As a child, Young moved with his mother to Winnipeg, Canada, after she divorced his father, a well-known sports journalist. He played in several high school rock bands, including the Esquires, the Stardusters, and the Squires. He also began hanging out in local folk clubs, where he met Stephen Stills and Joni Mitchell. Mitchell wrote "The Circle Game" for Young after hearing his "Sugar Mountain." In the mid-Sixties Young moved to Toronto, where he began performing solo. In 1966 he and bassist Bruce Palmer joined the Mynah Birds (which included Rick James and had a deal with Motown Records); after that fizzled, he and Palmer drove to Los Angeles in Young's Pontiac hearse. Young and Palmer ran into Stills and another mutual friend, Richie Furay, out west and formed Buffalo Springfield, one of the most important of the new folk-country-rock bands, which recorded Young's "Broken Arrow," "I Am a Child," "Mr. Soul," and "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing." But friction developed: Young quit the band, only to rejoin and quit again, and in May 1968, after recording three albums, the band split up.

Young acquired Joni Mitchell's manager Elliot Roberts, and released his debut solo LP in January 1969, co-produced by Jack Nitzsche. Around the same time Young began jamming with a band called the Rockets. Renamed Crazy Horse, the band - drummer Ralph Molina, bassist Billy Talbot, and guitarist Danny Whitten - backed Young on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (#34, 1969), recorded in two weeks. The album includes three of Young's most famous songs: "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand," which, Young later said, were all written in one day while he was stricken with the flu. The album went gold (and much later, platinum), but Young decided to split his time between Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills and Nash, which he joined in June. In March 1970 his presence was first felt on CSN&Y's Deja Vu.

Young's third solo, the gold (and utterly pessimistic) After the Gold Rush (#8, 1970), included Crazy Horse and 17-year-old guitarist Nils Lofgren. The album yielded the single "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" (#33, 1970), and that plus the CSN&Y album put the spotlight on Young. Harvest (#1, 1972), with the #1 single "Heart of Gold," made the singer/songwriter a superstar.

By the release of its live album, Four Way Street, in spring 1971, CSN&Y had broken up. In 1972 Young made a cinema verite film, Journey Through the Past; it and its soundtrack were panned by critics. Young confused fans further with Times Fade Away (#22, 1973), a rough-hewn live album recorded with the Stray Gators, including Nitzsche (keyboards), Ben Keith (pedal steel guitar), Tim Drummond (bass), and John Barbata (drums). In June 1975 Young released a bleak, ragged album recorded two years earlier, Tonight's the Night (#25). The album's dark tone reflected Young's emotional upheaval following the drug deaths of Crazy Horse's Danny Whitten in 1972 and CSN&Y roadie Bruce Berry in 1973. In November Young released the harder-rocking Zuma(#25), an emotionally intense work that included the sweeping "Cortex the Killer." Crazy Horse now included Talbot, Molina, and Frank Sampedro (rhythm guitar). In 1976 Young recorded Long May You Run (#26) with Stills, which went gold; he and Stills embarked on a tour, but Young left halfway through.

In June 1977 Young was back on his own with the gold American Stars 'n Bars (#21), again a more accessible effort, with Linda Rondstadt doing backup vocals along with newcomer Nicolette Larson. Decade was a carefully chosen, not entirely hit-centered compilation. Comes a Time (#7, 1978) was folkish and went gold.

In fall 1978 Young did an arena tour called Rust Never Sleeps. He played old and new music, performing half the show by himself on piano or guitar, and the other half with Crazy Horse, amid giant mockups of micro-phones and speakers. Reaction to Young's seeming change in directions (although anyone paying close attention would not have been too surprised) was swift and loud. In June 1979 he released Rust Never Sleeps (#8) with songs previewed on the tour, including "Out of the Blue," dedicated to Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols. The album also featured "Sedan Delivery" and "Powderfinger," which Young had once offered to Lynyrd Skynyrd, though they didn't record them. (Back in 1974 Skynyrd had written "Sweet Home Alabama" as an answer to Young's "Southern Man.") In November 1979 Young released the gold Live Rust LP (#15), culled from the fall 1978 shows and the soundtrack to a film of the tour (directed by Young) entitled Rust Never Sleeps.

