Neil Young has lived through a lot of heartbreak, tragedy, and difficulties. (Grunge)
In his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, Young remembers being "about five years old" in 1951, and his parents rushing him to Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto, and that "it was hard for [him] to walk for some reason." A painful lumbar puncture ("that hurt like hell and scared me to death") revealed what his doctor feared: Young Neil Young had polio.
The disease had ravaged his body, and his brother, Bob Young, recalls a lengthy hospitalization, after which Neil had to re-learn how to walk. "I remember him trying to get from one part of the living room to another by hanging on to furniture to keep his balance," Bob Young said. "He was unsure of what had happened with his battle with polio. 'I didn't die, did I?' He said."
Young felt the wages of polio well into adulthood. Lower back vertebrae were surgically removed, and he frequently wore a back brace, even during concerts.
Young also suffered from epilepsy. While likely not his first seizure, one such episode in 1967 remains memorable for him. He was hanging out a radio festival called the Hollywood Teen Fair, when he suddenly found himself "on my back on the pavement," as he wrote in Waging Heavy Peace. "I was having fun, and you know, maybe I'd forgotten to eat or something, I don't know. And then I felt kind of sick to my stomach, and then I started to feel all weird and echoey, and then I fell down, and I don't really remember afterwards," Young said on NPR's Fresh Air.
Read More: https://www.grunge.com/157119/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-neil-young/?utm_campaign=clip
In school the teachers weren’t always pleased with Neil’s conduct, especially in high school then Neil passion for music had increased, and he had problem concentrate in school – the music was always on this mind. The twofold direction against both rock music and romantic that later would characterize Neil Young’s own music was already apparent: he altered between rock ‘n’ roll songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly to slower songs by Roy Orbison and Bobby Darin.
Neil himself was playing the ukulele and the other instruments were bongos, guitar and bass. “We were pretending we had a band. None of us could play.”
I was a matter of time until Neil would abandon his ukulele and banjo and start playing guitar. Now he was into the music real serious: people around him witness that he could play 6-8 hours a day at this time. He was already determent to become a musician. Besides the music that came from the transistor radio and from the records he listened to at his friends houses Neil would also get inspired from bands at the Winnipeg club scenes. Chad Allen and the Expectations (former Allan and The Silvertones) played regularly and especially the guitarist Randy Bachman would get Neil’s attention
