Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Canada Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
A cornerstone of rock music for sixty years, and never once in the direction anyone expected him to go.
Neil Percival Young grew up in Toronto and Winnipeg, had polio as a child, and drove to Los Angeles in a hearse. He was in Buffalo Springfield, then joined Crosby, Stills and Nash, and has run a solo career alongside and across both ever since.
The work splits roughly in two and he has never stopped moving between them: the acoustic songs — After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Heart of Gold — and the long distorted guitar records made with Crazy Horse, which are most of the reason a generation of American alternative bands in the 1990s called him a godfather. Ohio, written and released within weeks of the Kent State shootings, is among the fastest a major protest song has ever reached the public.
He has been consistently, expensively contrary: his own record label sued him in the 1980s for making music unrepresentative of himself, after he followed a country record with a synthesiser album. He co-founded Farm Aid, has run the Bridge School benefit for children with disabilities for decades, campaigned on sound quality and on pipelines, and pulled his entire catalogue from a streaming service over vaccine misinformation.
He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, solo and with Buffalo Springfield, and is a Companion of the Order of Canada.
The work splits roughly in two and he has never stopped moving between them: the acoustic songs — After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Heart of Gold — and the long distorted guitar records made with Crazy Horse, which are most of the reason a generation of American alternative bands in the 1990s called him a godfather. Ohio, written and released within weeks of the Kent State shootings, is among the fastest a major protest song has ever reached the public.
He has been consistently, expensively contrary: his own record label sued him in the 1980s for making music unrepresentative of himself, after he followed a country record with a synthesiser album. He co-founded Farm Aid, has run the Bridge School benefit for children with disabilities for decades, campaigned on sound quality and on pipelines, and pulled his entire catalogue from a streaming service over vaccine misinformation.
He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, solo and with Buffalo Springfield, and is a Companion of the Order of Canada.
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