fighting man"

ie in his native Canada, this principled and unpredictable maverick has pursued an often winding course across the rock and roll landscape. He's been a cult hero, a chart-topping rock star, and all things in-between, remaining true to his restless muse all the while. At various times, Young has delved into folk, country, garage-rock and grunge. His biggest album, Harvest (1972) , apotheosized the laid-back singer/songwriter genre he helped invent. By contrast, Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Young's second-best seller, was a loud, brawling masterpiece whose title track, an homage to Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, contained the oft-quoted line "Better to burn out than it is to rust." Several of his more modest-selling titles - for example, Tonight's the Night, Comes a Time and Trans - contain some of his most trenchant performances. It is typical of Young that he followed his most polished and popular album, Harvest, with one of his most raw and uncommercial, Time Fades Away. While he's avoided sticking to one style for very long, the unifying factors throughout Young's peripatetic musical journey have been his unmistakable voice, his raw and expressive guitar playing, and his consummate songwriting skill. In the early 1960s the Canadian-born Young performed as a self-accompanied folksinger on the Toronto scene. As a budding rock and roller, he hooked up with such groups as the Squires and the Mynah Birds; the latter was briefly signed to Motown and also included budding funk-rocker Rick James. Buffalo Springfield came together in 1966, inaugurating a collaboration between Young and Stephen Stills that has been intermittently revived down the decades. As a member of Buffalo Springfield, Young contributed lead guitar and a raft of bittersweet folk-rock originals that included "Mr. Soul," "Broken Arrow" and "Expecting to Fly." Young's solo career took flight in 1969 with Neil Young, an album of pretty, brooding songs that included "The Loner." This singer/songwriter debut was one of the first solo albums by a rock and roll figure, and it quietly presaged a major direction that music would take in the Seventies. In the more than 30 years since that album's appearance, Young has recorded and toured tirelessly, releasing 35 albums. In addition to his prolific solo output, Young has undertaken occasional liaisons with Crosby, Stills and Nash (1970's Déjà vu, 1988's American Dream, 1999's Looking Forward) and with Stephen Stills (1976's Long May You Run, credited to the Stills-Young Band). More lasting has been Young's association with Crazy Horse, his steadiest backup band since 1969. Crazy Horse first turned up on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Young's second album, which contained the lengthy, jam-filled "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" and one of Young's most memorable songs, "Cinnamon Girl." The group provided a solid, rocking base for Young's songs and solos, and they've played with him on albums ranging from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Gold Rush (1970) to Ragged Glory (1990) and Broken Arrow (1996). The mellower, more acoustic and folk-flavored side of Neil Young has surfaced on numerous albums, notably Harvest (1972) and its sequel, Harvest Moon (1993). He has also made detours into country music (1985's Old Ways) and big-band blues (1988's This Note's for You). The one entity that Neil Young has come back to again and again, however, is Crazy Horse. Above partial article from: http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/neil-young