Guitarist/composer Neil Citron was born in Toronto, Canada and relocated with his family to California at the age of 5. He soon discovered one of his two great passions when he began martial arts training with martial arts legend Chuck Norris. In his mid teens, Neil was inspired by his cousin -- longtime Heart guitarist Howard Leese -- to learn the guitar, and music eventually consumed much of his energy; to pay for instruments, he took an after-school job teaching at Norris’ Martial Arts School.

Neil's devotion to music paid off handsomely when, at 17, he made his major-label debut on Mercury Records as a songwriter and guitarist with the band HERO. With music now paying his bills, he continued recording, and a second HERO album for RCA followed. Between 1994 and 2000, Neil recorded several CDs with Lana Lane, with sales in excess of 100,000 copies in Japan alone. In 1999, he released his own instrumental CD Guitar Dreams on the Avalon label.

In addition to his impressive guitar playing, Neil Citron has enjoyed an equally successful career as a composer; his songs, including the WASP track “Scream Until You Like It,” appear in five Dino DeLaurentis films. Last year Neil also played an integral role in the production of the
Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do, recording all the soundtrack’s guitar parts and coaching the actors for their onscreen performances.

Adding to his many talents, Neil recently became Steve Vai's engineer and has worked on recent projects for Steve’s Favored Nations record label, including Steve Lukather & Larry Carlton’s No Substitutions and Stuart Hamm’s Outbound, as well as Vai's The 7th Song and Alive in an Ultra World.

Neil wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered his latest CD Absolute, whose title refers to the music being clear-cut black and white. He played all the instruments except drums, which were performed by Walter Garces, and the disc also includes a track “Miss, Miss Melissa” featuring a drum performance by Vinny Appice.

Neil Citron is now a 6th degree black belt master in Martial Arts.