Rick James was caught draft-dodging (iirc) and that meant Bruce Palmer and Neil Young ended up heading for the West Coast, and the rest is history, so to speak...
Believe it or not, he was in a band in the sixties called the Mynah Birds (iirc) that had some guy called Neil Young on guitar - even recorded some stuff...If you watch carefully you'll see the late Bruce Palmer with an EB0Not the most brilliant of material but some of the earliest NY material out there... other stuff can be found by looking...