Neil Young

Neil Young started playing music in the mid-1960s, first with Buffalo Springfield alongside Stephen Stills and Richie Furay. After that band ended, he put out his first solo album in 1968. Songs like 'Cinnamon Girl' and 'Down By The River' from those early years showed his lean, direct approach to writing and playing.

He recorded a lot of material in the early 1970s, including the albums 'After the Gold Rush' and 'Harvest'. The track 'Don't Let It Bring You Down' is a good example of his sound from that period, a little weary, a little defiant, with guitar work that could shift from gentle to ragged. He kept working at a steady pace, releasing records like 'Tonight's the Night' and 'Rust Never Sleeps' later in the decade.

In 1992 he made 'Harvest Moon', an album that looked back quietly at some of the themes from his earlier work. He has often been outspoken about political and environmental issues, which has sometimes put him at odds with parts of the music business. Over the decades he has recorded with different groups, including the band Crazy Horse, and with collaborators like David Crosby and Graham Nash.

His catalog is large and varied, stretching from the late 1960s into the 2000s with albums like 'Prairie Wind' and 'The Monsanto Years'. He never really settled into one style for long, moving between folk, rock, and more experimental sounds. A song like 'Razor Love' from 2000 shows he could still write a plain, unadorned melody when he wanted to.