.gif)
Crazy Horse (band)
Encyclopedia
Crazy Horse is an American rock
band best known for its association with Neil Young
. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and has released five albums of its own.
doo wop group Danny And The Memories, which consisted of main singer Danny Whitten
and supporting vocalists Lou Bisbal (soon to be replaced by Bengiamino Rocco), Billy Talbot
, and Ralph Molina
. The latter two would become the only members of Crazy Horse present in every incarnation of the band.
Making its way to San Francisco and back to Los Angeles again, the group evolved over the course of several years into The Rockets, a psychedelic folk hybrid comprising Whitten on guitar, Talbot on bass, Molina on drums, Bobby Notkoff
on violin, and brothers Leon and George Whitsell also on guitars. This lineup recorded the Rockets' only album, a self-titled set released in 1968.
, whom they had met two years earlier during the early days of Buffalo Springfield
. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets on stage during their show at the Whisky A Go-Go and soon after enlisted Whitten, Talbot, and Molina to back him on his second solo album.
Credited to Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl
" and the extended guitar workouts "Down by the River
" and "Cowgirl in the Sand". Crazy Horse toured with Young during the first half of 1969 and, with the addition of Jack Nitzsche
on electric piano, in early 1970. The 1970 tour was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East
.
Shortly after beginning work on his third solo album with Crazy Horse in 1969, Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash
as a full fourth member, recording an album and touring in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. The group as a whole appears on just three of the eleven tracks on After the Gold Rush
: "When You Dance I Can Really Love
" plus "Oh Lonesome Me
" and "I Believe In You" from the sessions in 1969 prior to Young's first tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
for Reprise Records
that year. The band retained Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and added second guitarist Nils Lofgren
(whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush). Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It
" would later be covered by a wide range of artists including Geoff Muldaur
, The Indigo Girls
, and Rod Stewart
. Stewart would record the song three times and score a hit with it on the same number of occasions—including a UK #1 in 1977 as a double A-side with "The First Cut Is the Deepest
". In 1988 the song would become a top-ten hit in the UK again, this time a #3 for Everything but the Girl
.
Danny Whitten was nominated in March this year for induction into the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in 2012.
Shortly thereafter, Lofgren and Nitzsche moved on to other endeavors, while Whitten's drug problems pushed the group to turn to outside musicians. Crazy Horse released two albums with different lineups (save for the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina) in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake. The former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold as frontman, while the latter was dominated by the rootsier stylings of Rick and Mike Curtis (formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as The Curtis Brothers). Meanwhile, Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band, the Stray Gators. Due to Whitten's poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young let Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep in him in the group. Whitten returned to Los Angeles and died a few days later, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.
After Whitten's death, Talbot and Molina were the only full-fledged members of the band. They let the Crazy Horse name go unused without retiring it altogether. In mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith
to record Tonight's the Night, the majority of which eventually saw release (in bowdlerized form with some earlier songs and different takes than originally intended) in 1975; it is frequently acclaimed as Young's best album. That autumn, the ensemble toured as the Santa Monica Flyers; Molina and Whitsell would subsequently contribute guitar and drums and percussion (respectively) to Young's On the Beach
in 1974.
Shortly after aborted sessions at Chess Studios in late 1974, Young, Talbot, and Molina spontaneously convened at Talbot's Echo Park home in 1975 with rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
, who proved to be just the right person to help resurrect Crazy Horse. "It was great", Talbot would say of the coming together and the chemistry it evoked. "We were all soaring. Neil loved it. We all loved it. It was the first time we heard the Horse since Danny Whitten died." After a five-year hiatus Neil Young and Crazy Horse was born again, and Young marked the occasion by finishing off the lyrics to "Powderfinger
", soon to become one of the new lineup's signature songs.
With Sampedro and producer David Briggs in tow, Young and Crazy Horse quickly recorded Zuma
later that year in the basement of Briggs' rented house in Malibu, initiating their most prolific period of collaboration. Sampedro's lack of technical proficiency ("Neil kept writin' simpler songs so I could play them") and desire to see Young "rockin' and having fun and seeing chicks' asses swaying in the audience" would greatly inform the tenor of the record, which largely assays conventional hard rock
styles and ribald misogyny with few of the country and folk flourishes that had dominated Young's music since 1970. In early 1976, Young and the band toured Japan and Europe; they were shut out of a proposed summer stadium tour when Young rekindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills
. They toured America that autumn when Young was forced to make up a series of canceled concert dates after walking out midway through the tour with Stills. Throughout late 1975 and into 1977, Young recorded feverishly in various solo and group configurations; Crazy Horse appears on all but two songs of 1977's country-inflected American Stars 'n Bars (with many tracks featuring an augmented lineup [The Rockets] that included Ben Keith, Carole Mayedo, Linda Ronstadt
, and Nicolette Larson
), while Comes a Time
features two performances with Crazy Horse: "Lotta Love" and "Motorcycle Mama".
In 1978, Crazy Horse released their fourth album (Crazy Moon, which features some lead guitar by Young), and also joined Young on the tour that led to the successful Rust Never Sleeps
and Live Rust
, both credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
As Young spent much of the eighties working in genres mostly outside the band's idiom, Crazy Horse recorded with him more sporadically, appearing only on Re·ac·tor
, an unspecified portion of Trans
, and Life
. Sessions for a planned 1984 album with the band ended after they were "spooked" by the addition of a professional horn section, although a contemporaneous bootleg of a performance at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz
containing many of the intended songs remains an enduring fan favorite. Several years later, Young included all three members of Crazy Horse in another horn-driven ensemble, the Bluenotes. But when Talbot and Molina proved ill-suited to a blues-oriented approach, Young reluctantly replaced the Crazy Horse bassist and drummer while retaining Sampedro, who would remain with Young in various band permutations over the next two years. Immediately thereafter, Talbot and Molina replaced Sampedro with a pair of new Crazy Horse members (Sonny Mone and former Rain Parade
member Matt Piucci) and recorded the pointedly-titled Left for Dead; released in 1989, it is the group's fifth and, to date, final album independent of Young.
and for a tour in 1991 that generated the live album Weld
. Over the next twelve years Crazy Horse would steadily collaborate with Young once more, joining the singer for Sleeps With Angels
, Broken Arrow
, the live Year of the Horse
, "Goin' Home" on Are You Passionate?
, and Greendale
. Sampedro agreed to sit out the recording of Greendale, as Young felt the material called for only one guitar; he joined the band onstage for the ensuing tour.
According to Young's biography Shakey, Crazy Horse had begun a sixth album of its own in the mid-1990s, but left the project unfinished when Young called upon the group to join him for some secret club dates in California (for which the quartet billed themselves as the Echoes) and for the recording of Broken Arrow. Young and Crazy Horse attempted to record for three months in San Francisco in 2000; few takes were finished to the band's satisfaction, and Young re-recorded most of the material (except for "Goin' Home") with Booker T & the MGs for Are You Passionate?. Recordings from the San Francisco sessions, entitled Toast, were announced for release in 2008 as part of Young's Archives series; as of 2011, the album remains unreleased.
Crazy Horse has remained inactive since touring with Young in support of Greendale in the winter of 2004. According to Young in a 2011 interview with American Songwriter, "They have to be together before I can be together with them. They haven’t been doing anything together, so they need to be able to do it. I don’t have the time to support things. I have to go with things that are going to support me. But I think they can do it."
put out a 20-track retrospective, Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, featuring material from each of the group's five albums with the exception of its second one, Loose.
band best known for its association with Neil Young
. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and has released five albums of its own.
doo wop group Danny And The Memories, which consisted of main singer Danny Whitten
and supporting vocalists Lou Bisbal (soon to be replaced by Bengiamino Rocco), Billy Talbot
, and Ralph Molina
. The latter two would become the only members of Crazy Horse present in every incarnation of the band.
Making its way to San Francisco and back to Los Angeles again, the group evolved over the course of several years into The Rockets, a psychedelic folk hybrid comprising Whitten on guitar, Talbot on bass, Molina on drums, Bobby Notkoff
on violin, and brothers Leon and George Whitsell also on guitars. This lineup recorded the Rockets' only album, a self-titled set released in 1968.
, whom they had met two years earlier during the early days of Buffalo Springfield
. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets on stage during their show at the Whisky A Go-Go and soon after enlisted Whitten, Talbot, and Molina to back him on his second solo album.
Credited to Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl
" and the extended guitar workouts "Down by the River
" and "Cowgirl in the Sand". Crazy Horse toured with Young during the first half of 1969 and, with the addition of Jack Nitzsche
on electric piano, in early 1970. The 1970 tour was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East
.
Shortly after beginning work on his third solo album with Crazy Horse in 1969, Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash
as a full fourth member, recording an album and touring in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. The group as a whole appears on just three of the eleven tracks on After the Gold Rush
: "When You Dance I Can Really Love
" plus "Oh Lonesome Me
" and "I Believe In You" from the sessions in 1969 prior to Young's first tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
for Reprise Records
that year. The band retained Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and added second guitarist Nils Lofgren
(whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush). Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It
" would later be covered by a wide range of artists including Geoff Muldaur
, The Indigo Girls
, and Rod Stewart
. Stewart would record the song three times and score a hit with it on the same number of occasions—including a UK #1 in 1977 as a double A-side with "The First Cut Is the Deepest
". In 1988 the song would become a top-ten hit in the UK again, this time a #3 for Everything but the Girl
.
Danny Whitten was nominated in March this year for induction into the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in 2012.
Shortly thereafter, Lofgren and Nitzsche moved on to other endeavors, while Whitten's drug problems pushed the group to turn to outside musicians. Crazy Horse released two albums with different lineups (save for the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina) in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake. The former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold as frontman, while the latter was dominated by the rootsier stylings of Rick and Mike Curtis (formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as The Curtis Brothers). Meanwhile, Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band, the Stray Gators. Due to Whitten's poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young let Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep in him in the group. Whitten returned to Los Angeles and died a few days later, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.
After Whitten's death, Talbot and Molina were the only full-fledged members of the band. They let the Crazy Horse name go unused without retiring it altogether. In mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith
to record Tonight's the Night, the majority of which eventually saw release (in bowdlerized form with some earlier songs and different takes than originally intended) in 1975; it is frequently acclaimed as Young's best album. That autumn, the ensemble toured as the Santa Monica Flyers; Molina and Whitsell would subsequently contribute guitar and drums and percussion (respectively) to Young's On the Beach
in 1974.
