Neil Young

Young and his mother settled into the working-class area of Fort Rouge, Winnipeg, where the shy, dry-humoured youth 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 favour of a musical career.[39] 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". The band 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, who Young called "the original Briggs".[40] While playing at The Flamingo, Young met Stephen Stills, whose band the Company was playing the same venue, and they became friends.[41] The Squires played in several dance halls and clubs in Winnipeg and Ontario.[42]

After leaving the Squires, Young worked folk clubs in Winnipeg, where he first met Joni Mitchell.[43] Mitchell recalls Young as having been highly influenced by Bob Dylan at the time.[44] 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.[45] 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.[46]

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.[47] 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.[48] 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.[49]

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.[48] 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.[50]

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 also played as a studio session guitarist for some 1968 recordings by The Monkees which appeared on the Head and Instant Replay albums.[51]

After the break-up 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, who managed Young until his death in 2019. Young and Roberts immediately began work on Young's first solo record, Neil Young (January 22, 1969),[52] which received mixed reviews. In a 1970 interview,[53] 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).[54]

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.[55] 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".[56] 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."[57] Despite the tension, Young's tenure with CSN&Y 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 CSN&Y and immediately released as a single, even though CSN&Y'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 country-influenced 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 dream-like 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.

Young in the 1970s

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.[58][59] 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[60] of the live acoustic recording in favour 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.[61] The result was Young's fourth album, Harvest (February 14, 1972). 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.[62]). 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.

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:[49] "[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 (1972).[63] 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.

Young in Austin, Texas, on November 9, 1976

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.[64] 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".[65]

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 break-up 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.[66] Young further explained his move by saying: "It was a little too personal ... it scared me".[66] 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.[67]

Young reunited with Crosby, Stills, and Nash after a four-year hiatus in the summer of 1974 for a concert tour which was recorded and 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.[68]

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."[69]

The Last Waltz, Young (center on left microphone) performing with Bob Dylan and The Band, among others in 1976

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".[70] 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, also featured Larson and Crazy Horse. The album became Young's most commercially accessible album in quite some time and marked a return to his folk roots, including 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 number 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 $3,000,000 of his own money on production (US$11,759,694 in 2019 dollars[71]). This also marked the beginning of his brief collaboration with the post-punk band Devo, whose members appeared in the film.[72]

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 Young's previous, folk-inspired album Comes a Time.[73] 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. Young had collaborated with the art punk band 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.[74] The lyrics, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." were widely quoted by his peers and by critics.[74] 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 favour 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.[75]

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 mixture of old and new, and a genuine concert recording) 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 (1972) 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.[76] The Village Voice named Rust Never Sleeps as the year's winner 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 decade, distracted by medical concerns relating to the cerebral palsy of his son, Ben, Young had little time to spend on writing and recording.[77] After providing the incidental music to a 1980 biographical film of Hunter S. Thompson entitled Where the Buffalo Roam, Young released Hawks & Doves (November 3, 1980), a short record pieced together from sessions going back to 1974.[77]

1981's Re·ac·tor, an electric album recorded with Crazy Horse, also included material from the 1970s.[78] 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,[79] 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 catalogue) and represented a distinct stylistic departure. Young later revealed that an inspiration for the album was the theme of technology and communication with his son Ben, who has severe cerebral palsy and cannot speak.[81] 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. The entire song contained "robot vocals" by Young and Nils Lofgren. The song "After Berlin" as seen in that video, was the only time Neil Young has ever performed the song.

Young playing in Barcelona, Spain, 1984

Young's next album, 1983's Everybody's Rockin', included several rockabilly covers and clocked in at less than twenty-five 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 only seven months later, Geffen Records sued Young for making music "unrepresentative" of himself.[82] 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 Human Highway. Co-directed and co-written by Young, the long-gestating eclectic comedy starred Young, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, David Blue, Sally Kirkland, Charlotte Stewart and members of Devo.

The first year without a Neil Young album since the start of Young's musical career with Buffalo Springfield in 1966 was in 1984. 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.[83] It was also the year when Young's third child was born, a girl named Amber Jean. Later diagnosed with inherited epilepsy, Amber Jean was Neil and Pegi's second child together.

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.[84]

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.[85] By comparison, the major music cable network of Young's home nation, Muchmusic, ran the video immediately.

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.

