What was Neil Young’s first band?
Neil Young is known as one of the great voices of North American music, primarily for his work as a solo artist and with the band Crazy Horse. But before he found his way as an artist in his own right, Young was plying his trade as the member of several bands.
While still a teenager, he met 20-year-old American songwriter Stephen Stills, and the two struck up a lifelong friendship and musical rivalry. The following year, Buffalo Springfield was born after Young and fellow Canadian musician Bruce Palmer tracked Stills down in Los Angeles, where he was living at the time.
The band released their first album and singles in 1966, including the timeless anthem against police brutality ‘For What It’s Worth’. Stills was responsible for the song’s stirring lyrics and its bone-chilling imitation of the reaction to a sudden gunshot, but Young supplied the innovative guitar lines that helped cement the recording’s place in history.
Still, as youthful as the two future greats of folk and roots were, Buffalo Springfield was far from Young’s first time in a band. In fact, he’d been playing with groups of musicians since his mid-teens.
So, what band started it all?
The first group Young played in that we can refer to as a proper band in any real sense was the Winnipeg surf rock outfit The Squires, which he formed in high school at the tender age of 16. He met fellow guitarist Allan Bates through mutual friend Jack Harper, and the three of them started rehearsing in Harper’s basement.
Drummer Ken Smyth soon replaced Harper, and Ken Koblun joined on bass. They began playing the community hall circuit, covering tracks by surf rock instrumental specialists like The Shadows and The Ventures. They even released a single composed by Young, a swaggering mid-tempo rocker called ‘The Sultan’. His guitar prowess is already evident on this early track.
Young dropped out of high school before his final year as he became fully committed to his music. “Neil wanted us to be good,” Bates recalled to Uncut back in 2009. He was a real rehearsal guy; there was no messing around. And I can see that with all his bands over the years.”
Young’s work ethic and insistence on high standards soon got him to the top. He achieved songwriting credits on hit songs in Canada, even before moving to LA and joining up with Stills. Within three years of ‘The Sultan’, he was wielding his Gibson Les Paul to extraordinary effect on one of the great songs of his age.