The Eighties was a particularly strange and erratic decade for Young, even by his own unpredictable standards. Right before presidential election week 1980, he issued Hawks and Doves (#30), an enigmatic state-of-the-union address, with one side of odd acoustic pieces and the other of rickety country songs. Exactly on year later he released Reactor (#27), an all-hard rock LP, which, despite its title, seemed to have little to do with nuclear power. In 1982 he moved to Geffen and released Trans (#19), which introduced what Young called "Neil 2"; he fed his voice through a computerized vocoder and sang songs like "Sample and Hold." He toured arenas as a solo performer when the album was released, singing his most-requested songs, covering "backstage" action on a large video screen, and singing along with his vocoderized video image on songs from Trans.

Young's wandering got more extreme with Everybody's Rockin', a rockabilly-style album recorded and performed with a group he dubbed the Shocking Pinks, and his work started sliding down the charts. Old Ways was a country record with guest spots by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Landing on Water combined new-wave-like synthesizers with standard rock songs. And Life reunited Young with Crazy Horse in lackluster performances. After his disastrous relationship with Geffen - in which he was ultimately slapped with a $3 million suit for making "unrepresentative," noncommercial music -Young returned to his former label for This Note's for You, a horn-based R&B album recorded with a backing group called the Bluenotes. (The video for the title song attacked rockers who allowed their songs to be used in TV ads and was initially banned by MTV, although, it earned the network's Video Music Award for Best Video of the Year.) In 1987, after appearing with his old cohorts in CSN at a Greenpeace benefit, Young rejoined the group briefly for the 1988 CSN&Y album, American Dream (#16, 1989).

Except for 1989's Freedom, none of Young's Eighties albums was particularly well received beyond the artist's loyal core audience, though some - such as Trans -- had captured critics' interest. Many wrote off his Eighties period as typical Neil Young flakiness. But there were events in Young's personal life that shed light on his increased eccentricity. In 1978 his second son, Ben, was born to his wife, Pegi, with cerebral palsy (in 1972, Young's first son Zeke, was born to his then-companion, actress Carrie Snodgress, with a milder version of the disorder). Later in a 1992 interview with the New York Times, Young said his Eighties output had reflected his frustration with not being able to communicate with Ben: "Trans signified the end of one sound and era and the beginning of another era, where I was indecipherable and no one could understand what I was saying."

Young's extramusical activities during the Eighties were as unpredictable as the albums. In 1984, to the bewilderment of his fans, he spoke out in favor of Ronald Reagan. He also participated in the 1985 Live Aid benefit and helped organize the subsequent Farm Aid concerts. In 1986 Young and his wife started the Bridge School in San Francisco, a learning center for handicapped children with problems communicating. In 1989 a group of alternative rockers, including Sonic Youth, Pixies and Dinosaur, Jr. contributed to The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young, whose proceeds went to the school. (Young also organized annual benefit concerts for the school, at which a wide range of artists perform each year.)

Hailed by a new generation of postpunk musicians as the Granddaddy of Grunge; Young had a major comeback beginning in 1989 with Freedom (#35), his highest charter since Trans; he introduced its single, "Rockin' in the Free World," in an unbridled, transcendent 1989 performance on "Saturday Night Live." Young then regrouped Crazy Horse for Ragged Glory (#31, 1990), a raucous, critically lauded album. With raw, feedback-and-distortion-drenched hard rock, the album proved the extent of Young's influence on younger alternative-rock bands such as Dinosaur, Jr. and Soul Asylum. In 1991 he embraced that new generation of bands by taking noise-rockers Sonic Youth and Social Distortion on the road; the tour was documented on Weld (whose 35-minute instrumental companion Arc featured extended, noisy feedback jams). Young also began praising rap, particularly the music of Ice-T.

Harvest Moon (#16, 1992), reuniting him with members of the Stray Gators, found Young doing his sentimental acoustic/folk songs again. A sequel to Harvest, it was the biggest seller in 13 years. In 1992 Young appeared at the 50th birthday celebration for Bob Dylan, covering Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "All Along the Watchtower." Released in 1993, Lucky Thirteen compiles Young's Geffen material, and Unplugged documents his live, acoustic performances following the release of Harvest Moon.

In 1994 Young contributed the haunting title song to Jonathan Demme's film Philadelphia, which was nominated for an Oscar. He also released Sleeps with Angels (#9, 1994), his strongest, most consistent, and critically lauded album since Rust Never Sleeps. After performing with Pearl Jam several times, in 1995 Young collaborated with the group on the album Mirror Ball, released to rave reviews in mid-1995.