The artist Neil Young called “my biggest guitar hero”
As one of Canada’s finest singer-songwriters, Neil Young boasts a truly staggering body of work, from his early material with Buffalo Springfield to proto-grunge eminence with Crazy Horse. He’s a true all-rounder with a solid grasp of several instruments and a distinctive vocal but is rarely regarded as a guitar virtuoso.
In fact, George Harrison, the lead guitarist of The Beatles, once grilled Young on the basis of his guitar playing. He revealed his thoughts on Young in footage taken from a 1992 studio session with Bob Geldof and Chucho Merchan. The Boomtown Rats singer praised Young only to be met with Harrison’s cutting critique. “I’m not a Neil Young fan,” Harrison interrupted before commenting on his guitar playing, “I hate it. Yeah, I can’t stand it.”
Continuing, Harrison remembered an occasion when he and Eric Clapton played a concert with Young. “We did this show with him; I saw it from the other side of the stage and looked around. I looked at Eric and said, ‘What’s going on?'” he recalled. “[Eric] did the solo in the middle then he kind of looked at me like – ‘Don’t look at me, it’s not me’.”
Of course, not everyone can be Eric Clapton, Harrison included. Young’s fans would argue that his guitar playing didn’t need to be virtuosic. Early on, his acoustic talent was sufficient to voice several enduring compositions on After the Gold Rush and Harvest. Later, his approach to electric feedback and distortion in songs like ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’ helped to define a sound precursory to 1980s noise rock and grunge styles.
As an electric guitarist, Young is inspired by myriad luminaries of the blues rock and hard rock genres, but none more so than the late legend Jimi Hendrix. “He’s a classic, you know,” Young said in praise of Hendrix in a 1996 interview with Much Music. “He’ll be around forever. He’s one of my heroes. Definitely my biggest guitar hero for electric guitar, he knew how to handle it.”
Elaborating on his point, Young seemed more interested in Hendrix’s penchant for feedback effects than his virtuosic style. “The feedback is very rich. It’s full of sound, especially in its original state before it’s captured,” Young continued. “The live thing is really where it’s at. When it’s first happening, that’s when you really hear it.”
The influence of Hendrix’s 1968 album Electric Ladyland is tangible in much of Young’s electric guitar work with Crazy Horse.