The father-son relationship, though, was for a long time a troubled and fractious one. Scott Young was another itinerant soul, who had upped and left the family home when Neil was 15, leaving both his young sons in the care of their mother. According to Young's biographer, Jimmy McDonough, the indomitable 'Rassy' Ragland Young was a hard drinker who, until her deathbed, never forgave her errant husband for his betrayal.

Neil Young's life has also been mapped out by impulsive relationships with strong women. He married his first wife, Susan Acevedo, in 1968, and divorced her just as swiftly in 1970. That same year he moved in with Carrie Snodgrass, an actress he first saw and fell for while watching the film Diary of A Mad Housewife. She was later immortalised on the baroque ballad 'A Man Needs A Maid', on which he sang, 'I fell in love with the actress/ She was playing a part that I knew so well'.

Though he made some of his finest music in the Seventies, the decade was also marked by a series of personal tragedies. In 1972 his first son, Zeke, was born, and soon after diagnosed with cerebral palsy. That same year Young lost his guitarist and close friend 27-year-old Danny Whitten, and his favourite roadie, Bruce Berry, to drug overdoses. Then, six years later, having married his current wife, Pegi, Young's second son, Ben, was born with an even more severe form of cerebral palsy.