''Greendale'' is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. Neil Young and Crazy Horse's ''Greendale'', a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town. Based on the saga of the Green family, the "audio novel" has been compared to the literary classics of Thornton Wilder's ''Our Town'' and Sherwood Anderson's ''Winesburg, Ohio'' for its complexity and emotional depth in exploring a small town in America.

''Greendale'' combines numerous themes on corruption, environmentalism and mass media consolidation into relevant post-9/11 art. The album, concert, film and DVDs have produced a vast divergence of critical opinion ranging from being called "amateur" to being voted as one of the best albums of 2003 by Rolling Stone magazine music critics.

The CD was originally released with a DVD of live "Neil-only" acoustic performance of the Greendale material from Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland. In 2004, the CD was released with a new DVD containing a live performance of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. A DVD-Audio version was also released, with both Advanced Resolution Stereo and 5.1 Surround sound mixes, and a video of "Devil's Sidewalk" from the film. In late 2004, the feature length DVD with actors lip-synching the material was released.

Greendale's blues sound reflects the influence of bluesman Jimmy Reed and his driving electric blues and folk melodies.

As of 2009, it is the last Neil Young album to feature Crazy Horse. - Wikipedia

Young theoretically set himself up for a backlash by touring the multimedia/theatrical stage version of Greendale prior to the album's actual release. American audiences were at times perplexed (to the point of hostility) while trying to follow the conceptual story line as fleshed out by screen projections and actors miming Young's lyrics. Roughly put, it concerns three generations of the fictional Green family who go through myriad, sometimes tragic, changes even as America itself undergoes its own succession of growing pains. (A Young-directed Greendale film will be available on DVD by the time you read this. And initial copies of the CD itself include a bonus DVD of a solo acoustic Greendale show, shot in Europe, during which Young prefaces each song with an elaborate explanation.)

For the long-suffering Young fan, however, the news is good. On purely musical terms, Greendale is a direct descendant of Ragged Glory, from 1990, one of the mightiest-ever Young/Crazy Horse outings. Greendale commences with "Falling From Above," a kind of good-time roots-rocker similar to Glory's "Country Home," and midway through there's the ten-minute "Carmichael," a slow-burn guitar jam drawn from the same template as "Love To Burn." Still later are no less than two other lengthy, visceral workouts, the 13-minute "Grandpa's Interview" and the 12-minute "Sun Green." That's a whole lotta Horse, folks, almost as if Young was saying, "Okay, thanks for putting up with my concert indulgences-here's the reward for your patience." Boy howdy to that, because Greendale is hands-down one of the year's most kick-ass rock albums.