Neil Young turns 81 on Thursday, November 12. He was born that day in 1945 in Toronto, and the man who gave us “Heart of Gold” has spent this year acting nothing like a retiree. He put out Second Song, his 50th album, with his band the Chrome Hearts in September, played warm-up shows with Willie Nelson ahead of Farm Aid, and in late October filed a $10 million lawsuit over a Trump committee playing “Rockin’ in the Free World” at an Ohio rally.
For all his noise onstage, Young has guarded his private life closely, and the biggest change of his later years happened almost entirely out of sight. He ended a 36-year marriage and then quietly wed one of Hollywood’s best-known actresses. The romance also cost him one of rock’s most famous friendships, and how that rift ended is the part most fans never heard.
How Did 36 Years With Pegi Come To An End?
Young met Margaret “Pegi” Morton in 1974, when she was waitressing at a restaurant near his ranch in La Honda, California. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, she was living in a teepee at the time and called herself a “bona fide hippie nomad.” They married in August 1978, and their son Ben was born that year with severe cerebral palsy. Daughter Amber followed in 1984.
When the couple could not find a school that could teach Ben, they built one. Pegi and Neil founded the Bridge School in Hillsborough, California, in 1986, and for 30 years the benefit concerts they hosted at Shoreline Amphitheatre drew Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and Metallica to raise money for children with severe speech and physical disabilities.
Then, on July 29, 2014, Young filed for divorce in San Mateo County, Rolling Stone reported. Pegi later poured the breakup into her album Raw. “It was tough on all of us, for my kids and me,” she told Rolling Stone. She died of cancer on January 1, 2019, at 66, and Young wrote on his Neil Young Archives site, “Thanks Pegi, for being such a wonderful mother to our children.”
By then, Young had long since moved on with a woman every moviegoer knew.
Why Did Neil Young And Daryl Hannah Keep Their Wedding A Secret?
Daryl Hannah, now 65, had been the mermaid in Splash and the replicant Pris in Blade Runner. Their relationship became public in 2014, soon after his divorce filing, and the couple refused to discuss it. At the 2018 SXSW premiere of Paradox, the Netflix Western she directed with Young as its star, he finally said a few words. “I’m very lucky. We’re very lucky to have found each other,” he told Yahoo Entertainment.
That summer the rumors started. A boat captain told People he saw a “small, intimate gathering” aboard Young’s vintage yacht, the W.N. Ragland, off Washington State in late July. Reports then placed a second ceremony in Atascadero, California, in late August. Neither of them confirmed a thing. Then on October 31, 2018, Young posted a video of himself performing “Ohio” and casually wrote, “My wife Daryl and I put this video together.” As CBS News noted, it was his third marriage and Hannah’s first.
Young has said she changed his habits. “Daryl’s a big help. She’s very health-oriented, which I never have been,” he told AARP in 2019. Not everyone around him was so welcoming, though, and one old bandmate said so in print.
Which Bandmate Called Her A “Purely Poisonous Predator”?
In 2014, David Crosby told the Idaho Statesman that Young was hanging out with “a purely poisonous predator.” He meant Hannah. That October he went on Howard Stern’s radio show and said Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young would never perform again. He would not even say Crosby’s name. “There’s love there. There’s just nothing else there,” he said, as Pollstar reported.
Crosby knew he had gone too far. He later went on Stern’s show himself and apologized to Hannah, and he said he had emailed Young to say he was sorry. The apology did not land. Five years later Young was still stinging when he spoke to AARP. “Crosby should write an introspective book: Why People Won’t Talk to Me Anymore,” he said, though he added, “I won’t close the door on anything.”
The two men who had harmonized on “Ohio” were no longer speaking. Whether that door ever opened again came down to Crosby’s final years.
Did Neil Young And David Crosby Ever Make Up?
One moment of unity came in January 2022, when Young pulled his music from Spotify in protest over COVID misinformation on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Within days Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash asked to remove theirs too. “We support Neil,” their joint statement said, and Rolling Stone called it a CSNY reunion of sorts. But it was a gesture made through record labels, not a phone call, and as Far Out Magazine later noted, the pair were still estranged when the end came.
Crosby died on January 18, 2023, at 81, the same age Young is turning now. Whatever hurt was left, Young set it aside within a day. “David is gone, but his music lives on,” he wrote on his archives site. “The soul of CSNY, David’s voice and energy were at the heart of our band.” He remembered jamming on “Almost Cut My Hair” and “Deja Vu,” when “Stills and I had a blast as he kept going on and on.”
Three months later, Young walked onstage at Stephen Stills’ Light Up the Blues benefit at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, and the two old Buffalo Springfield partners sang “Helpless” together. The school he built with Pegi still raises money from his songs. Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, Vol. 2 – Out of the Blue and Vol. 3 – Into the Black were released November 6, with proceeds benefiting the Bridge School.
And as he turns 81, Young is still married to the woman Crosby once insulted, the one he calls “a big help.”
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