Shortly after aborted sessions at Chess Studios in late 1974, Young, Talbot, and Molina spontaneously convened at Talbot's Echo Park home in 1975 with rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
, who proved to be just the right person to help resurrect Crazy Horse. "It was great", Talbot would say of the coming together and the chemistry it evoked. "We were all soaring. Neil loved it. We all loved it. It was the first time we heard the Horse since Danny Whitten died." After a five-year hiatus Neil Young and Crazy Horse was born again, and Young marked the occasion by finishing off the lyrics to "Powderfinger
", soon to become one of the new lineup's signature songs.
With Sampedro and producer David Briggs in tow, Young and Crazy Horse quickly recorded Zuma
later that year in the basement of Briggs' rented house in Malibu, initiating their most prolific period of collaboration. Sampedro's lack of technical proficiency ("Neil kept writin' simpler songs so I could play them") and desire to see Young "rockin' and having fun and seeing chicks' asses swaying in the audience" would greatly inform the tenor of the record, which largely assays conventional hard rock
styles and ribald misogyny with few of the country and folk flourishes that had dominated Young's music since 1970. In early 1976, Young and the band toured Japan and Europe; they were shut out of a proposed summer stadium tour when Young rekindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills
. They toured America that autumn when Young was forced to make up a series of canceled concert dates after walking out midway through the tour with Stills. Throughout late 1975 and into 1977, Young recorded feverishly in various solo and group configurations; Crazy Horse appears on all but two songs of 1977's country-inflected American Stars 'n Bars (with many tracks featuring an augmented lineup [The Rockets] that included Ben Keith, Carole Mayedo, Linda Ronstadt
, and Nicolette Larson
), while Comes a Time
features two performances with Crazy Horse: "Lotta Love" and "Motorcycle Mama".
In 1978, Crazy Horse released their fourth album (Crazy Moon, which features some lead guitar by Young), and also joined Young on the tour that led to the successful Rust Never Sleeps
and Live Rust
, both credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
As Young spent much of the eighties working in genres mostly outside the band's idiom, Crazy Horse recorded with him more sporadically, appearing only on Re·ac·tor
, an unspecified portion of Trans
, and Life
. Sessions for a planned 1984 album with the band ended after they were "spooked" by the addition of a professional horn section, although a contemporaneous bootleg of a performance at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz
containing many of the intended songs remains an enduring fan favorite. Several years later, Young included all three members of Crazy Horse in another horn-driven ensemble, the Bluenotes. But when Talbot and Molina proved ill-suited to a blues-oriented approach, Young reluctantly replaced the Crazy Horse bassist and drummer while retaining Sampedro, who would remain with Young in various band permutations over the next two years. Immediately thereafter, Talbot and Molina replaced Sampedro with a pair of new Crazy Horse members (Sonny Mone and former Rain Parade
member Matt Piucci) and recorded the pointedly-titled Left for Dead; released in 1989, it is the group's fifth and, to date, final album independent of Young.
and for a tour in 1991 that generated the live album Weld
. Over the next twelve years Crazy Horse would steadily collaborate with Young once more, joining the singer for Sleeps With Angels
, Broken Arrow
, the live Year of the Horse
, "Goin' Home" on Are You Passionate?
, and Greendale
. Sampedro agreed to sit out the recording of Greendale, as Young felt the material called for only one guitar; he joined the band onstage for the ensuing tour.
According to Young's biography Shakey, Crazy Horse had begun a sixth album of its own in the mid-1990s, but left the project unfinished when Young called upon the group to join him for some secret club dates in California (for which the quartet billed themselves as the Echoes) and for the recording of Broken Arrow. Young and Crazy Horse attempted to record for three months in San Francisco in 2000; few takes were finished to the band's satisfaction, and Young re-recorded most of the material (except for "Goin' Home") with Booker T & the MGs for Are You Passionate?. Recordings from the San Francisco sessions, entitled Toast, were announced for release in 2008 as part of Young's Archives series; as of 2011, the album remains unreleased.
Crazy Horse has remained inactive since touring with Young in support of Greendale in the winter of 2004. According to Young in a 2011 interview with American Songwriter, "They have to be together before I can be together with them. They haven’t been doing anything together, so they need to be able to do it. I don’t have the time to support things. I have to go with things that are going to support me. But I think they can do it."
put out a 20-track retrospective, Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, featuring material from each of the group's five albums with the exception of its second one, Loose.
band best known for its association with Neil Young
. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and has released five albums of its own.
doo wop group Danny And The Memories, which consisted of main singer Danny Whitten
and supporting vocalists Lou Bisbal (soon to be replaced by Bengiamino Rocco), Billy Talbot
, and Ralph Molina
. The latter two would become the only members of Crazy Horse present in every incarnation of the band.
Making its way to San Francisco and back to Los Angeles again, the group evolved over the course of several years into The Rockets, a psychedelic folk hybrid comprising Whitten on guitar, Talbot on bass, Molina on drums, Bobby Notkoff
on violin, and brothers Leon and George Whitsell also on guitars. This lineup recorded the Rockets' only album, a self-titled set released in 1968.
, whom they had met two years earlier during the early days of Buffalo Springfield
. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets on stage during their show at the Whisky A Go-Go and soon after enlisted Whitten, Talbot, and Molina to back him on his second solo album.
Credited to Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl
" and the extended guitar workouts "Down by the River
" and "Cowgirl in the Sand". Crazy Horse toured with Young during the first half of 1969 and, with the addition of Jack Nitzsche
on electric piano, in early 1970. The 1970 tour was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East
.
Shortly after beginning work on his third solo album with Crazy Horse in 1969, Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash
as a full fourth member, recording an album and touring in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. The group as a whole appears on just three of the eleven tracks on After the Gold Rush
: "When You Dance I Can Really Love
" plus "Oh Lonesome Me
" and "I Believe In You" from the sessions in 1969 prior to Young's first tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
for Reprise Records
that year. The band retained Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and added second guitarist Nils Lofgren
(whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush). Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It
" would later be covered by a wide range of artists including Geoff Muldaur
, The Indigo Girls
, and Rod Stewart
. Stewart would record the song three times and score a hit with it on the same number of occasions—including a UK #1 in 1977 as a double A-side with "The First Cut Is the Deepest
". In 1988 the song would become a top-ten hit in the UK again, this time a #3 for Everything but the Girl
.
Danny Whitten was nominated in March this year for induction into the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in 2012.
Shortly thereafter, Lofgren and Nitzsche moved on to other endeavors, while Whitten's drug problems pushed the group to turn to outside musicians. Crazy Horse released two albums with different lineups (save for the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina) in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake. The former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold as frontman, while the latter was dominated by the rootsier stylings of Rick and Mike Curtis (formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as The Curtis Brothers). Meanwhile, Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band, the Stray Gators. Due to Whitten's poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young let Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep in him in the group. Whitten returned to Los Angeles and died a few days later, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.
After Whitten's death, Talbot and Molina were the only full-fledged members of the band. They let the Crazy Horse name go unused without retiring it altogether. In mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith
to record Tonight's the Night, the majority of which eventually saw release (in bowdlerized form with some earlier songs and different takes than originally intended) in 1975; it is frequently acclaimed as Young's best album. That autumn, the ensemble toured as the Santa Monica Flyers; Molina and Whitsell would subsequently contribute guitar and drums and percussion (respectively) to Young's On the Beach
in 1974.
Shortly after aborted sessions at Chess Studios in late 1974, Young, Talbot, and Molina spontaneously convened at Talbot's Echo Park home in 1975 with rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
, who proved to be just the right person to help resurrect Crazy Horse. "It was great", Talbot would say of the coming together and the chemistry it evoked. "We were all soaring. Neil loved it. We all loved it. It was the first time we heard the Horse since Danny Whitten died." After a five-year hiatus Neil Young and Crazy Horse was born again, and Young marked the occasion by finishing off the lyrics to "Powderfinger
", soon to become one of the new lineup's signature songs.
With Sampedro and producer David Briggs in tow, Young and Crazy Horse quickly recorded Zuma
later that year in the basement of Briggs' rented house in Malibu, initiating their most prolific period of collaboration. Sampedro's lack of technical proficiency ("Neil kept writin' simpler songs so I could play them") and desire to see Young "rockin' and having fun and seeing chicks' asses swaying in the audience" would greatly inform the tenor of the record, which largely assays conventional hard rock
styles and ribald misogyny with few of the country and folk flourishes that had dominated Young's music since 1970. In early 1976, Young and the band toured Japan and Europe; they were shut out of a proposed summer stadium tour when Young rekindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills
. They toured America that autumn when Young was forced to make up a series of canceled concert dates after walking out midway through the tour with Stills. Throughout late 1975 and into 1977, Young recorded feverishly in various solo and group configurations; Crazy Horse appears on all but two songs of 1977's country-inflected American Stars 'n Bars (with many tracks featuring an augmented lineup [The Rockets] that included Ben Keith, Carole Mayedo, Linda Ronstadt
, and Nicolette Larson
), while Comes a Time
features two performances with Crazy Horse: "Lotta Love" and "Motorcycle Mama".
In 1978, Crazy Horse released their fourth album (Crazy Moon, which features some lead guitar by Young), and also joined Young on the tour that led to the successful Rust Never Sleeps
and Live Rust
, both credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
As Young spent much of the eighties working in genres mostly outside the band's idiom, Crazy Horse recorded with him more sporadically, appearing only on Re·ac·tor
, an unspecified portion of Trans
, and Life
. Sessions for a planned 1984 album with the band ended after they were "spooked" by the addition of a professional horn section, although a contemporaneous bootleg of a performance at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz
containing many of the intended songs remains an enduring fan favorite. Several years later, Young included all three members of Crazy Horse in another horn-driven ensemble, the Bluenotes. But when Talbot and Molina proved ill-suited to a blues-oriented approach, Young reluctantly replaced the Crazy Horse bassist and drummer while retaining Sampedro, who would remain with Young in various band permutations over the next two years. Immediately thereafter, Talbot and Molina replaced Sampedro with a pair of new Crazy Horse members (Sonny Mone and former Rain Parade
member Matt Piucci) and recorded the pointedly-titled Left for Dead; released in 1989, it is the group's fifth and, to date, final album independent of Young.
and for a tour in 1991 that generated the live album Weld
. Over the next twelve years Crazy Horse would steadily collaborate with Young once more, joining the singer for Sleeps With Angels
, Broken Arrow
, the live Year of the Horse
, "Goin' Home" on Are You Passionate?
, and Greendale
. Sampedro agreed to sit out the recording of Greendale, as Young felt the material called for only one guitar; he joined the band onstage for the ensuing tour.
According to Young's biography Shakey, Crazy Horse had begun a sixth album of its own in the mid-1990s, but left the project unfinished when Young called upon the group to join him for some secret club dates in California (for which the quartet billed themselves as the Echoes) and for the recording of Broken Arrow. Young and Crazy Horse attempted to record for three months in San Francisco in 2000; few takes were finished to the band's satisfaction, and Young re-recorded most of the material (except for "Goin' Home") with Booker T & the MGs for Are You Passionate?. Recordings from the San Francisco sessions, entitled Toast, were announced for release in 2008 as part of Young's Archives series; as of 2011, the album remains unreleased.