Young performing in 1996 in Turku, Finland

Young's 1989 single "Rockin' in the Free World", which hit No. 2 on the US mainstream-rock charts, and accompanying the 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 the government policies of President George H.W. Bush.[86]

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 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 esthetic. Young toured for the album with Orange County, California country-punk band Social Distortion and alternative rock pioneers Sonic Youth as support, much to the consternation of many of his old fans.[87] Weld, a two-disc live album documenting the tour, was released in 1991.[87] 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.[87]

1992's Harvest Moon marked an abrupt return to the country and folk-rock stylings of Harvest (1972) 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 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.

Young on stage in Barcelona

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.[88] 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.[89] 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.

Young has consistently demonstrated the unbridled passion of an artist who understands that self-renewal is the only way to avoid burning out. For this reason, he has remained one of the most significant artists of the rock and roll era.

— Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website.[90][91]

In 1995, Young and his manager Elliot Roberts founded a record label, Vapor Records.[92] It has released recordings by Tegan and Sara, Spoon, Jonathan Richman, Vic Chesnutt, Everest, Pegi Young, Jets Overhead, and Young himself, among others.[92]

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 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 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".[93] 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 super quartet earned US$42.1 million, making it the eighth largest grossing tour of 2000.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young perform at the PNC Bank Arts Center in 2006. (From L to R: Nash, Stills, Young, and Crosby)

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.[94] At the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" benefit concert for the victims of the attacks, Young performed John Lennon's "Imagine" and accompanied Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready on "Long Road", a Pearl Jam song that was written with Young during the Mirrorball sessions. "Let's Roll" was included on 2002's Are You Passionate?, an album mostly composed of mellow love songs dedicated to Young's wife, Pegi, backed by Booker T. & the M.G.s.

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.[95] 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."[96] 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.

Stills and Young performing together on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 2006 tour

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,[97] 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.[98] 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.[99] 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.[100] In early 2006, three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the sectarian war and casualties there were escalating. While doing errands on a visit to his daughter, Young had seen a newspaper photo of wounded U.S. veterans on a transport plane to Germany, and noticing that the same paper devoted little actual coverage to the story, he was unable to get the image out of his head, realizing the suffering caused to families by the war had not truly registered to him and most Americans who were not directly affected by it. Young cried, and immediately got his guitar out and began to write multiple songs at once. Within a few days he had completed work and assembled a band. He later said he had restrained himself for a long time from writing any protest songs, waiting for someone younger, with a different perspective, but no one seemed to be saying anything.

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 titled, "Let's Impeach the President",[101] in which he stated that Bush had lied to lead the country into war. Young's lyrics in another song named Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who had not declared any intention to run for president at the time and was widely unexpected to be able to win either the Democratic Party nomination or a general election, as potentially a replacement for Bush. That summer, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited for the supporting "Freedom of Speech Tour '06", in which they played Young's new protest songs alongside the group's older material, meeting with both enthusiasm and anger from different fans, some of whom were supportive of Bush politically. CSNY Déjà Vu, a concert film of the tour directed by Young himself, 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 (2003)[102] and Living with War (2006).[103] The trend continued on 2007's Chrome Dreams II, with lyrics exploring Young's personal eco-spirituality.[104] Also in 2007, Young accepted an invitation to participate in Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, contributing his version of "Walking to New Orleans".

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 U.S. 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.[105]

Young performing in Oslo, Norway in 2009

In 2008, Young revealed his latest project, the production of a hybrid-engine 1959 Lincoln called LincVolt.[106] A new album loosely based on the Lincvolt project, Fork in the Road, was released on April 7, 2009.[107] The album, partly composed of love songs to the car, also commented on the economic crisis, with one narrator attacking the Wall Street bailouts enacted in late 2008. Unfortunately, the car caught fire in November 2010, in a California warehouse, and along the way it burned an estimated US$850,000 worth of Young's rock and roll memorabilia collection. Initial reports suggest the fire might have been triggered by an error in the vehicle's plug-in charging system. Young blamed the fire on human error and said he and his team were committed to rebuilding the car. "The wall charging system was not completely tested and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made. It was not the fault of the car", he said.

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 U.S. on March 19, 2010[108] to critical acclaim.[109][110][111] Young guested on the album Potato Hole, released on April 21, 2009 by Memphis organ player Booker T. Jones, of Booker T. & the MGs fame. Young plays guitar on nine of the album's ten instrumental tracks, alongside Drive-By Truckers, who already had three guitar players, giving some songs on the album a total of five guitar tracks. Jones contributed guitars on a couple of tracks.

In 2009, Young headlined the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, England,[112] 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[113] in addition to performances at the Big Day Out festival in New Zealand and Australia and the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona.

