(Born Nov. 12, 1945) Neil Young is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has become one of the most respected and influential musicians of his generation. Neil Young came to prominence with folk rock band Buffalo Springfield in the mid-1960s. He reached his commercial peak during the singer-songwriter boom of the early 1970s with the albums After the Gold Rush and Harvest and his role in the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.