Crazy Horse has remained inactive since touring with Young in support of Greendale in the winter of 2004. According to Young in a 2011 interview with American Songwriter, "They have to be together before I can be together with them. They haven’t been doing anything together, so they need to be able to do it. I don’t have the time to support things. I have to go with things that are going to support me. But I think they can do it."
put out a 20-track retrospective, Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, featuring material from each of the group's five albums with the exception of its second one, Loose.
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band best known for its association with Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and has released five albums of its own.
Early years
The band's origins date to 1963 and the Los Angeles-based a cappellaA cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
doo wop group Danny And The Memories, which consisted of main singer Danny Whitten
Danny Whitten
Daniel Ray Whitten was an American musician and songwriter best known for his work with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and for the song "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a hit for Rita Coolidge, Rod Stewart and Everything but the Girl.- Biography :Whitten was born on May 8, 1943, in Columbus, Georgia....
and supporting vocalists Lou Bisbal (soon to be replaced by Bengiamino Rocco), Billy Talbot
Billy Talbot
Billy Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the bassist of Crazy Horse.-Music career:Born in New York City, Talbot started his musical career singing on street corners at the age of 14. He moved to New Jersey with his family the next year, and by 17 he had moved to...
, and Ralph Molina
Ralph Molina
Ralph Molina is an American musician, best known as the drummer for Neil Young's backing band Crazy Horse.Born in Puerto Rico, Molina has been a member of Crazy Horse since they were formed in 1962 as Danny & the Memories. He has remained throughout the band's many personnel changes, and has...
. The latter two would become the only members of Crazy Horse present in every incarnation of the band.
Making its way to San Francisco and back to Los Angeles again, the group evolved over the course of several years into The Rockets, a psychedelic folk hybrid comprising Whitten on guitar, Talbot on bass, Molina on drums, Bobby Notkoff
Bobby Notkoff
Bobby Notkoff is a violinist who played with The Rockets in the 1960s and Family Lotus in the 1970s. He was a founding member of Electric Flag, one of the first supergroups, with Mike Bloomfield and Buddy Miles.He lives in New Mexico.-Selected discography:...
on violin, and brothers Leon and George Whitsell also on guitars. This lineup recorded the Rockets' only album, a self-titled set released in 1968.
With Neil Young, 1968-1970
With their album complete, the Rockets reconnected with Neil YoungNeil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
, whom they had met two years earlier during the early days of Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...
. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets on stage during their show at the Whisky A Go-Go and soon after enlisted Whitten, Talbot, and Molina to back him on his second solo album.
Credited to Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on Reprise Records catalogue RS 6349...
includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl
Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young song)
"Cinnamon Girl" is a song by Neil Young. It debuted on the 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which was also Young's first album with backing band Crazy Horse...
" and the extended guitar workouts "Down by the River
Down by the River
"Down by the River" is a song composed by Neil Young. It was first released on his 1969 album with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Young explained the context of story when introducing it in New Orleans on September 27, 1984. It depicts a man who catches his woman cheating on him,...
" and "Cowgirl in the Sand". Crazy Horse toured with Young during the first half of 1969 and, with the addition of Jack Nitzsche
Jack Nitzsche
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
on electric piano, in early 1970. The 1970 tour was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East
Live at the Fillmore East (Neil Young album)
Live at the Fillmore East is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse featuring guitarist Danny Whitten. In February and March 1970, Young and Crazy Horse went on tour to support Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Live at the Fillmore East, released in 2006, features performances from the tour...
.
Shortly after beginning work on his third solo album with Crazy Horse in 1969, Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash
Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young)
Crosby, Stills & Nash is a folk rock supergroup made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, also known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young when joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young...
as a full fourth member, recording an album and touring in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. The group as a whole appears on just three of the eleven tracks on After the Gold Rush
After the Gold Rush
After the Gold Rush is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young. Released in August 1970 on Reprise Records, it was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu...
: "When You Dance I Can Really Love
When You Dance I Can Really Love
"When You Dance I Can Really Love" is the ninth track on Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush. It was written by Young.It was released as a single in the U.S...
" plus "Oh Lonesome Me
Oh Lonesome Me
"Oh Lonesome Me" is a popular song written and recorded by Don Gibson with Chet Atkins producing for RCA Victor in Nashville in 1958. The song topped the country chart for eight non consecutive weeks, in addition to reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100...
" and "I Believe In You" from the sessions in 1969 prior to Young's first tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
With and Without Young, 1970-1990
As Young experienced back problems and remained committed to other endeavors from late 1970 through most of 1971, Crazy Horse capitalized on its newfound exposure and recorded its eponymous debut albumCrazy Horse (album)
Crazy Horse is the 1971 debut album by Crazy Horse, released by Reprise Records. It peaked at number 84 on the Billboard album chart.- History :...
for Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...
that year. The band retained Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and added second guitarist Nils Lofgren
Nils Lofgren
Nils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock music recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
(whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush). Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It
I Don't Want to Talk About It
"I Don't Want to Talk About It" is the name of a song written by Danny Whitten. Whitten's band, Crazy Horse released it as a track on their 1971 eponymous album....
" would later be covered by a wide range of artists including Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur is an American founding member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band of Cambridge, Massachusetts; a member of Paul Butterfield's Better Days; and an accomplished solo guitarist, singer, and songwriter....
, The Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls
The Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. They met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area...
, and Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
. Stewart would record the song three times and score a hit with it on the same number of occasions—including a UK #1 in 1977 as a double A-side with "The First Cut Is the Deepest
The First Cut Is the Deepest
"The First Cut Is the Deepest" is a 1967 song written by Cat Stevens, originally released by P. P. Arnold in the spring of 1967. Stevens' own version of the song is technically a cover, and originally appeared on his album New Masters in December 1967....
". In 1988 the song would become a top-ten hit in the UK again, this time a #3 for Everything but the Girl
Everything but the Girl
Everything but the Girl was a two-person English band, formed in Hull during 1981, consisting of lead singer and occasional guitarist Tracey Thorn and guitarist, keyboardist, and singer Ben Watt . They are currently inactive although vocalist Tracey Thorn hinted that they may reform someday...
.
Danny Whitten was nominated in March this year for induction into the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in 2012.
Shortly thereafter, Lofgren and Nitzsche moved on to other endeavors, while Whitten's drug problems pushed the group to turn to outside musicians. Crazy Horse released two albums with different lineups (save for the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina) in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake. The former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold as frontman, while the latter was dominated by the rootsier stylings of Rick and Mike Curtis (formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as The Curtis Brothers). Meanwhile, Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band, the Stray Gators. Due to Whitten's poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young let Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep in him in the group. Whitten returned to Los Angeles and died a few days later, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.
After Whitten's death, Talbot and Molina were the only full-fledged members of the band. They let the Crazy Horse name go unused without retiring it altogether. In mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith
Ben Keith
Bennett Keith Schaeufele , better known by his stage name Ben Keith, was an American musician and record producer...
to record Tonight's the Night, the majority of which eventually saw release (in bowdlerized form with some earlier songs and different takes than originally intended) in 1975; it is frequently acclaimed as Young's best album. That autumn, the ensemble toured as the Santa Monica Flyers; Molina and Whitsell would subsequently contribute guitar and drums and percussion (respectively) to Young's On the Beach
On the Beach
On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world novel written by British-Australian author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. It was published in 1957....
in 1974.
Shortly after aborted sessions at Chess Studios in late 1974, Young, Talbot, and Molina spontaneously convened at Talbot's Echo Park home in 1975 with rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
Frank Sampedro
Frank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
, who proved to be just the right person to help resurrect Crazy Horse. "It was great", Talbot would say of the coming together and the chemistry it evoked. "We were all soaring. Neil loved it. We all loved it. It was the first time we heard the Horse since Danny Whitten died." After a five-year hiatus Neil Young and Crazy Horse was born again, and Young marked the occasion by finishing off the lyrics to "Powderfinger
Powderfinger (song)
"Powderfinger" is a song written by Neil Young, first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It subsequently appeared on several of Young's live recordings, and has been covered by several bands, including Cowboy Junkies, Beat Farmers, Rusted Root, and Jazz Mandolin Project...
", soon to become one of the new lineup's signature songs.
With Sampedro and producer David Briggs in tow, Young and Crazy Horse quickly recorded Zuma
Zuma (album)
Zuma is the seventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his second with Crazy Horse, released in 1975. Some believe the album was named after Zuma Beach in Malibu; however, it seems more logical that the title comes from Montezuma, as he is featured prominently in the song Cortez The...
later that year in the basement of Briggs' rented house in Malibu, initiating their most prolific period of collaboration. Sampedro's lack of technical proficiency ("Neil kept writin' simpler songs so I could play them") and desire to see Young "rockin' and having fun and seeing chicks' asses swaying in the audience" would greatly inform the tenor of the record, which largely assays conventional hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
styles and ribald misogyny with few of the country and folk flourishes that had dominated Young's music since 1970. In early 1976, Young and the band toured Japan and Europe; they were shut out of a proposed summer stadium tour when Young rekindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...
. They toured America that autumn when Young was forced to make up a series of canceled concert dates after walking out midway through the tour with Stills. Throughout late 1975 and into 1977, Young recorded feverishly in various solo and group configurations; Crazy Horse appears on all but two songs of 1977's country-inflected American Stars 'n Bars (with many tracks featuring an augmented lineup [The Rockets] that included Ben Keith, Carole Mayedo, Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
, and Nicolette Larson
Nicolette Larson
Nicolette Larson was an American pop singer. She is perhaps best known for her work in the late 1970s with Neil Young, as well as her 1978 cover of Young's "Lotta Love". The song, her debut single, was a Number One Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks hit and #8 pop hit that year...
), while Comes a Time
Comes a Time
Comes a Time is the ninth album by Neil Young, and a return to the country/folk rock sound of Harvest . Many of the tracks include harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson. Originally, it had started out as a solo record, but when Young played it for Reprise executives they asked him if he wouldn't...
features two performances with Crazy Horse: "Lotta Love" and "Motorcycle Mama".
In 1978, Crazy Horse released their fourth album (Crazy Moon, which features some lead guitar by Young), and also joined Young on the tour that led to the successful Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
and Live Rust
Live Rust
Live Rust is a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, recorded during his fall 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. The show at the Cow Palace, San Francisco was filmed and was the performance used in the concert film, Rust Never Sleeps; however, the album Live Rust was composed of performances...
