Neil Young’s opinion on Stephen Stills

The musical partnership between Neil Young and Stephen Stills started in the ’60s and they have been making music together on and off ever since. Together and with the help of their bandmates in CSNY and Buffalo Springfield they created some of the most successful and influential albums in music history. Over the decades, Neil has given his opinion on many of his peers, including his friend Stephen Stills.

What is Neil Young’s opinion on Stephen Stills

Although their relationship has had its ups and downs, Neil Young loves Stephen and thinks he is a genius. “A great friendship rose up between Steve Stills and me that goes on to this day. Stephen is a genius. Like any genius, he is sometimes misunderstood, and I misunderstood him many times when we were young. Later on I came to recognize him and understand him better. When I left CSNY to do my own thing, I missed him. Although Crosby and Nash loved him and his music, I always felt they never completely got the point with him, and he became a little reclusive in his creativity because of that, in my opinion.”

“No one really knows him like I do, though. He is my brother. We went through so much and learned from each other along the way, discovering our music and life at the same time. It was all so new to us, and we discovered it together, like brothers. I don’t think we are finished with that yet. The way we play off of each other, the joy of that, is something seldom found.”

He continued:

“I never felt that David and Graham had that same sense about him. Of course, we were older friends and both lead guitar players who could play together in a way that made it hard for us to tell who was playing what. David and Graham did not have that with Stephen in the same way. I think I respect Stephen’s talent and genius in a way that they don’t. They see something else, and now they have spent a lot more time with him than I have. When I spend time with him today, I still see that original genius,” Neil Young said in his autobiography “Waging Heavy Peace” (2012).

Both born in Canada, Stephen Stills and Neil Young eventually ended up in California to pursue their dreams of getting a record deal. Stills was already aware of Young and had actually met him in Canada the previous year. Then, in April 1966, while stuck in a traffic jam on Sunset Boulevard, Stills spotted the famous hearse Young used to drive with an Ontario license plate and realized it had to be him. He and Richie Furay managed to catch up with Young and Bruce Palmer and the musicians reunited. It was after that encounter that they formed Buffalo Springfield in 1966, the band with which they first achieved fame.

Neil Young once said Stephen is a soulful and tormented artist

Neil left Buffalo Springfield in 1968 because he wanted to record his own albums and although he achieved fame as a solo artist he kept getting together with Stills in the following decades. In 1969 he joined Crosby, Stills & Nash for the first time and in 1976 he reunited with Stephen to form the Stills-Young Band which recorded the album “Long May You Run”. Their tour didn’t last long with Neil leaving after almost 20 shows. Although he initially cited personal reasons and later said that the tour simply wasn’t working and that the balance between them was off he was also concerned about how negative reviews comparing him to Stills were affecting his friend.

“I love playing with Stephen, it’s great to play with Stephen, he’s a great musician. (…) (I didn’t leave Buffalo Springfield because of him), I was 21 or 22 years old and already been with him for 18 months and I wanted to make my own records. In those days there was no such thing as a group with a guy making solo records at the same time, that was unheard of. (During our tour in 1976) we didn’t have problems between ourselves, but there were problems created by other people.”

He continued:

“I mean, we were still getting along well and playing well. But there were things that were happening that were destroying Stephen’s confidence and his ability to deal with the situation. He’s a tormented artist and he’s affected greatly. He’s like a light bulb without any glass around it, he’s like a filament. Things happen and it really affects him, he hasn’t gotten much of an outer shell. He’s really defenseless to a lot of things that people don’t realize how easy it is to hurt him.”

“People say things and stuff like that, because he’s really like a tough guy, you know. He’s not really that tough, because he has real feelings. He’s a soulful man, he could be one of the great Bluesmen of our time, if he puts his mind to just doing that. So people said things, people wrote things about us and stuff like that, and he was affected by it. Then he lost perspective on what was really happening and started putting out negative things to the audience and this and that. So I thought that it was a time to call it a day. I love him, it was too bad that it happened that way, but for both of us it was best. For everyone concerned, except the audience,” Neil Young explained in an interview with Laura Gross in 1988 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Stephen Stills recently said Young is his brother and that he absolutely loves him

Stephen is also a big fan of his friend and recently called him a brother, despite the ups and downs of their friendship. “Well, what can I say? He’s my brother. Regardless of all the negative commentary that’s gone on over the years, I happen to absolutely love him to death. He knows what he wants. He’s got a good old case of OCD (Obsessive compulsive disorder), but so does my wife. He insists on getting everything the way he hears it. He’s got control issues, but that’s okay. That’s what drives people like that to enormous success, if they’ve got a modicum of talent. I’m the lazier of the two. Though there are a few engineers who would argue that that’s a lie. But lately I’m just an old lazy dog,” Stephen Stills said in an interview with Classic Rock in 2025.

A couple of years before, he had already described Neil as “delightfully charming, willfully erratic and wilful. Even though I know there will be disappointments I still trust him more than anybody.” One interesting thing about Stills’ playing is that Young already compared it to Eric Clapton. “I love the way Eric plays. We played a couple of tunes right at that show that I really got off playing with him. He reminded me of playing with (Stephen) Stills in Buffalo Springfield. Because he is such a craftsman, such an artist the way he played. He’s so good, you know, there wasn’t anything he’d go for that he wouldn’t get. (So he is someone) fun to play with,” Neil Young told Much Music in 1996 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).