Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Jeff Dufour. Jeff is the editor-in-chief of National Journal. Find him on Twitter at @dcdufour.

Step aside and open wide as we begin a long journey through the past of the profoundly great career of The Loner himself, Mr. Neil Young. The opening episode of this three-part series covers the first decade of a career that continues to this day. Young traveled a vast distance from obscurity to fame during this period, from his early Sixties origins as Canadian surf instrumentalist to a failed Ontario folkie, to playing lead guitar for Rick “Superfreak” James, to co-founding one of the Sixties’ great “lost” bands in Buffalo Springfield, to a solo career that began as a quirky oddity and then turned him into #1 chart-topping superstar after his profile was raised to household-name status by spending time in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. And then, just as he had conquered America, he intentionally took an immediate hard left turn into the ditch.