, both credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
As Young spent much of the eighties working in genres mostly outside the band's idiom, Crazy Horse recorded with him more sporadically, appearing only on Re·ac·tor
Re-ac-tor
Re-ac-tor is the eleventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, and his third with Crazy Horse, released in 1981. The album married the electric guitar crunch of the late '70s Crazy Horse sound with early '80s new wave rhythms...
, an unspecified portion of Trans
Trans (album)
Trans is the twelfth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 1982. Recorded partially and released during his notorious Geffen era in the 1980s, Trans baffled many Neil Young fans. Some suggested that the album could be a satirical message that Young was trying to send about the...
, and Life
Life (1987 album)
Life is the sixteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fourth with Crazy Horse, Young's first with his erstwhile backing band since 1981's Re-ac-tor, and Young's last release on the Geffen label....
. Sessions for a planned 1984 album with the band ended after they were "spooked" by the addition of a professional horn section, although a contemporaneous bootleg of a performance at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
containing many of the intended songs remains an enduring fan favorite. Several years later, Young included all three members of Crazy Horse in another horn-driven ensemble, the Bluenotes. But when Talbot and Molina proved ill-suited to a blues-oriented approach, Young reluctantly replaced the Crazy Horse bassist and drummer while retaining Sampedro, who would remain with Young in various band permutations over the next two years. Immediately thereafter, Talbot and Molina replaced Sampedro with a pair of new Crazy Horse members (Sonny Mone and former Rain Parade
Rain Parade
The Rain Parade was a band active in the Paisley Underground scene in Los Angeles in the 1980s.-History:The band was founded by college roommates Matt Piucci and David Roback in 1981, originally as The Moving Sidewalks. David's brother Steven Roback joined the band shortly thereafter...
member Matt Piucci) and recorded the pointedly-titled Left for Dead; released in 1989, it is the group's fifth and, to date, final album independent of Young.
With Young, 1990 and later
The split with Sampedro and Young proved relatively short-lived as Young and Crazy Horse reunited in 1990 for the acclaimed album Ragged GloryRagged Glory
Ragged Glory is the twentieth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fifth with Crazy Horse, released in 1990.The album revisits the hard rock style previously explored on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Zuma...
and for a tour in 1991 that generated the live album Weld
Weld (album)
Weld is a live album and concert video by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album...
. Over the next twelve years Crazy Horse would steadily collaborate with Young once more, joining the singer for Sleeps With Angels
Sleeps with Angels
Sleeps With Angels is the twenty-second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his sixth with Crazy Horse, released on the Warner Bros. Records/Reprise label....
, Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow (album)
Broken Arrow is the twenty-fourth studio album by Neil Young, and his seventh with Crazy Horse. The first three songs are in the form of long, structured jams...
, the live Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
, "Goin' Home" on Are You Passionate?
Are You Passionate?
Are You Passionate? is the twenty-sixth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, the only album to feature Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and his eighth with Crazy Horse, released in 2002. It represents Young's foray into soul music, not sounding like anything he had previously released...
, and Greendale
Greendale (album)
Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
. Sampedro agreed to sit out the recording of Greendale, as Young felt the material called for only one guitar; he joined the band onstage for the ensuing tour.
According to Young's biography Shakey, Crazy Horse had begun a sixth album of its own in the mid-1990s, but left the project unfinished when Young called upon the group to join him for some secret club dates in California (for which the quartet billed themselves as the Echoes) and for the recording of Broken Arrow. Young and Crazy Horse attempted to record for three months in San Francisco in 2000; few takes were finished to the band's satisfaction, and Young re-recorded most of the material (except for "Goin' Home") with Booker T & the MGs for Are You Passionate?. Recordings from the San Francisco sessions, entitled Toast, were announced for release in 2008 as part of Young's Archives series; as of 2011, the album remains unreleased.
Crazy Horse has remained inactive since touring with Young in support of Greendale in the winter of 2004. According to Young in a 2011 interview with American Songwriter, "They have to be together before I can be together with them. They haven’t been doing anything together, so they need to be able to do it. I don’t have the time to support things. I have to go with things that are going to support me. But I think they can do it."
Reissued recordings
In 2005 Rhino Records' Handmade division released a two-disc set, Scratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings, in a limited edition of 2,500 copies. The set included the group's first two albums in their entirety on the first disc, with the second disc containing nine rarities and outtakes (including both sides of a single by Danny and the Memories). The set is currently out of print. Also in 2005, the Australian reissue label Raven RecordsRaven Records
Raven Records is an Australian record label that specializes in retrospectives and reissues or recordings by American, British and Australian artists.Raven Records was established in 1979 by Glenn A. Baker, Kevin Mueller and Peter Shillito....
put out a 20-track retrospective, Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, featuring material from each of the group's five albums with the exception of its second one, Loose.
Current
- Billy TalbotBilly TalbotBilly Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the bassist of Crazy Horse.-Music career:Born in New York City, Talbot started his musical career singing on street corners at the age of 14. He moved to New Jersey with his family the next year, and by 17 he had moved to...
, bassBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments... - Ralph MolinaRalph MolinaRalph Molina is an American musician, best known as the drummer for Neil Young's backing band Crazy Horse.Born in Puerto Rico, Molina has been a member of Crazy Horse since they were formed in 1962 as Danny & the Memories. He has remained throughout the band's many personnel changes, and has...
, drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, vocals - Frank "Poncho" SampedroFrank SampedroFrank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
, guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, organOrgan (music)The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, vocals (1975–present)
Past members of Neil Young and Crazy Horse
- Danny WhittenDanny WhittenDaniel Ray Whitten was an American musician and songwriter best known for his work with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and for the song "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a hit for Rita Coolidge, Rod Stewart and Everything but the Girl.- Biography :Whitten was born on May 8, 1943, in Columbus, Georgia....
, guitar, vocals - Jack NitzscheJack NitzscheBernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
, keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, vocals
Other past members
- Nils LofgrenNils LofgrenNils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock music recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
, guitar, keyboards, vocals - George Whitsell, guitar, vocals
- Greg Leroy, guitar, vocals
- John Blanton, keyboards
- Rick Curtis, guitar, vocals
- Michael Curtis, keyboards
- Sonny Mone, guitar, vocals
- Matt Piucci, guitar
Crazy Horse
- Crazy HorseCrazy Horse (album)Crazy Horse is the 1971 debut album by Crazy Horse, released by Reprise Records. It peaked at number 84 on the Billboard album chart.- History :...
, Reprise 1971 - LooseLoose (Crazy Horse album)Loose is a 1972 album by the rock band Crazy Horse, the follow-up to their self-titled debut.- Track listing :#"Hit and Run" - 2:42#"Try" - 3:18#"One Thing I Love" - 2:37#"Move" - 3:14...
, Reprise 1972 - At Crooked Lake, Epic 1972
- Crazy MoonCrazy Moon (Crazy Horse album)-Track listing:#"She's Hot" - 3:11#"Going Down Again" - 3:26#"Lost and Lonely Feelin'" - 3:10#"Dancin' Lady" - 3:23#"End Of The Line" - 3:10#"New Orleans" - 3:11...
, Capitol 1978 - Left for Dead, Capitol 1989
- Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, Raven 2005
- Scratchy: The Complete Reprise RecordingsScratchy: The Complete Reprise RecordingsScratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings is a 2005 compilation album released by the group Crazy Horse. It is a re-issue of the first two Crazy Horse albums, Crazy Horse and Loose, on Reprise Records, with bonus tracks and the first single by the pre-Crazy Horse group Danny & The Memories.-Disc...
, Rhino Handmade 2005
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
- Everybody Knows This Is NowhereEverybody Knows This Is NowhereEverybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on Reprise Records catalogue RS 6349...
(1969) - After the Gold RushAfter the Gold RushAfter the Gold Rush is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young. Released in August 1970 on Reprise Records, it was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu...
(1970) - "Oh Lonesome MeOh Lonesome Me"Oh Lonesome Me" is a popular song written and recorded by Don Gibson with Chet Atkins producing for RCA Victor in Nashville in 1958. The song topped the country chart for eight non consecutive weeks, in addition to reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100...
," "When You Dance I Can Really LoveWhen You Dance I Can Really Love"When You Dance I Can Really Love" is the ninth track on Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush. It was written by Young.It was released as a single in the U.S...
," and "I Believe In You" - Tonight's the Night (1975) - "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" - recorded live at the Fillmore East on March 7, 1970
- ZumaZuma (album)Zuma is the seventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his second with Crazy Horse, released in 1975. Some believe the album was named after Zuma Beach in Malibu; however, it seems more logical that the title comes from Montezuma, as he is featured prominently in the song Cortez The...
(1975) - American Stars 'n Bars (1977)
- Comes a TimeComes a TimeComes a Time is the ninth album by Neil Young, and a return to the country/folk rock sound of Harvest . Many of the tracks include harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson. Originally, it had started out as a solo record, but when Young played it for Reprise executives they asked him if he wouldn't...
(1978) - "Look Out For My Love" and "Lotta LoveLotta Love"Lotta Love" is a Neil Young composition which as recorded by Nicolette Larson reached #8 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart in February 1979 and also reached #1 on the Easy Listening chart ranking as the #10 Adult Contemporary hit of the year....
" - Rust Never SleepsRust Never SleepsRust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
(1979) - "PowderfingerPowderfinger (song)"Powderfinger" is a song written by Neil Young, first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It subsequently appeared on several of Young's live recordings, and has been covered by several bands, including Cowboy Junkies, Beat Farmers, Rusted Root, and Jazz Mandolin Project...
," "Welfare Mothers," "Sedan Delivery," and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"Hey Hey, My My " is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey ", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps...
" - Live RustLive RustLive Rust is a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, recorded during his fall 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. The show at the Cow Palace, San Francisco was filmed and was the performance used in the concert film, Rust Never Sleeps; however, the album Live Rust was composed of performances...
(live, 1979) - Re·ac·torRe-ac-torRe-ac-tor is the eleventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, and his third with Crazy Horse, released in 1981. The album married the electric guitar crunch of the late '70s Crazy Horse sound with early '80s new wave rhythms...
(1981) - TransTrans (album)Trans is the twelfth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 1982. Recorded partially and released during his notorious Geffen era in the 1980s, Trans baffled many Neil Young fans. Some suggested that the album could be a satirical message that Young was trying to send about the...
(1982) - unspecified which track or tracks, if any—All Crazy Horse players appear on the album, but not necessarily together; the album sleeve does not list track-by-track credits. - LifeLife (1987 album)Life is the sixteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fourth with Crazy Horse, Young's first with his erstwhile backing band since 1981's Re-ac-tor, and Young's last release on the Geffen label....
