Neil Young

Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC OMis a Canadian singer-songwriter and musician, producer, director and screenwriter. He began performing in a group covering Shadows instrumentals in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he co-founded the band Buffalo Springfield together with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, and later joined Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1969. He released his first album in 1968 and has since forged a successful and acclaimed solo career, spanning over 45 years and 35 studio...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth12 November 1945
CityToronto, Canada
CountryCanada
I see country music, I see people who take care of their own. You've got 75 year-old guys on the road. That's what I was put here to do, y'know, so I wanna make sure I surround myself with people who are gonna take care of me. 'Cause I'm in it for the long run.
This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.
Of course you have to support the troops. They're just kids. They're doing for their country what's expected of them.
... I have no idea who's steering, and I don't really care .. I just keep going whatever the inclination is ... there are threads that are continuous and hold everything together and a major thread is country music ...
... my songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way ... they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio...
It's a robust time, probably the most fertile time for the underground and for revolution since Nixon. I'm not talking about political overthrow; I'm talking about just general cultural revolution. Bush has polarised the country and is creating this breeding ground for an opposition. In the next couple of months, they'll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It's pretty crazy.
That's a defining moment, there, when someone plays an instrument that everyone relates to around the planet.
I think I'm going to be making country records for as long as I can see into the future. It's much more down-home and real.
I don't like the current political system in the USA and some other countries. Increasingly, democracy has been hijacked by corporate interests.
I understand we've got like a Bush subordinate in there now. That's unfortunate. But he's got a minority, right? So we can get rid of him pretty soon.
We want computer games to move people emotionally, like a great piece of art, a great movie or a great piece of music.
At our school, we deal with kids who have brain injuries, strokes, cerebral palsy, things like that. I'm very familiar with that. So I was thinking of not being able to do what I do. It didn't freak me out. It just made me think: Now you've got to play this card. Now you're going to do what you can, in the time that you have.
There's nothing I did before 'Ohio' that would be in the same category -- and very little since. It's a kind of a political song as well as a feeling song, and it's dated to a particular incident, kinda like 'Rockin' in the Free World.' I just don't write that many of them.
We're aggressively working on characters because they're key for this genre.