on ''VH1's 100 Greatest Artist of Hard Rock that same year.
In 2001, Young was awarded the Spirit of Liberty award from the civil liberties group People for the American Way.

In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Neil Young #34 on their list of the www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939214/the_immortals_the_first_fifty/" class="PageLink" target="_blank">100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

In 2006, Paste Magazine compiled a "Greatest Living Songwriters" list; Young was ranked No. 2 behind Bob Dylan. (While Young and Dylan have occasionally played together in concert, they have never collaborated on a song together, or played on each others' records).

Jason Bond, an East Carolina University biologist, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider in 2007 and named it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi after Young, his favorite singer (a previous similar case was the dinousaur Masiakasaurus knopfleri named after the musician Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits).

In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked Young at #37 in its list of "The 100 Greatest Singers of All-Time".

In 2009, He was nominated for a Grammy for Best Solo Rock Vocal performance.

Instruments

]
Neil Young is a collector of second-hand guitars, but in recording and performing, he frequently uses just a few instruments. As explained by his longtime guitar technician Larry Cragg in the film Neil Young: Heart of Gold, they include:

1953 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop—Nicknamed "Old Black", this is Young's primary electric guitar and is featured on Rust Never Sleeps and most other albums. Old Black got its name from a purely amateur paintjob applied to the originally-gold body of the instrument, sometime before Neil acquired the guitar in the late 1960s. In 1972, a mini-humbucker pickup from a Gibson Firebird guitar was installed into the lead/treble position, replacing a P-90 as standard on Les Paul guitars from that era. This pickup, severely microphonic, is considered a crucial component of Neil's sound. A Bigsby vibrato tailpiece was installed as early as 1969 on the guitar, and can be heard clearly during the opening of "Cowgirl in the Sand" from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. This guitar also features a mini-switch that is used to send the signal from the mini-humbucker direct to the amp, without going through the volume or tone controls. A Les Paul Gold Top of the same year as Old Black was assembled by Neil's guitar tech, using same style Firebird pick up in the guitar as well as the same model Bigsby Vib; but, according to Young, was just not the same as the original. Young acquired Old Black from Jim Messina, swapping one of his Gretsches for it in 1969 while Messina was assisting Young on his first solo album. Messina, who played briefly in Buffalo Springfield and produced the band's final album, "Last Time Around," still has the Gretch in his possession.

Martin D-45—His primary steel-string acoustic guitar; used to write "Old Man" and many other hit songs.
Martin D-28—Nicknamed "Hank" after its previous owner, Hank Williams. The guitar came into Young's possession after Hank Williams, Jr. had traded it to another owner for some shotguns and it went through a succession of other owners until it was located by Young's longtime friend Grant Boatwright. The guitar was purchased by Young from Tut Taylor. Young has toured with it for over 30 years. A story about the guitar and inspired song known as "This Old Guitar" can be seen about 50 minutes into the film Neil Young: Heart of Gold. It is Young's primary guitar for the album, Prairie Wind.
Neil Young can be seen playing a Vagabond Travel Guitar as he sings "Let's Impeach the President" on The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.
A 12-string Taylor 855 is used in the first half of the soundtrack and concert film "Rust Never Sleeps"
1927 Gibson Mastertone—A six-string banjo, tuned like a guitar. It has been used on many recordings and was played by James Taylor on "Old Man".
Various vintage Fender Tweed Deluxe amplifiers— Young's preferred amplifier for electric guitar is the diminutive Fender Deluxe, specifically a Tweed-era model from 1959. Neil purchased his first vintage Deluxe in 1967 for $50 from the drummer of Crazy Horse, Ralph Molina, and has since acquired nearly 450 different examples, all from the same era, but he maintains that it's the original model that sounds superior, and is a crucial component to his trademark sound. The Tweed Deluxe is almost always used in conjunction with a late-1950's Magnatone 280 (similar to the amp used by Lonnie Mack and Buddy Holly). The Magnatone and the Deluxe are paired together in a somewhat unique manner - the PageLink speaker jack from the Deluxe sends the amped signal through a volume potentiometer and directly into the input of the Magnatone. The Magnatone is notable for its true pitch-bending vibrato capabilities, which can be heard as an electric piano amplifier on "See the Sky About to Rain". A notable and unique accessory to Young's Deluxe is the Whizzer, a device created specifically for Young, which physically changes the amplifier's settings to pre-set combinations. It has gone through many incarnations.
Gretsch 6120 (Chet Atkins)—Before Young bought Old Black, this was his primary electric guitar used during his Buffalo Springfield days.
Gretsch White Falcon – Late '50s hollow body that Young purchased near the end of the Buffalo Springfield era; in 1969 Young acquired a stereo version of the same vintage guitar from Stills, and this instrument is featured prominently during Young's early '70s period, and can be heard on tracks like "Ohio," "Southern Man," "Alabama," "L.A.," others. It is Neil's primary electric guitar during the Harvest era. This particular White Falcon is the stereo 6137, in which the signal from the three bass strings is separated from the signal from the three treble strings. Young typically plays this guitar in this stereo mode, sending the separate signals to two different amps: the Fender Deluxe and typically to either a Fender Tremolux or a low-powered Tweed Fender Twin. The separation of the signals is most prominently heard on the Harvest album song "Words".
Neil Young replaced his trademark Les Paul with a Gibson Flying V on the "Time Fades Away" tour.
Neil Young played a Fender Broadcaster on the Tonight's the Night tour and album.

Discography

Copyright Citations
This article is licensed under the GNU License
Click here for original article: Neil Young