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.[114] Young has referred to issues surrounding the proposed use of oil pipelines as "scabs on our lives".[114] 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[115] movement, raising money for the Athabasca Chipewyan legal defence fund.[116] 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 honours from leaders of the Rosebud, Oglala Lakota, Ponca and Omaha nations, and were invested with sacred buffalo robes.[117]

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.[118] Young has faced criticism by representatives from within the Canadian petroleum industry, who have argued that his statements are irresponsible.[114] 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".[114]

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".[118] Young has also been critical of Barack Obama's government for failing to uphold the promises made regarding environmental policies during his election campaign.[118]

Young recorded "A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop" in response to Starbucks' possible involvement with Monsanto and use of genetically-modified food.[119][120] The song was included on his concept album called The Monsanto Years.[121]

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."[122] 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.[123] Young continued his Twisted Road tour with a short East Coast venture during spring 2011. Young also contributed vocals to the Elton John–Leon Russell album The Union, singing the second stanza on the track "Gone to Shiloh" and providing backing vocals.

In September 2011, Jonathan Demme's third documentary film on the singer songwriter, Neil Young Journeys, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.[124] Like Demme's earlier work with Young, most of the film consists of a simply filmed live performance, in this case, Young's homecoming show in May 2011 at Toronto's Massey Hall, four decades after he first played at the iconic venue. Playing old songs, as well as new ones from Le Noise, Young performs solo on both electric and acoustic instruments. His performance is a counterpoint to Demme's footage of Young's return to Omemee, Ontario, the small town near Toronto where he grew up, which has now become physically unrecognizable, though he vividly recalls events from his childhood there.

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.[125]

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.[126]

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.[127] Americana is Neil Young's first album composed entirely of cover songs. On June 5, 2012, American Songwriter also reported that Neil Young & Crazy Horse would be launching their first tour in eight years in support of the album.[128]

In 2012, Young toured with Crazy Horse prior to the release of their second album of 2012, Psychedelic Pill, which was released in late October.

On August 25, 2012, Young was mistakenly reported dead by NBCNews.com, the day when astronaut Neil Armstrong died.[129]

On September 25, 2012, Young's autobiography Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream was released to critical and commercial acclaim.[130] Reviewing the book for the New York Times, Janet Maslin reported that Young chose to write his memoirs in 2012 for two reasons. For one, he needed to take a break from stage performances for health reasons but continue to generate income. For another, he feared the onset of dementia, considering his father's medical history and his own present condition. Maslin gives the book a higher than average grade, describing it as frank but quirky and without pathos as it delves into his relationships and his experience in parenting a child with disabilities as well as his artistic and commercial activities and associations.[131]

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.[132]

The album A Letter Home was released on April 19, 2014, through Jack White's record label, and his second memoir, entitled Special Deluxe, was tentatively scheduled for a late 2014 release. He appeared with Jack White on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on May 12, 2014.[133]

The 2014 debut solo album by Chrissie Hynde, entitled Stockholm, featured Young on guitar on the track "Down the Wrong Way".[134]

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.[135]

Storytone was followed in 2015 by his concept album The Monsanto Years.[136] The Monsanto Years is an album themed both in support of sustainable farming, and to protest the biotechnology company Monsanto.[137] 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.[138] 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.[139] In August 2019, The Guardian reported Young, among other environmental activists, was being spied on by the firm.[140]

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.[141][142][143] After a show on September 19, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois, the tour started over on October 1, 2015 in Missoula, Montana and ended on October 25, 2015 in Mountain View, California.

In October 2016, Young performed at Desert Trip in Indio, California,[144][145] and announced his thirty-seventh studio album, Peace Trail, recorded with drummer Jim Keltner and bass guitarist Paul Bushnell,[146] 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.[147] 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.[148]

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.[149]

On December 1, 2017, Young performed live in Omemee, Ontario, Canada, a town he had lived in as a boy.[150]

On March 23, 2018, Young released a soundtrack album for the Daryl Hannah film Paradox. The album is labeled as "Special Release Series, Volume 10."

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.[151]

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.[152][153][154]

In November 2018, shortly after his home had been destroyed by the California wildfire, Young criticised President Donald Trump's stance on climate change.[155]

In December 2018, Young criticised 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.[156]

Young revived Crazy Horse for a series of low-profile theater gigs beginning May 1, 2018 in Fresno, California.