(1987) - Ragged GloryRagged GloryRagged Glory is the twentieth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fifth with Crazy Horse, released in 1990.The album revisits the hard rock style previously explored on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Zuma...
(1990) - WeldWeld (album)Weld is a live album and concert video by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album...
(live, 1991) - ArcArc (album)Arc is a composition of feedback, guitar noise, and vocal fragments that was realized from various shows on the 1991 Neil Young and Crazy Horse US tour, which was originally released with Weld in a special-edition 3-CD set called Arc-Weld...
(live, 1991) - a 35-minute composite of feedback, guitar noise, and vocal fragments culled from endings of songs performed live - Sleeps with AngelsSleeps with AngelsSleeps With Angels is the twenty-second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his sixth with Crazy Horse, released on the Warner Bros. Records/Reprise label....
(1994) - The Complex Sessions (EP, 1995, promo only)
- Broken ArrowBroken Arrow (album)Broken Arrow is the twenty-fourth studio album by Neil Young, and his seventh with Crazy Horse. The first three songs are in the form of long, structured jams...
(1996) - Year of the HorseYear of the HorseYear of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
(live, 1997) - Are You Passionate?Are You Passionate?Are You Passionate? is the twenty-sixth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, the only album to feature Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and his eighth with Crazy Horse, released in 2002. It represents Young's foray into soul music, not sounding like anything he had previously released...
(2002) - "Goin' Home" - GreendaleGreendale (album)Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
(2003) - Live at the Fillmore EastLive at the Fillmore East (Neil Young album)Live at the Fillmore East is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse featuring guitarist Danny Whitten. In February and March 1970, Young and Crazy Horse went on tour to support Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Live at the Fillmore East, released in 2006, features performances from the tour...
(live, 2006, recorded March 6–7, 1970)
Neil Young and Crazy Horse on film and video
- Rust Never Sleeps (1979)
- Weld (1991)
- Sleeps With Angels (c. 1995, promo only)
- The Complex Sessions (1995)
- Year of the HorseYear of the HorseYear of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
(1997) - GreendaleGreendale (album)Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
(2004)- includes "Be The Rain" live at the Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario, 9/4/03
- Be The Rain (2004, promo only)
- Farm Aid 2003: A Soundstage Special Event (c. 2004)
- includes "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"Hey Hey, My My " is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey ", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps...
" live at the Germain Amptheater, Columbus, Ohio, 9/7/03
- includes "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
Other collaborations
- She Used to Wanna Be a BallerinaShe Used to Wanna Be a BallerinaShe Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina was the seventh album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 1971.Her previous album Illuminations having sold so poorly as to lose Vanguard a considerable sum of money, the label placed considerable pressure on Sainte-Marie to come up with something that would sell in...
, Buffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-Marie, OC is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes...
, VanguardVanguard RecordsVanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...
, 1971 - Head like a Rock, Ian McNabbIan McNabbRobert Ian McNabb is a British singer-songwriter and musician from Liverpool, England. He is known both for his work as leader and songwriter-in-chief of The Icicle Works in the 1980s, and his critically acclaimed solo career throughout from the early 1990s to date...
, 1994 (on four songs only, and without Frank SampedroFrank SampedroFrank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
)
Footnotes
Crazy Horse is an American rockRock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band best known for its association with Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and has released five albums of its own.
Early years
The band's origins date to 1963 and the Los Angeles-based a cappellaA cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
doo wop group Danny And The Memories, which consisted of main singer Danny Whitten
Danny Whitten
Daniel Ray Whitten was an American musician and songwriter best known for his work with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and for the song "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a hit for Rita Coolidge, Rod Stewart and Everything but the Girl.- Biography :Whitten was born on May 8, 1943, in Columbus, Georgia....
and supporting vocalists Lou Bisbal (soon to be replaced by Bengiamino Rocco), Billy Talbot
Billy Talbot
Billy Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the bassist of Crazy Horse.-Music career:Born in New York City, Talbot started his musical career singing on street corners at the age of 14. He moved to New Jersey with his family the next year, and by 17 he had moved to...
, and Ralph Molina
Ralph Molina
Ralph Molina is an American musician, best known as the drummer for Neil Young's backing band Crazy Horse.Born in Puerto Rico, Molina has been a member of Crazy Horse since they were formed in 1962 as Danny & the Memories. He has remained throughout the band's many personnel changes, and has...
. The latter two would become the only members of Crazy Horse present in every incarnation of the band.
Making its way to San Francisco and back to Los Angeles again, the group evolved over the course of several years into The Rockets, a psychedelic folk hybrid comprising Whitten on guitar, Talbot on bass, Molina on drums, Bobby Notkoff
Bobby Notkoff
Bobby Notkoff is a violinist who played with The Rockets in the 1960s and Family Lotus in the 1970s. He was a founding member of Electric Flag, one of the first supergroups, with Mike Bloomfield and Buddy Miles.He lives in New Mexico.-Selected discography:...
on violin, and brothers Leon and George Whitsell also on guitars. This lineup recorded the Rockets' only album, a self-titled set released in 1968.
With Neil Young, 1968-1970
With their album complete, the Rockets reconnected with Neil YoungNeil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
, whom they had met two years earlier during the early days of Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...
. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets on stage during their show at the Whisky A Go-Go and soon after enlisted Whitten, Talbot, and Molina to back him on his second solo album.
Credited to Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on Reprise Records catalogue RS 6349...
includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl
Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young song)
"Cinnamon Girl" is a song by Neil Young. It debuted on the 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which was also Young's first album with backing band Crazy Horse...
" and the extended guitar workouts "Down by the River
Down by the River
"Down by the River" is a song composed by Neil Young. It was first released on his 1969 album with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Young explained the context of story when introducing it in New Orleans on September 27, 1984. It depicts a man who catches his woman cheating on him,...
" and "Cowgirl in the Sand". Crazy Horse toured with Young during the first half of 1969 and, with the addition of Jack Nitzsche
Jack Nitzsche
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
on electric piano, in early 1970. The 1970 tour was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East
Live at the Fillmore East (Neil Young album)
Live at the Fillmore East is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse featuring guitarist Danny Whitten. In February and March 1970, Young and Crazy Horse went on tour to support Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Live at the Fillmore East, released in 2006, features performances from the tour...
.
Shortly after beginning work on his third solo album with Crazy Horse in 1969, Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash
Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young)
Crosby, Stills & Nash is a folk rock supergroup made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, also known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young when joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young...
as a full fourth member, recording an album and touring in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. The group as a whole appears on just three of the eleven tracks on After the Gold Rush
After the Gold Rush
After the Gold Rush is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young. Released in August 1970 on Reprise Records, it was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu...
: "When You Dance I Can Really Love
When You Dance I Can Really Love
"When You Dance I Can Really Love" is the ninth track on Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush. It was written by Young.It was released as a single in the U.S...
" plus "Oh Lonesome Me
Oh Lonesome Me
"Oh Lonesome Me" is a popular song written and recorded by Don Gibson with Chet Atkins producing for RCA Victor in Nashville in 1958. The song topped the country chart for eight non consecutive weeks, in addition to reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100...
" and "I Believe In You" from the sessions in 1969 prior to Young's first tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
With and Without Young, 1970-1990
As Young experienced back problems and remained committed to other endeavors from late 1970 through most of 1971, Crazy Horse capitalized on its newfound exposure and recorded its eponymous debut albumCrazy Horse (album)
Crazy Horse is the 1971 debut album by Crazy Horse, released by Reprise Records. It peaked at number 84 on the Billboard album chart.- History :...
for Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...
that year. The band retained Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and added second guitarist Nils Lofgren
Nils Lofgren
Nils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock music recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
(whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush). Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It
I Don't Want to Talk About It
"I Don't Want to Talk About It" is the name of a song written by Danny Whitten. Whitten's band, Crazy Horse released it as a track on their 1971 eponymous album....
" would later be covered by a wide range of artists including Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur is an American founding member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band of Cambridge, Massachusetts; a member of Paul Butterfield's Better Days; and an accomplished solo guitarist, singer, and songwriter....
, The Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls
The Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. They met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area...
, and Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
. Stewart would record the song three times and score a hit with it on the same number of occasions—including a UK #1 in 1977 as a double A-side with "The First Cut Is the Deepest
The First Cut Is the Deepest
"The First Cut Is the Deepest" is a 1967 song written by Cat Stevens, originally released by P. P. Arnold in the spring of 1967. Stevens' own version of the song is technically a cover, and originally appeared on his album New Masters in December 1967....
". In 1988 the song would become a top-ten hit in the UK again, this time a #3 for Everything but the Girl
Everything but the Girl
Everything but the Girl was a two-person English band, formed in Hull during 1981, consisting of lead singer and occasional guitarist Tracey Thorn and guitarist, keyboardist, and singer Ben Watt . They are currently inactive although vocalist Tracey Thorn hinted that they may reform someday...
.
Danny Whitten was nominated in March this year for induction into the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in 2012.
Shortly thereafter, Lofgren and Nitzsche moved on to other endeavors, while Whitten's drug problems pushed the group to turn to outside musicians. Crazy Horse released two albums with different lineups (save for the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina) in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake. The former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold as frontman, while the latter was dominated by the rootsier stylings of Rick and Mike Curtis (formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as The Curtis Brothers). Meanwhile, Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band, the Stray Gators. Due to Whitten's poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young let Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep in him in the group. Whitten returned to Los Angeles and died a few days later, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.
After Whitten's death, Talbot and Molina were the only full-fledged members of the band. They let the Crazy Horse name go unused without retiring it altogether. In mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith
Ben Keith
Bennett Keith Schaeufele , better known by his stage name Ben Keith, was an American musician and record producer...
to record Tonight's the Night, the majority of which eventually saw release (in bowdlerized form with some earlier songs and different takes than originally intended) in 1975; it is frequently acclaimed as Young's best album. That autumn, the ensemble toured as the Santa Monica Flyers; Molina and Whitsell would subsequently contribute guitar and drums and percussion (respectively) to Young's On the Beach
On the Beach
On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world novel written by British-Australian author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. It was published in 1957....
in 1974.
Shortly after aborted sessions at Chess Studios in late 1974, Young, Talbot, and Molina spontaneously convened at Talbot's Echo Park home in 1975 with rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
Frank Sampedro
Frank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
, who proved to be just the right person to help resurrect Crazy Horse. "It was great", Talbot would say of the coming together and the chemistry it evoked. "We were all soaring. Neil loved it. We all loved it. It was the first time we heard the Horse since Danny Whitten died." After a five-year hiatus Neil Young and Crazy Horse was born again, and Young marked the occasion by finishing off the lyrics to "Powderfinger
Powderfinger (song)
"Powderfinger" is a song written by Neil Young, first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It subsequently appeared on several of Young's live recordings, and has been covered by several bands, including Cowboy Junkies, Beat Farmers, Rusted Root, and Jazz Mandolin Project...
