Neil Young first achieved fame as a member of Buffalo Springfield alongside guitarist and singer Stephen Stills, but he truly reached another level of recognition as one of the greatest songwriters of all time through his solo career and his work with Crosby, Stills & Nash. Part of the music business since the early ’60s, Young has witnessed the evolution of Rock and Roll up close and has spoken about many bands from that era, including The Rolling Stones. What is Neil Young's opinion on The Rolling Stones "The Rolling Stones, now there was something, because they kept going. They didn’t just last for five years. It took them longer to make a great contribution. The Beatles made their contribution in about five years, bang, gone—right? The Rolling Stones came out with “Miss You” way after, years after the Beatles broke up—and when you think of the Rolling Stones, that’s one of their best things, that Some Girls album— and that’s with Ron Wood, y’know. They d gone through a lot of changes." "I liked the fact that the Stones lasted so long and kept making vital music. What I really really liked about the Stones was Brian Jones and Keith Richards playin’ together. Even though Brian Jones was just kind of a bratty, sub-blues kind of guy, he still had the exuberance. Brian Jones was a very funky part of that band in the beginning, man—all the slide shit and everything? He was really wild, Jones. Too bad he was so crazy. A druggie." "They were all young, goin’ through a lotta changes real fast. Brian didn’t make it. 'Satisfaction' was a great record. 'Get Off My Cloud,' even better record. Looser, less of a hit. More of a reckless abandon. 'Get Off My Cloud’—I know it’s not as good of a song, and I know that the performance is probably not as good as the 'Satisfaction' performance, maybe it is—but the thing about it is it’s obviously just such a fuckin’ throw-together song that they came up with on the way to the studio or the night before, y'know?" Neil Young continued: "That's what I liked about it. It really sounded like the Rolling Stones. I remember hearing one of the real early ones— 'I’m a Man.' It was really rough and crude.... It was when yer learning how to play, checkin’ out songs, learnin’ songs. You kinda look at things different, not so much what the song’s saying as, is it hard or easy?" "If it is easy, does that mean they can't play? Are they good or bad? You’re still working those things out. And then you can get so hung up playin’ a bunch of chords and changes that you lose the thing. . . . You don't realize that the easy stuff is the hardest. To make the easy stuff be great," Neil Young said about The Stones when he inducted Woody Guthrie into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. The Neil Young songs inspired by The Rolling Stones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyc0JSd5q7U&list=RDjyc0JSd5q7U&start_radio=1&pp=ygUHbXIgc291bKAHAQ%3D%3D Neil Young had the chance to see and meet The Rolling Stones in the beginning of their careers, in 1966, when Bufallo Springfield was their opening act in the United States. Curiously, the track "Mr. Soul", from the album "Buffalo Springfield Again" (1967) has a guitar riff clearly inspired by The Stones hit "Satisfaction". A couple years later on his solo career, Young was inspired by a little more than the riff, he actually used the melody of The Stones' "Lady Jane" in the song "Borrowed Tune" from his 1975 album "Tonight's The Night". He also mentions the band in the lyrics, saying: “I’m singin’ this borrowed tune. I took from the Rolling Stones. Alone in this empty room. Too wasted to write my own.” In the liner notes of the 1977 compilation record "Decade", Young said: "A song I had written at the beginning of the Time Fades Away tour reflecting on whether a big stadium tour was right for me. I played 'Lady Jane' and forgot the chords. I started playing my own chords, it started sounding better to me, so I kept playing that. It just turned into another song," he said. The influence of The Stones can also be heard on "Computer Age" The British band led by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards has always been an influence to Neil, even in terms of how his live concerts would be. He went to see them many times and was impressed by the logistics and size of their shows as it's said in Young's biography "Shakey" (2003). The Stones' inspiration can also be heard on "Computer Age", track from his 1983 album "Trans", which has a riff similar to "Jumpin' Jack Flash". Over the years, the Folk Rock artist became good friends with The Rolling Stones, especially Mick Jagger, whom he grew closer to while living in Malibu. Young had the chance to share the stage with Keith Richards in 1992 when he inducted Jimi Hendrix into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Stones guitarist joined him and other artists on stage to play "All Along the Watchtower". Neil Young said Rock can be divided between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones Neil Young once reflected about how Rock and Roll music can be divided in two categories, The Beatles type bands and The Rolling Stones type band. According to him The Beatles were more tight, something The Rolling Stones were not. As shown in his biography "Shakey" he said: "I realized, 'Hey, these Crazy Horse guys are a lot closer to the Rolling Stones. More than Buffalo Springfield was the Beatles.'So Id taken rock and roll and divided it into two categories, Rolling Stones and Beatles, okay?" "And I realized that if you divided into those two categories, color made no difference, what part of the world made no difference. Beatles are on one side, Rolling Stones on the other side, everybody else line up, okay? Crazy Horse and the Mynah Birds, they were on the Rolling Stones side". He was the questioned about in which category some bands would fit: "Buffalo Springfield were the Beatles? "Yup". CSNY? "Beatles." Pearl Jam? "Rolling Stones". The Harvest band, the Stray Gators0? "Beatles, heh heh. ... See, it’s just like that—pretty simple". Where did Dylan fit in this equation? "Where did he fit in? Rolling Stones. Dylan was never as tight as the Beatles," Neil Young saidThe post Neil Young’s opinion on The Rolling Stones appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.