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Wed 4 February 2026 19:30, UK
Being a fan of Neil Young can normally be a bit complicated, depending on which era you’re talking about.
Young might be one of the reigning kings of rock and roll in some circles, but he was never going to be creatively stagnant for a second, and a lot of his career has been spent marching to the beat of his own drum every single time he plays guitar. That might make for an uneven discography, but Young could always rely on the right people to support him every step of the way.
Granted, Young was always meant to be making music on his own. Buffalo Springfield was a great starting point for him, but even if he had a lot more fire in him as an artist, it was much easier to use Crazy Horse as their own unique instrument. There were bound to be a few casualties along the way, like Danny Whitten, but Young was able to channel every single emotion in his body onto the tape, whether that was his grief on Tonight’s the Night or sarcasm on Everybody’s Rockin’.
If he was having this many problems working in his own solo career, though, you can imagine his frustration when he was tied to Crosby, Stills, and Nash for too long. On the surface, Young seemed like the perfect fourth member of the group, but that’s only if you don’t take his personality into account. He needed to mix things up wherever he could, and while he was around to give them perfect songs like ‘Helpless’ and bring an edge to their sound on ‘Ohio’, it wasn’t out of the question for him to leave in the middle of a tour because he wasn’t clicking with the rest of the guys.
It’s not like the rest of the band were fully on board with Young coming into the group, either. Graham Nash famously had his reservations about bringing someone like Young into the fold, but when you listen to a record like Deja Vu, the songs speak for themselves half the time. And were it not for Stephen Stills pushing for Young to join, we wouldn’t have got one of the greatest albums in classic rock history.
Stills had already known Young from his days with Buffalo Springfield, and even when the band had their zany period of splitting off into two separate duos, Young always had time to jam with his old buddy. They didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on everything, and there were moments where Young needed his space, but he had no problem calling Stills one of the best people that he has ever worked with.
Even after seeing some of the biggest highs and lows of the music industry, Young admitted that Stills was one of the few people who stuck by him every step of the way, saying, “We have friction all the time because we’re like brothers. We’ve been through a lot of stuff and we’ve done a lot of things that the other is surprised by here and there but the guy’s got to be one of the closest friends in my life just because of what we’ve been through together. I love him.”
And for as many classics that Young has, Stills could give him a run for his money half the time he played. He was already the one playing most of the instruments on the first CSN album, and when listening to his solo career and his tunes for the supergroup, there wasn’t anything that he couldn’t sink his teeth into, whether it was playing smooth folk songs or trying out strange tunings on tunes like ‘Carry On’.
So while Young may have had a few things to say about his old band on records like Rust Never Sleeps, there’s a good chance that nothing could break the bond between him and Stills. The music business might be one of the most cutthroat industries in the world, but even if you shouldn’t get into the business to make friends, sometimes relationships are strong enough to outlast even the biggest helping of bullshit.
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