MUSICAL FAMILY TREE

NEIL AND HIS HIGH-SCHOOL friend Ken Koblun were mainstays of several Winnipeg teenaged groups (1962–64), including The Jades, The Esquires, and Stardust, before putting together The Squires, rated by Winnipeg rock radio stations in the top three among a hundred or so groups competing for high school and community club dance gigs in 1963 and 1964. The Squires played out-of-town dates in such Manitoba localities as Selkirk, Churchill, and Portage la Prairie before getting into the $350-a-week (for the whole band) range in Fort William, Ontario (now part of Thunder Bay). In the summer of 1965 Neil landed in Toronto and, after a few hungry months, made his first real Toronto connection with a group called

The Mynah Birds (October ’65 to February ’66), led by Bruce Palmer and including Ricky James Matthews (later to become famous as Rick James). With Neil playing lead on a twelve-string guitar, they were recording for Motown in Detroit when Ricky was arrested for having taken a long unauthorized vacation from the United States Navy. His incarceration on those grounds broke up the band, causing Bruce and Neil to hightail it for Los Angeles, where they soon were among the founding fathers of

Buffalo Springfield (March ’66 to May ’68), the originals being Neil, Bruce, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, and Dewey Martin. Springfield was an immediate west coast hit, but the members (in their late teens and early twenties) didn’t know how to handle the fame, the women, the travel, and their own interpersonal rivalries, so after two hectic years (which including fill-in playing by Jim Fielder, Ken Koblun, and Jim Messina, because Bruce was busted a couple of times) Springfield split. Neil made one album of his own work before hooking up with three musicians with whom he played as

Neil Young and Crazy Horse (February ’69 to the present, off and on). His first Crazy Horse musicians were Danny Whitten (guitar), Billy Talbot (bass), and Ralph Molina (drums). Their first album was Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, released just before Stephen Stills, by then in a trio with David Crosby and Graham Nash, knocked on Neil’s door and asked him to join up, which he did, that group then becoming

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (June ’69 now and then to February ’75 and maybe not finished yet). Their second gig ever was Woodstock, and over the next year they became the biggest super-group of their time, even though Neil continued to tour and record separately with Crazy Horse. Whitten’s deepening involvement with heroin caused Neil to split from Crazy Horse for a while, but in late 1972, Whitten overdosed and died after not making the grade in a tryout to join a new group Neil called

The Stray Gators (late ’71 to May ’73), with Ben Keith on steel guitar, Kenny Buttrey on drums (later replaced by Johnny Barbata), Tim Drummond on bass, Jack Nitzsche on piano and slide guitar. Their financially record-breaking Time Fades Away tour produced a live album by the same name before Neil, feeling that he was becoming middle-of-the-road and wishing to head for the ditch, founded

The Santa Monica Flyers, with Talbot, Molina, Keith, Drummond, and Nils Lofgren (guitar, keyboards, etc.). Their music was so starkly despairing that the album Tonight’s The Night wasn’t released for two years, by which time Neil had reconstituted

Crazy Horse, with Danny Whitten gone but not forgotten, and Frank Sampedro joining Talbot and Molina. They played together off and on for several albums and tours over the next few years before Neil put together his

Trans Band to record and tour. This group included Lofgren, Keith, Bruce Palmer (who’d been doing little over the years except playing the sitar), Ralph Molina, and Joe Lala. On the Trans album but not on the tour, were Talbot and Sampedro. Trans was Neil’s synthesized and vocoded lunge into the 1980s, but he instantly evened things up by rolling back the clock for a 1950s rockabilly group called

The Shocking Pinks, with 1950s-style music and, instrument played by Keith (sax), Drummond (string bass), and snare-drummer Karl Himmel, plus a backup doo-wah singing group called The Redwood Boys: Larry Byrom, Rick Palombi, and Anthony Crawford. Byrom also played piano, and a Nashville lawyer named Craig Hayes played sax. Actor Newell Alexander filled various roles, including that of dance-party host (à la 1950s). The Everybody’s Rockin’ album was the labour of this temporary crew; Neil has since changed it into a more country-oriented aggregation called

The International Harvesters, with twin fiddles by Anthony Crawford and Rufus Thibodeau, Keith and Drummond on pedal steel and bass respectively, Himmel on drums, and Spooner Oldham on keyboards. They wowed ’em in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, in the summer of 1984 before joining the likes of Willie Nelso, Waylon Jennings, and Hank Williams, Jr., to play country music on an extensive tour of the United States and Canada.

In addition to these musicians, dozens of others appear on Neil’s albums – some making single guest appearances on stage or in the studio, others coming in often when Neil felt their particular talents would fit a certain song or mood.

Since the original publication of Neil and Me in 1984, Neil has continued to perform and record with a wide array of musicians as his mood and the mood of his songs dictate.

The massive Live Aid famine relief benefit concert in 1985 saw him perform both solo, and with old cohorts Crosby, Stills and Nash. Three years later they recorded the album American Dream together. In 1986, he teamed up with guitarist/producer Denny Kortchmar and percussionist Steve Jordan for the synthesizer-flavoured Landing On Water.

He has frequently renewed his long association with Crazy Horse (Ralph Molina, Poncho Sampedro, and Billy Talbot): Life (1987), Ragged Glory (1990), the live albums Arc/Weld (1991), Sleeps with Angels (1994), and, most recently, Broken Arrow (1996).

Shifting gears again, Neil formed a blues-style band, The Bluenotes, for 1988’s This Note’s For You. The musicians included Poncho Sampedro and Ben Keith, as well as a distinctly bluesy horn section. This same collection of musicians, as well as a few more (including Linda Ronstadt) joined Neil to record Freedom (1989).

Following an album and tour with Crazy Horse, Neil’s music became distinctly mellower as he recorded Harvest Moon (1992). He recruited The Stray Gators to recapture the right mood to echo the original Harvest, with Spooner Oldham taking over on piano, and Neil’s half-sister Astrid helping with background vocals.

In 1993, after meeting them at the Bob Dylan Thirtieth Anniversary concert (which Neil dubbed “Bobfest”), Neil toured with Memphis soul legends Booker T. and the MGs (Booker T. Jones, Steve Croppers, Duck Dunn, and Jim Keltner) as his backing band. They did not release any studio recording – but Neil did record with another band on the same tour bill. New superstar band Pearl Jam (Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Jack Irons), who had already openly professed their admiration for Neil, recorded sessions with him that would be released as Mirror Ball (1995).

In 1996, Neil hooked up once again with Crazy Horse, not only for the album Broken Arrow, but also for the mammoth European and North American tour that followed – from June 20 in Zurich, Switzerland, to November 10 in Buffalo, New York.