There are few stars in the world who can match the extensive and impressive career of Neil Percival Young, without doubts one of the best rock, folk and country rock musicians ever to live, with a burning passion for music that started in 1960 in his hometown of Winnipeg, Canada. It wasn´t long till this talented young man decided to move to Los Angeles, California, back at those days the “City of Angels” was the staging point for many bands, qincluding The Doors and many others.
It was in Los Angeles when he started playing with some bands like Buffalo Springfield, together with Stephen Stills, Richie Furray and many others, composing some truly impressive songs lik e “For What´s it´s Worth”, combining elements of folk music, some of that notorious “British Invasion” of the 1960´s and of course some of Young´s personal touch, country music. Not long after that, he started playing as a soloist, with a backing band known as Crazy Horse. Those great times in his career helped him launch some of the best albums in his repertory, such as Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Harvest, After the Gold Rush, On the Beach and Rust Never Sleeps.
But his career also took him to be a member in some other great bands like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as well as collaborating with a lot of young country and folk music artists, who took the impulse of Neil Young to launch themselves to some really interesting music. In fact, his guitar work and ocean deep lyrics turned mister Young in one of the most interesting musicians for long decades, frequently combining musical styles to create a very particular mixture of country, rock, folk and a great number of other musical styles, to end up with his particular music.
A musician with many facets
He´s not only a deeply compromised musician, but also a very talented film director, as he also had a particular career in films, directing or codirecting under the pseudonym of “Bernard Shakey” films like Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979) and Greendale (2003), amongst many others. Also he contributed with sound effects and music in some heavy weight productions like Philadelphia (1993) and Dead Man (1995).
With all this on his back, he also faced some “big monsters” in the musical arena, in the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic, when he protested (amongst other great artists like Joni Mitchell) against the anti-vaccination campaign launched by The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in Spotify. They opposed these messages and asked the platform to remove them, threatening to remove their catalogues from the online music streaming service, and as Spotify bought the exclusives rights to Joe Rogan´s show, they decided not to remove those anti-vaccination podcasts.
Soon after that, Young decided to remove his complete catalogue from the streaming service, convincing a great number of musicians and other radio artists to do the same, giving a big blog to Spotify that nearly brought it down. In fact, this fight was heaven for Spotify´s competitors, which found in this withdrawal a great opportunity to bring those artists as Neil Young to their orbits.
Neil Young with Conan O´Brien
Early this month the talented musician gave an interesting interview with the comedian in Team Coco Radio, discussing a great variety of topics, including songwriting craft, Young´s television appearances, and one of the big topics nowadays: the power or radio. Since Young is quite an activist as was shown in his fight with a heavy weight boxer as Spotify, he also talked deeply about his relation with radio and why is it so important these days.
Since radio is closely linked to the possibility to learn the truth about some important topics in life, Neil Young is a resilient defender of modern podcasting, but also old school radios, since they are the vehicle for country and folk music in the deep roads of America and Canada alike. But also in many other countries, as Internet connection is impossible to find in the deep country, there´s only radio as a vehicle for ideas, but also music.
In O´Brien´s radio show, Young also talked about some of his recent launches, like the 50th anniversary of Harvest at the end of 2022, as well as another big “surprise” in the fashion the musician likes, in the form of a new album, called “Toast” recorded with Crazy Horse back in 2001 and set in the basement for more than 20 years.
His impressive musical career doesn´t seem to find an end, as he launched another all-new album back in October of 2022, together his is everlasting band, Crazy Horse. With the name of “World Record”, it´s a great attraction for those fans of the country and folk genre, as he somehow found a way to surpass himself with yet another record breaking album.
Young also took the chance to talk about the late Johnny Cash, Ian & Sylvia, talking from the heart he managed even to blush a little the ever funny O´Brien. It seems that 2023 will only bring more music to his repertory, with live performances, and why not, much more albums.