In April 2019, the band began recording "at least 11 new songs, all written recently" for a new album titled Colorado.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Neil Young among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[157]

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 forthcoming 10-track studio LP 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 Neil's co-producer, John Hanlon, in spring 2019. The 10 new songs are ranging from around 3 minutes to over 13 minutes. Colorado is due to be released in October 2019[158][159] on Reprise Records. On August 30, 2019, Young unveiled "Milky Way", the first song from Colorado, a love ballad Young had performed several times at concerts over the past few months – both solo acoustic and with Promise of the Real.[160]

In February 2020, Young wrote an "open letter" to President Donald Trump: ‘You Are a Disgrace to My Country’.[161][162] In April 2020, He announced that he was working on a new archival album titled Road of Plenty, which will consist of music made with Crazy Horse during a 1986 US tour and tracks recorded in 1989 while rehearsing for their Saturday Night Live appearance.[163]

On May 7, 2020, it was announced that Neil Young would release on June 19, 2020 his 1975 long lost unreleased album Homegrown, a long-awaited album he described as "the missing link between Harvest, Comes A Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon". The original release date of April 17 had to be delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[164]

On August 4, 2020, Young filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Trump campaign for the use of Young's music at Trump's campaign rallies.[165]

On August 14, 2020, Young announced that he would "soon" release a new EP entitled The Times. Young shared the news via his video for his new song "Lookin' for a Leader"[nb 1], 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, it's part of The Times, an EP coming soon from Reprise Records—my home since 1968."[166][167]

December 2020, Rolling Stone Magazine releases a Special Edition marking Young's 75th birthday, called, "The Ultimate Guide to His Music & Legend", plus his 100 greatest songs.

In a December 2020 Letters To The Editor article on the NYA website, Neil Young revealed that he is currently working on a new solo album, possibly for a 2021 release. The only thing Neil had mentioned about the album so far is, "I've been waiting a long time." [168]

On January 2021, it was reported that Young had sold the rights to his back catalogue to a British investment company. Hipgnosis Songs Fund had bought a 50 per cent stake in Young’s catalogue, amounting to 1,800 songs from his Buffalo Springfield days, through the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young era and on to his solo career with the Crazy Horse backing band. Financial details were not disclosed but the value was estimated to be at least $150m.[169][170]

Young was born in Toronto, Canada and lived there throughout his early life (1945, 1957 to 1960, 1966 to 1967), as well as Omemee (1945 to 1952), Pickering (1956) before settling in Winnipeg (1960–1966). Young has been outside Canada since 1967. After becoming successful, he bought properties in California, United States. He currently holds dual citizenship for Canada and the United States.[173][174]

Young had a home in Malibu, California, which burned to the ground in the 2018 Woolsey Fire.[175]

Young owns Broken Arrow Ranch, a property of about 1,000 acres[176] near La Honda, California, that he purchased in 1970 for US$350,000 (US$2,304,242 in 2019 dollars);[71] the property was subsequently expanded to thousands of acres.[177][178]

Young announced in 2019 that his application for United States citizenship had been held up because of his use of marijuana, but the issue was resolved and he became a United States citizen.[18]

Young married his first wife, restaurant owner Susan Acevedo, in December 1968. They were together until October 1970, when she filed for divorce.[179]

From late 1970 to 1975, Young was in a relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress. The song "A Man Needs a Maid" from Harvest is inspired by his seeing her in the film Diary of a Mad Housewife. They met soon afterward and she moved in with him on his ranch in northern California. They have a son, Zeke, who was born September 8, 1972. He has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy.[180][181]

Young met future wife Pegi Young (née Morton) in 1974 when she was working as a waitress at a diner near his ranch, a story he tells in the 1992 song "Unknown Legend". They married in August 1978[182] and had two children together, Ben and Amber. Ben has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy,[181] and Amber has been diagnosed with epilepsy.[181] The couple were musical collaborators and co-founded the Bridge School in 1986.[183][184] On July 29, 2014, Young filed for divorce after 36 years of marriage.[62] Pegi died on January 1, 2019.[185]

Young has been in a relationship with actress and director Daryl Hannah since 2014.[186] Young and Hannah were reported to have wed on August 25, 2018 in Atascadero, California.[187] Young confirmed his marriage to Hannah in a video released on October 31, 2018.[188]

Young has been widely reported to be the godfather of actress Amber Tamblyn;[189] in a 2009 interview with Parade, Tamblyn explained that "godfather" was "just a loose term" for Young, Dennis Hopper, and Dean Stockwell, three famous friends of her father, who were always around the house when she was growing up, and who were important influences on her life.[190]

Young is an environmentalist[191] and outspoken advocate for the welfare of small farmers, having co-founded in 1985 the benefit concert Farm Aid. He worked on LincVolt, the conversion of his 1959 Lincoln Continental to hybrid electric technology as an environmentalist statement.[192][193] In 1986, Young helped found The Bridge School,[194] an educational organization for children with severe verbal and physical disabilities, and its annual supporting Bridge School Benefit concerts, together with his former wife Pegi Young.[195] The last concerts were held in October 2016. On June 14, 2017, Neil and Pegi Young announced that the Bridge School Concerts would no longer continue.