", soon to become one of the new lineup's signature songs.
With Sampedro and producer David Briggs in tow, Young and Crazy Horse quickly recorded Zuma
Zuma (album)
Zuma is the seventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his second with Crazy Horse, released in 1975. Some believe the album was named after Zuma Beach in Malibu; however, it seems more logical that the title comes from Montezuma, as he is featured prominently in the song Cortez The...
later that year in the basement of Briggs' rented house in Malibu, initiating their most prolific period of collaboration. Sampedro's lack of technical proficiency ("Neil kept writin' simpler songs so I could play them") and desire to see Young "rockin' and having fun and seeing chicks' asses swaying in the audience" would greatly inform the tenor of the record, which largely assays conventional hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
styles and ribald misogyny with few of the country and folk flourishes that had dominated Young's music since 1970. In early 1976, Young and the band toured Japan and Europe; they were shut out of a proposed summer stadium tour when Young rekindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...
. They toured America that autumn when Young was forced to make up a series of canceled concert dates after walking out midway through the tour with Stills. Throughout late 1975 and into 1977, Young recorded feverishly in various solo and group configurations; Crazy Horse appears on all but two songs of 1977's country-inflected American Stars 'n Bars (with many tracks featuring an augmented lineup [The Rockets] that included Ben Keith, Carole Mayedo, Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
, and Nicolette Larson
Nicolette Larson
Nicolette Larson was an American pop singer. She is perhaps best known for her work in the late 1970s with Neil Young, as well as her 1978 cover of Young's "Lotta Love". The song, her debut single, was a Number One Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks hit and #8 pop hit that year...
), while Comes a Time
Comes a Time
Comes a Time is the ninth album by Neil Young, and a return to the country/folk rock sound of Harvest . Many of the tracks include harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson. Originally, it had started out as a solo record, but when Young played it for Reprise executives they asked him if he wouldn't...
features two performances with Crazy Horse: "Lotta Love" and "Motorcycle Mama".
In 1978, Crazy Horse released their fourth album (Crazy Moon, which features some lead guitar by Young), and also joined Young on the tour that led to the successful Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
and Live Rust
Live Rust
Live Rust is a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, recorded during his fall 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. The show at the Cow Palace, San Francisco was filmed and was the performance used in the concert film, Rust Never Sleeps; however, the album Live Rust was composed of performances...
, both credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
As Young spent much of the eighties working in genres mostly outside the band's idiom, Crazy Horse recorded with him more sporadically, appearing only on Re·ac·tor
Re-ac-tor
Re-ac-tor is the eleventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, and his third with Crazy Horse, released in 1981. The album married the electric guitar crunch of the late '70s Crazy Horse sound with early '80s new wave rhythms...
, an unspecified portion of Trans
Trans (album)
Trans is the twelfth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 1982. Recorded partially and released during his notorious Geffen era in the 1980s, Trans baffled many Neil Young fans. Some suggested that the album could be a satirical message that Young was trying to send about the...
, and Life
Life (1987 album)
Life is the sixteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fourth with Crazy Horse, Young's first with his erstwhile backing band since 1981's Re-ac-tor, and Young's last release on the Geffen label....
. Sessions for a planned 1984 album with the band ended after they were "spooked" by the addition of a professional horn section, although a contemporaneous bootleg of a performance at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
containing many of the intended songs remains an enduring fan favorite. Several years later, Young included all three members of Crazy Horse in another horn-driven ensemble, the Bluenotes. But when Talbot and Molina proved ill-suited to a blues-oriented approach, Young reluctantly replaced the Crazy Horse bassist and drummer while retaining Sampedro, who would remain with Young in various band permutations over the next two years. Immediately thereafter, Talbot and Molina replaced Sampedro with a pair of new Crazy Horse members (Sonny Mone and former Rain Parade
Rain Parade
The Rain Parade was a band active in the Paisley Underground scene in Los Angeles in the 1980s.-History:The band was founded by college roommates Matt Piucci and David Roback in 1981, originally as The Moving Sidewalks. David's brother Steven Roback joined the band shortly thereafter...
member Matt Piucci) and recorded the pointedly-titled Left for Dead; released in 1989, it is the group's fifth and, to date, final album independent of Young.
With Young, 1990 and later
The split with Sampedro and Young proved relatively short-lived as Young and Crazy Horse reunited in 1990 for the acclaimed album Ragged GloryRagged Glory
Ragged Glory is the twentieth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fifth with Crazy Horse, released in 1990.The album revisits the hard rock style previously explored on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Zuma...
and for a tour in 1991 that generated the live album Weld
Weld (album)
Weld is a live album and concert video by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album...
. Over the next twelve years Crazy Horse would steadily collaborate with Young once more, joining the singer for Sleeps With Angels
Sleeps with Angels
Sleeps With Angels is the twenty-second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his sixth with Crazy Horse, released on the Warner Bros. Records/Reprise label....
, Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow (album)
Broken Arrow is the twenty-fourth studio album by Neil Young, and his seventh with Crazy Horse. The first three songs are in the form of long, structured jams...
, the live Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
, "Goin' Home" on Are You Passionate?
Are You Passionate?
Are You Passionate? is the twenty-sixth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, the only album to feature Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and his eighth with Crazy Horse, released in 2002. It represents Young's foray into soul music, not sounding like anything he had previously released...
, and Greendale
Greendale (album)
Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
. Sampedro agreed to sit out the recording of Greendale, as Young felt the material called for only one guitar; he joined the band onstage for the ensuing tour.
According to Young's biography Shakey, Crazy Horse had begun a sixth album of its own in the mid-1990s, but left the project unfinished when Young called upon the group to join him for some secret club dates in California (for which the quartet billed themselves as the Echoes) and for the recording of Broken Arrow. Young and Crazy Horse attempted to record for three months in San Francisco in 2000; few takes were finished to the band's satisfaction, and Young re-recorded most of the material (except for "Goin' Home") with Booker T & the MGs for Are You Passionate?. Recordings from the San Francisco sessions, entitled Toast, were announced for release in 2008 as part of Young's Archives series; as of 2011, the album remains unreleased.
Crazy Horse has remained inactive since touring with Young in support of Greendale in the winter of 2004. According to Young in a 2011 interview with American Songwriter, "They have to be together before I can be together with them. They haven’t been doing anything together, so they need to be able to do it. I don’t have the time to support things. I have to go with things that are going to support me. But I think they can do it."
Reissued recordings
In 2005 Rhino Records' Handmade division released a two-disc set, Scratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings, in a limited edition of 2,500 copies. The set included the group's first two albums in their entirety on the first disc, with the second disc containing nine rarities and outtakes (including both sides of a single by Danny and the Memories). The set is currently out of print. Also in 2005, the Australian reissue label Raven RecordsRaven Records
Raven Records is an Australian record label that specializes in retrospectives and reissues or recordings by American, British and Australian artists.Raven Records was established in 1979 by Glenn A. Baker, Kevin Mueller and Peter Shillito....
put out a 20-track retrospective, Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, featuring material from each of the group's five albums with the exception of its second one, Loose.
Current
- Billy TalbotBilly TalbotBilly Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the bassist of Crazy Horse.-Music career:Born in New York City, Talbot started his musical career singing on street corners at the age of 14. He moved to New Jersey with his family the next year, and by 17 he had moved to...
, bassBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments... - Ralph MolinaRalph MolinaRalph Molina is an American musician, best known as the drummer for Neil Young's backing band Crazy Horse.Born in Puerto Rico, Molina has been a member of Crazy Horse since they were formed in 1962 as Danny & the Memories. He has remained throughout the band's many personnel changes, and has...
, drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, vocals - Frank "Poncho" SampedroFrank SampedroFrank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
, guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, organOrgan (music)The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, vocals (1975–present)
Past members of Neil Young and Crazy Horse
- Danny WhittenDanny WhittenDaniel Ray Whitten was an American musician and songwriter best known for his work with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and for the song "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a hit for Rita Coolidge, Rod Stewart and Everything but the Girl.- Biography :Whitten was born on May 8, 1943, in Columbus, Georgia....
, guitar, vocals - Jack NitzscheJack NitzscheBernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
, keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, vocals
Other past members
- Nils LofgrenNils LofgrenNils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock music recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
, guitar, keyboards, vocals - George Whitsell, guitar, vocals
- Greg Leroy, guitar, vocals
- John Blanton, keyboards
- Rick Curtis, guitar, vocals
- Michael Curtis, keyboards
- Sonny Mone, guitar, vocals
- Matt Piucci, guitar
Crazy Horse
- Crazy HorseCrazy Horse (album)Crazy Horse is the 1971 debut album by Crazy Horse, released by Reprise Records. It peaked at number 84 on the Billboard album chart.- History :...
, Reprise 1971 - LooseLoose (Crazy Horse album)Loose is a 1972 album by the rock band Crazy Horse, the follow-up to their self-titled debut.- Track listing :#"Hit and Run" - 2:42#"Try" - 3:18#"One Thing I Love" - 2:37#"Move" - 3:14...
, Reprise 1972 - At Crooked Lake, Epic 1972
- Crazy MoonCrazy Moon (Crazy Horse album)-Track listing:#"She's Hot" - 3:11#"Going Down Again" - 3:26#"Lost and Lonely Feelin'" - 3:10#"Dancin' Lady" - 3:23#"End Of The Line" - 3:10#"New Orleans" - 3:11...
, Capitol 1978 - Left for Dead, Capitol 1989
- Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, Raven 2005
- Scratchy: The Complete Reprise RecordingsScratchy: The Complete Reprise RecordingsScratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings is a 2005 compilation album released by the group Crazy Horse. It is a re-issue of the first two Crazy Horse albums, Crazy Horse and Loose, on Reprise Records, with bonus tracks and the first single by the pre-Crazy Horse group Danny & The Memories.-Disc...
, Rhino Handmade 2005
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
- Everybody Knows This Is NowhereEverybody Knows This Is NowhereEverybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on Reprise Records catalogue RS 6349...
(1969) - After the Gold RushAfter the Gold RushAfter the Gold Rush is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young. Released in August 1970 on Reprise Records, it was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu...
(1970) - "Oh Lonesome MeOh Lonesome Me"Oh Lonesome Me" is a popular song written and recorded by Don Gibson with Chet Atkins producing for RCA Victor in Nashville in 1958. The song topped the country chart for eight non consecutive weeks, in addition to reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100...
," "When You Dance I Can Really LoveWhen You Dance I Can Really Love"When You Dance I Can Really Love" is the ninth track on Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush. It was written by Young.It was released as a single in the U.S...
