Neil Young Birthplace — Toronto, Ontario

Neil Percival Young was born on November 12, 1945, in Toronto, Ontario, in the Rosedale neighbourhood — a comfortable, leafy part of the city that bore no resemblance to the raw, searching music he would eventually make. His parents separated when he was twelve and he moved with his mother to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he began playing in local garage bands and developed the guitar style — a blend of country, blues, and folk that could turn on a dime between tenderness and abrasion — that remains unmistakably his own. He moved to California in 1966 after several failed attempts to break through in Toronto.

Young's career is one of the most restless and least predictable in rock: from the Buffalo Springfield to his early solo albums, from "Harvest" (1972) — one of the best-selling albums in Canadian history — to the deliberately difficult "Tonight's the Night" and "On the Beach," from country to electronica to grunge (his influence on Nirvana led Kurt Cobain to call him "the godfather of grunge" in his final note). His refusal to repeat himself, to settle into a comfortable commercial groove, is the defining characteristic of a fifty-year career.

Toronto has claimed Young as a native son, though Winnipeg also asserts a strong connection — the city where his musical identity was formed. The Neil Young Archives project, an ongoing effort to document his entire recording career, has been based in various California locations. Young has lived primarily in Northern California for decades, on his Broken Arrow Ranch in La Honda. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.