Young is a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism.[196]

Young playing a Gretsch White Falcon in Cologne, June 19, 2009

In 2003, Rolling Stone listed Young as eighty-third in its ranking of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" (although in a more recent version of the list, he has been moved up to seventeenth place), describing him as a "restless experimenter ... who transform[s] the most obvious music into something revelatory".[206] Young is a collector of second-hand guitars, but in recording and performing, he uses frequently just a few instruments, as is 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 (1979) and other albums. Old Black got its name from an amateur paintjob applied to the originally gold body of the instrument, some time before Young acquired the guitar in the late 1960s. In 1972, a mini humbucker pick-up from a Gibson Firebird was installed in the lead/treble position. This pick-up, severely microphonic, is considered a crucial component of Young's sound. A Bigsby vibrato tailpiece was installed as early as 1969, and can be heard during the opening of "Cowgirl in the Sand" from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
• Martin D-45. His primary steel-string acoustic guitar. It was one of four instruments bought by Stephen Stills for himself and his bandmates in CSNY to celebrate their first full concert at the Greek Theater in 1969.
• Martin D-28. Nicknamed "Hank" after its previous owner, Hank Williams. Hank Williams, Jr., had traded it for some shotguns; 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 the song it inspired, "This Old Guitar", can be seen about 50 minutes into the film Neil Young: Heart of Gold.
• Vintage Martin D-18: Young used an old D-18 throughout his early days performing in coffee houses in Canada and on some early Buffalo Springfield work, before he received the D-45 from Stills. It can also be seen on unreleased footage from the Woodstock documentary, particularly on an acoustic duet of the Buffalo Springfield track "Mr. Soul" with Stills.

Other notable (or odd) instruments played by Young include:

• Taylor 855 12-string, used in the first half of Rust Never Sleeps (1979).
• 1927 Gibson Mastertone, a six-string banjo guitar, a banjo body tuned like a guitar, used on many recordings and played by James Taylor on "Old Man".
• Gretsch 6120 (Chet Atkins model). Before Young bought Old Black, this was his primary electric guitar during his Buffalo Springfield days.
• Gretsch White Falcon. Young purchased a late 1950s model near the end of the Buffalo Springfield era; in 1969 he bought a stereo version of the same vintage guitar from Stephen Stills, and this instrument is featured prominently during Young's early 1970s period, and can be heard on tracks like "Ohio", "Southern Man", "Alabama", "Words (Between the Lines of Age)", and "L.A.". It was Young's primary electric guitar during the Harvest (1972) era, since Young's deteriorating back condition (eventually fixed with surgery) made playing the much heavier Les Paul difficult.[207] 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, a Fender Deluxe and either a Fender Tremolux or a low-powered Tweed Fender Twin. The separation of the signals is most prominently heard on the Harvest (1972) song "Words".
• Gibson Flying V, on the Time Fades Away tour.
• Fender Broadcaster, on the Tonight's the Night (1975) album and tour.
• Guild M-20, seen in the film Neil Young Journeys.

Young plays Hohner Marine Band harmonicas and is often seen using a harmonica holder.[208]

Young owns a restored Estey reed organ, serial number 167272, dating from 1885, which he frequently plays in concert.[209]

Young owns a glass harmonica which is used in the recording of "I do" on the 2019 album Colorado.[210]

Young uses various vintage Fender Tweed Deluxe amplifiers. His preferred amplifier for electric guitar is the Fender Deluxe, specifically a Tweed-era model from 1959. He purchased his first vintage Deluxe in 1967 for US$50 (US$383 in 2019 dollars[71]) from Sol Betnun Music on Larchmont in Hollywood and has since acquired nearly 450 different examples, all from the same era, but he maintains that it is the original model that sounds superior and is crucial to his trademark sound.[211]

The Tweed Deluxe is almost always used in conjunction with a late-1950s Magnatone 280 (similar to the amplifier used by Lonnie Mack and Buddy Holly). The Magnatone and the Deluxe are paired together in a most unusual manner: the external 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 by Rick Davis, which physically changes the amplifier's settings to pre-set combinations. This device is connected to footswitches operable by Young onstage in the manner of an effects pedal. Tom Wheeler's book Soul of Tone highlights the device on page 182/183.[212]