," and "I Believe In You" - Tonight's the Night (1975) - "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" - recorded live at the Fillmore East on March 7, 1970
- ZumaZuma (album)Zuma is the seventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his second with Crazy Horse, released in 1975. Some believe the album was named after Zuma Beach in Malibu; however, it seems more logical that the title comes from Montezuma, as he is featured prominently in the song Cortez The...
(1975) - American Stars 'n Bars (1977)
- Comes a TimeComes a TimeComes a Time is the ninth album by Neil Young, and a return to the country/folk rock sound of Harvest . Many of the tracks include harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson. Originally, it had started out as a solo record, but when Young played it for Reprise executives they asked him if he wouldn't...
(1978) - "Look Out For My Love" and "Lotta LoveLotta Love"Lotta Love" is a Neil Young composition which as recorded by Nicolette Larson reached #8 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart in February 1979 and also reached #1 on the Easy Listening chart ranking as the #10 Adult Contemporary hit of the year....
" - Rust Never SleepsRust Never SleepsRust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
(1979) - "PowderfingerPowderfinger (song)"Powderfinger" is a song written by Neil Young, first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It subsequently appeared on several of Young's live recordings, and has been covered by several bands, including Cowboy Junkies, Beat Farmers, Rusted Root, and Jazz Mandolin Project...
," "Welfare Mothers," "Sedan Delivery," and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"Hey Hey, My My " is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey ", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps...
" - Live RustLive RustLive Rust is a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, recorded during his fall 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. The show at the Cow Palace, San Francisco was filmed and was the performance used in the concert film, Rust Never Sleeps; however, the album Live Rust was composed of performances...
(live, 1979) - Re·ac·torRe-ac-torRe-ac-tor is the eleventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, and his third with Crazy Horse, released in 1981. The album married the electric guitar crunch of the late '70s Crazy Horse sound with early '80s new wave rhythms...
(1981) - TransTrans (album)Trans is the twelfth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 1982. Recorded partially and released during his notorious Geffen era in the 1980s, Trans baffled many Neil Young fans. Some suggested that the album could be a satirical message that Young was trying to send about the...
(1982) - unspecified which track or tracks, if any—All Crazy Horse players appear on the album, but not necessarily together; the album sleeve does not list track-by-track credits. - LifeLife (1987 album)Life is the sixteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fourth with Crazy Horse, Young's first with his erstwhile backing band since 1981's Re-ac-tor, and Young's last release on the Geffen label....
(1987) - Ragged GloryRagged GloryRagged Glory is the twentieth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fifth with Crazy Horse, released in 1990.The album revisits the hard rock style previously explored on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Zuma...
(1990) - WeldWeld (album)Weld is a live album and concert video by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album...
(live, 1991) - ArcArc (album)Arc is a composition of feedback, guitar noise, and vocal fragments that was realized from various shows on the 1991 Neil Young and Crazy Horse US tour, which was originally released with Weld in a special-edition 3-CD set called Arc-Weld...
(live, 1991) - a 35-minute composite of feedback, guitar noise, and vocal fragments culled from endings of songs performed live - Sleeps with AngelsSleeps with AngelsSleeps With Angels is the twenty-second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his sixth with Crazy Horse, released on the Warner Bros. Records/Reprise label....
(1994) - The Complex Sessions (EP, 1995, promo only)
- Broken ArrowBroken Arrow (album)Broken Arrow is the twenty-fourth studio album by Neil Young, and his seventh with Crazy Horse. The first three songs are in the form of long, structured jams...
(1996) - Year of the HorseYear of the HorseYear of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
(live, 1997) - Are You Passionate?Are You Passionate?Are You Passionate? is the twenty-sixth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, the only album to feature Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and his eighth with Crazy Horse, released in 2002. It represents Young's foray into soul music, not sounding like anything he had previously released...
(2002) - "Goin' Home" - GreendaleGreendale (album)Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
(2003) - Live at the Fillmore EastLive at the Fillmore East (Neil Young album)Live at the Fillmore East is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse featuring guitarist Danny Whitten. In February and March 1970, Young and Crazy Horse went on tour to support Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Live at the Fillmore East, released in 2006, features performances from the tour...
(live, 2006, recorded March 6–7, 1970)
Neil Young and Crazy Horse on film and video
- Rust Never Sleeps (1979)
- Weld (1991)
- Sleeps With Angels (c. 1995, promo only)
- The Complex Sessions (1995)
- Year of the HorseYear of the HorseYear of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
(1997) - GreendaleGreendale (album)Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
(2004)- includes "Be The Rain" live at the Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario, 9/4/03
- Be The Rain (2004, promo only)
- Farm Aid 2003: A Soundstage Special Event (c. 2004)
- includes "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"Hey Hey, My My " is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey ", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps...
" live at the Germain Amptheater, Columbus, Ohio, 9/7/03
- includes "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
Other collaborations
- She Used to Wanna Be a BallerinaShe Used to Wanna Be a BallerinaShe Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina was the seventh album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 1971.Her previous album Illuminations having sold so poorly as to lose Vanguard a considerable sum of money, the label placed considerable pressure on Sainte-Marie to come up with something that would sell in...
, Buffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-Marie, OC is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes...
, VanguardVanguard RecordsVanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...
, 1971 - Head like a Rock, Ian McNabbIan McNabbRobert Ian McNabb is a British singer-songwriter and musician from Liverpool, England. He is known both for his work as leader and songwriter-in-chief of The Icicle Works in the 1980s, and his critically acclaimed solo career throughout from the early 1990s to date...
, 1994 (on four songs only, and without Frank SampedroFrank SampedroFrank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
)
Footnotes
Crazy Horse is an American rockRock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band best known for its association with Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and has released five albums of its own.
Early years
The band's origins date to 1963 and the Los Angeles-based a cappellaA cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
doo wop group Danny And The Memories, which consisted of main singer Danny Whitten
Danny Whitten
Daniel Ray Whitten was an American musician and songwriter best known for his work with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and for the song "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a hit for Rita Coolidge, Rod Stewart and Everything but the Girl.- Biography :Whitten was born on May 8, 1943, in Columbus, Georgia....
and supporting vocalists Lou Bisbal (soon to be replaced by Bengiamino Rocco), Billy Talbot
Billy Talbot
Billy Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the bassist of Crazy Horse.-Music career:Born in New York City, Talbot started his musical career singing on street corners at the age of 14. He moved to New Jersey with his family the next year, and by 17 he had moved to...
, and Ralph Molina
Ralph Molina
Ralph Molina is an American musician, best known as the drummer for Neil Young's backing band Crazy Horse.Born in Puerto Rico, Molina has been a member of Crazy Horse since they were formed in 1962 as Danny & the Memories. He has remained throughout the band's many personnel changes, and has...
. The latter two would become the only members of Crazy Horse present in every incarnation of the band.
Making its way to San Francisco and back to Los Angeles again, the group evolved over the course of several years into The Rockets, a psychedelic folk hybrid comprising Whitten on guitar, Talbot on bass, Molina on drums, Bobby Notkoff
Bobby Notkoff
Bobby Notkoff is a violinist who played with The Rockets in the 1960s and Family Lotus in the 1970s. He was a founding member of Electric Flag, one of the first supergroups, with Mike Bloomfield and Buddy Miles.He lives in New Mexico.-Selected discography:...
on violin, and brothers Leon and George Whitsell also on guitars. This lineup recorded the Rockets' only album, a self-titled set released in 1968.
With Neil Young, 1968-1970
With their album complete, the Rockets reconnected with Neil YoungNeil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
, whom they had met two years earlier during the early days of Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...
. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets on stage during their show at the Whisky A Go-Go and soon after enlisted Whitten, Talbot, and Molina to back him on his second solo album.
Credited to Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on Reprise Records catalogue RS 6349...
includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl
Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young song)
"Cinnamon Girl" is a song by Neil Young. It debuted on the 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which was also Young's first album with backing band Crazy Horse...
" and the extended guitar workouts "Down by the River
Down by the River
"Down by the River" is a song composed by Neil Young. It was first released on his 1969 album with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Young explained the context of story when introducing it in New Orleans on September 27, 1984. It depicts a man who catches his woman cheating on him,...
" and "Cowgirl in the Sand". Crazy Horse toured with Young during the first half of 1969 and, with the addition of Jack Nitzsche
Jack Nitzsche
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
on electric piano, in early 1970. The 1970 tour was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East
Live at the Fillmore East (Neil Young album)
Live at the Fillmore East is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse featuring guitarist Danny Whitten. In February and March 1970, Young and Crazy Horse went on tour to support Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Live at the Fillmore East, released in 2006, features performances from the tour...
.
Shortly after beginning work on his third solo album with Crazy Horse in 1969, Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash
Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young)
Crosby, Stills & Nash is a folk rock supergroup made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, also known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young when joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young...
as a full fourth member, recording an album and touring in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. The group as a whole appears on just three of the eleven tracks on After the Gold Rush
After the Gold Rush
After the Gold Rush is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young. Released in August 1970 on Reprise Records, it was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu...
: "When You Dance I Can Really Love
When You Dance I Can Really Love
"When You Dance I Can Really Love" is the ninth track on Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush. It was written by Young.It was released as a single in the U.S...
" plus "Oh Lonesome Me
Oh Lonesome Me
"Oh Lonesome Me" is a popular song written and recorded by Don Gibson with Chet Atkins producing for RCA Victor in Nashville in 1958. The song topped the country chart for eight non consecutive weeks, in addition to reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100...
" and "I Believe In You" from the sessions in 1969 prior to Young's first tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
With and Without Young, 1970-1990
As Young experienced back problems and remained committed to other endeavors from late 1970 through most of 1971, Crazy Horse capitalized on its newfound exposure and recorded its eponymous debut albumCrazy Horse (album)
Crazy Horse is the 1971 debut album by Crazy Horse, released by Reprise Records. It peaked at number 84 on the Billboard album chart.- History :...
for Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...
that year. The band retained Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and added second guitarist Nils Lofgren
Nils Lofgren
Nils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock music recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
(whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush). Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It
I Don't Want to Talk About It
"I Don't Want to Talk About It" is the name of a song written by Danny Whitten. Whitten's band, Crazy Horse released it as a track on their 1971 eponymous album....
" would later be covered by a wide range of artists including Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur
Geoff Muldaur is an American founding member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band of Cambridge, Massachusetts; a member of Paul Butterfield's Better Days; and an accomplished solo guitarist, singer, and songwriter....
, The Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls
The Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. They met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area...
, and Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
. Stewart would record the song three times and score a hit with it on the same number of occasions—including a UK #1 in 1977 as a double A-side with "The First Cut Is the Deepest
The First Cut Is the Deepest
"The First Cut Is the Deepest" is a 1967 song written by Cat Stevens, originally released by P. P. Arnold in the spring of 1967. Stevens' own version of the song is technically a cover, and originally appeared on his album New Masters in December 1967....
