Young, Neil
Entry updated 10 February 2025. Tagged: Music, People.
(1945- ) Canadian guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and occasional author and filmmaker, a major figure in country rock in particular, and a considerable influence on a wide range of guitarists since the 1960s, solo and in the groups Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. His most prominent sf lyric is the beautifully plangent title track to After the Gold Rush (1970), a prescient tale of environmental collapse: "look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s" (see Ecology). In the final verse, Spaceships take "Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun", though this is revealed to be a dream of the narrator. The song is reportedly based on an unproduced screenplay Young wrote in the 1960s, and has been covered numerous times. Young has also written an as-yet unpublished sf novel entitled «Canary», set in a power company which is faking solar energy (see Power Sources). [CWa]
Neil Percival Young
born Toronto, Ontario: 12 November 1945
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