Niel Young, Shakey

Born the son of Edna "Rassy" Young, a former quiz show panelist on Canadian Television, and Scott Young, a sportswriter for the Toronto Sun, Young's first musical inklings were encouraged when his father gave him a ukulele for Christmas in 1958. His parents split up not too long after that, and in 1960, Young moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, with his mother. A rather apathetic student, he was far more interested in playing the banjo and guitar than turning his mind to his studies, and he eventually dropped out of high school to concentrate his attention on the band he had formed, Neil Young & the Squires.

Depending on one's perspective, Young either lost focus in the early- to mid-eighties or deserves credit as an ambitious explorer. Jumping wildly between genres, he opened the decade with the country-tinged Hawks & Doves, moved into Kraftwerk-like electronic sounds with Trans and retro-rockabilly on Everybody's Rockin', but still tore it up with Crazy Horse on Re-act-or and on 1987's Life. The next year, Young headed in

that only McDonough could have captured that energy coming off of Young, because I have read other biographies before and none of them had captured that artist’s energy as well as McDonough did. I recommend this book to every fan of Young, also to every fan of folk and rock music. I recommend it because it just goes to show you that even a peaceful hippie dropout can still make it somewhere in this world, also because it shows you one type of musician that helped shape Canada’s music industry.

When the Mynah Birds called it quits after recording one album, Young and Mynah Birds bassist Bruce Palmer moved to the promised land of L.A., where they hooked up with Stills, Furay, and drummer Dewey Martin to form the seminal folk-rock band the Buffalo Springfield. Stills' counterculture anthem "For What It's Worth" earned the band nationwide fame, but it was Young who drew the most attention for his unique style and high-energy guitar playing. In their two-year existence, the band recorded three successful albums and a retrospective (Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield Again, Last Time Around, and The Best of the Buffalo Springfield) for Atco before splintering in 1968.

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