3. Neil YoungAfter The Goldrush

My choices here aren’t particularly easy to tease apart because they all kind of represent the narrative of my life before I started my own musical journey with Bad Religion, but in hindsight Neil Young, a Canadian, moved to Southern California, and he did so just before me and my family moved there in 1975. So, yes, he’s rough around the edges, and, yes, sometimes you wonder if he ever mastered his instrument, especially on those early albums, but the production sounds like Southern California. The vibe of those albums feels like Southern California. But, again, as a kid I just liked the tunes. I didn’t realise at the time that this was the California sound and that Neil Young was helping to create it, but I do think that that helps explain why this album means so much to me and why that sound means so much to me. When we moved to California, things were starting to gel in what became known as the Laurel Canyon scene, and quickly thereafter things fell apart. But as a little 11-year-old boy, this sound meant so much to me because it was so different from the sound and culture of what I had been used to.