". In 1988 the song would become a top-ten hit in the UK again, this time a #3 for Everything but the Girl
Everything but the Girl
Everything but the Girl was a two-person English band, formed in Hull during 1981, consisting of lead singer and occasional guitarist Tracey Thorn and guitarist, keyboardist, and singer Ben Watt . They are currently inactive although vocalist Tracey Thorn hinted that they may reform someday...
.
Danny Whitten was nominated in March this year for induction into the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in 2012.
Shortly thereafter, Lofgren and Nitzsche moved on to other endeavors, while Whitten's drug problems pushed the group to turn to outside musicians. Crazy Horse released two albums with different lineups (save for the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina) in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake. The former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold as frontman, while the latter was dominated by the rootsier stylings of Rick and Mike Curtis (formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as The Curtis Brothers). Meanwhile, Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band, the Stray Gators. Due to Whitten's poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young let Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep in him in the group. Whitten returned to Los Angeles and died a few days later, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.
After Whitten's death, Talbot and Molina were the only full-fledged members of the band. They let the Crazy Horse name go unused without retiring it altogether. In mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith
Ben Keith
Bennett Keith Schaeufele , better known by his stage name Ben Keith, was an American musician and record producer...
to record Tonight's the Night, the majority of which eventually saw release (in bowdlerized form with some earlier songs and different takes than originally intended) in 1975; it is frequently acclaimed as Young's best album. That autumn, the ensemble toured as the Santa Monica Flyers; Molina and Whitsell would subsequently contribute guitar and drums and percussion (respectively) to Young's On the Beach
On the Beach
On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world novel written by British-Australian author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. It was published in 1957....
in 1974.
Shortly after aborted sessions at Chess Studios in late 1974, Young, Talbot, and Molina spontaneously convened at Talbot's Echo Park home in 1975 with rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
Frank Sampedro
Frank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
, who proved to be just the right person to help resurrect Crazy Horse. "It was great", Talbot would say of the coming together and the chemistry it evoked. "We were all soaring. Neil loved it. We all loved it. It was the first time we heard the Horse since Danny Whitten died." After a five-year hiatus Neil Young and Crazy Horse was born again, and Young marked the occasion by finishing off the lyrics to "Powderfinger
Powderfinger (song)
"Powderfinger" is a song written by Neil Young, first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It subsequently appeared on several of Young's live recordings, and has been covered by several bands, including Cowboy Junkies, Beat Farmers, Rusted Root, and Jazz Mandolin Project...
", soon to become one of the new lineup's signature songs.
With Sampedro and producer David Briggs in tow, Young and Crazy Horse quickly recorded Zuma
Zuma (album)
Zuma is the seventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his second with Crazy Horse, released in 1975. Some believe the album was named after Zuma Beach in Malibu; however, it seems more logical that the title comes from Montezuma, as he is featured prominently in the song Cortez The...
later that year in the basement of Briggs' rented house in Malibu, initiating their most prolific period of collaboration. Sampedro's lack of technical proficiency ("Neil kept writin' simpler songs so I could play them") and desire to see Young "rockin' and having fun and seeing chicks' asses swaying in the audience" would greatly inform the tenor of the record, which largely assays conventional hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
styles and ribald misogyny with few of the country and folk flourishes that had dominated Young's music since 1970. In early 1976, Young and the band toured Japan and Europe; they were shut out of a proposed summer stadium tour when Young rekindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...
. They toured America that autumn when Young was forced to make up a series of canceled concert dates after walking out midway through the tour with Stills. Throughout late 1975 and into 1977, Young recorded feverishly in various solo and group configurations; Crazy Horse appears on all but two songs of 1977's country-inflected American Stars 'n Bars (with many tracks featuring an augmented lineup [The Rockets] that included Ben Keith, Carole Mayedo, Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
, and Nicolette Larson
Nicolette Larson
Nicolette Larson was an American pop singer. She is perhaps best known for her work in the late 1970s with Neil Young, as well as her 1978 cover of Young's "Lotta Love". The song, her debut single, was a Number One Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks hit and #8 pop hit that year...
), while Comes a Time
Comes a Time
Comes a Time is the ninth album by Neil Young, and a return to the country/folk rock sound of Harvest . Many of the tracks include harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson. Originally, it had started out as a solo record, but when Young played it for Reprise executives they asked him if he wouldn't...
features two performances with Crazy Horse: "Lotta Love" and "Motorcycle Mama".
In 1978, Crazy Horse released their fourth album (Crazy Moon, which features some lead guitar by Young), and also joined Young on the tour that led to the successful Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
and Live Rust
Live Rust
Live Rust is a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, recorded during his fall 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. The show at the Cow Palace, San Francisco was filmed and was the performance used in the concert film, Rust Never Sleeps; however, the album Live Rust was composed of performances...
, both credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
As Young spent much of the eighties working in genres mostly outside the band's idiom, Crazy Horse recorded with him more sporadically, appearing only on Re·ac·tor
Re-ac-tor
Re-ac-tor is the eleventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, and his third with Crazy Horse, released in 1981. The album married the electric guitar crunch of the late '70s Crazy Horse sound with early '80s new wave rhythms...
, an unspecified portion of Trans
Trans (album)
Trans is the twelfth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 1982. Recorded partially and released during his notorious Geffen era in the 1980s, Trans baffled many Neil Young fans. Some suggested that the album could be a satirical message that Young was trying to send about the...
, and Life
Life (1987 album)
Life is the sixteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fourth with Crazy Horse, Young's first with his erstwhile backing band since 1981's Re-ac-tor, and Young's last release on the Geffen label....
. Sessions for a planned 1984 album with the band ended after they were "spooked" by the addition of a professional horn section, although a contemporaneous bootleg of a performance at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
containing many of the intended songs remains an enduring fan favorite. Several years later, Young included all three members of Crazy Horse in another horn-driven ensemble, the Bluenotes. But when Talbot and Molina proved ill-suited to a blues-oriented approach, Young reluctantly replaced the Crazy Horse bassist and drummer while retaining Sampedro, who would remain with Young in various band permutations over the next two years. Immediately thereafter, Talbot and Molina replaced Sampedro with a pair of new Crazy Horse members (Sonny Mone and former Rain Parade
Rain Parade
The Rain Parade was a band active in the Paisley Underground scene in Los Angeles in the 1980s.-History:The band was founded by college roommates Matt Piucci and David Roback in 1981, originally as The Moving Sidewalks. David's brother Steven Roback joined the band shortly thereafter...
member Matt Piucci) and recorded the pointedly-titled Left for Dead; released in 1989, it is the group's fifth and, to date, final album independent of Young.
With Young, 1990 and later
The split with Sampedro and Young proved relatively short-lived as Young and Crazy Horse reunited in 1990 for the acclaimed album Ragged GloryRagged Glory
Ragged Glory is the twentieth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fifth with Crazy Horse, released in 1990.The album revisits the hard rock style previously explored on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Zuma...
and for a tour in 1991 that generated the live album Weld
Weld (album)
Weld is a live album and concert video by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album...
. Over the next twelve years Crazy Horse would steadily collaborate with Young once more, joining the singer for Sleeps With Angels
Sleeps with Angels
Sleeps With Angels is the twenty-second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his sixth with Crazy Horse, released on the Warner Bros. Records/Reprise label....
, Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow (album)
Broken Arrow is the twenty-fourth studio album by Neil Young, and his seventh with Crazy Horse. The first three songs are in the form of long, structured jams...
, the live Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
, "Goin' Home" on Are You Passionate?
Are You Passionate?
Are You Passionate? is the twenty-sixth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, the only album to feature Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and his eighth with Crazy Horse, released in 2002. It represents Young's foray into soul music, not sounding like anything he had previously released...
, and Greendale
Greendale (album)
Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
. Sampedro agreed to sit out the recording of Greendale, as Young felt the material called for only one guitar; he joined the band onstage for the ensuing tour.
According to Young's biography Shakey, Crazy Horse had begun a sixth album of its own in the mid-1990s, but left the project unfinished when Young called upon the group to join him for some secret club dates in California (for which the quartet billed themselves as the Echoes) and for the recording of Broken Arrow. Young and Crazy Horse attempted to record for three months in San Francisco in 2000; few takes were finished to the band's satisfaction, and Young re-recorded most of the material (except for "Goin' Home") with Booker T & the MGs for Are You Passionate?. Recordings from the San Francisco sessions, entitled Toast, were announced for release in 2008 as part of Young's Archives series; as of 2011, the album remains unreleased.
Crazy Horse has remained inactive since touring with Young in support of Greendale in the winter of 2004. According to Young in a 2011 interview with American Songwriter, "They have to be together before I can be together with them. They haven’t been doing anything together, so they need to be able to do it. I don’t have the time to support things. I have to go with things that are going to support me. But I think they can do it."
Reissued recordings
In 2005 Rhino Records' Handmade division released a two-disc set, Scratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings, in a limited edition of 2,500 copies. The set included the group's first two albums in their entirety on the first disc, with the second disc containing nine rarities and outtakes (including both sides of a single by Danny and the Memories). The set is currently out of print. Also in 2005, the Australian reissue label Raven RecordsRaven Records
Raven Records is an Australian record label that specializes in retrospectives and reissues or recordings by American, British and Australian artists.Raven Records was established in 1979 by Glenn A. Baker, Kevin Mueller and Peter Shillito....
put out a 20-track retrospective, Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, featuring material from each of the group's five albums with the exception of its second one, Loose.
Current
- Billy TalbotBilly TalbotBilly Talbot is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the bassist of Crazy Horse.-Music career:Born in New York City, Talbot started his musical career singing on street corners at the age of 14. He moved to New Jersey with his family the next year, and by 17 he had moved to...
, bassBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments... - Ralph MolinaRalph MolinaRalph Molina is an American musician, best known as the drummer for Neil Young's backing band Crazy Horse.Born in Puerto Rico, Molina has been a member of Crazy Horse since they were formed in 1962 as Danny & the Memories. He has remained throughout the band's many personnel changes, and has...
, drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, vocals - Frank "Poncho" SampedroFrank SampedroFrank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
, guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, organOrgan (music)The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, vocals (1975–present)
Past members of Neil Young and Crazy Horse
- Danny WhittenDanny WhittenDaniel Ray Whitten was an American musician and songwriter best known for his work with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and for the song "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a hit for Rita Coolidge, Rod Stewart and Everything but the Girl.- Biography :Whitten was born on May 8, 1943, in Columbus, Georgia....
, guitar, vocals - Jack NitzscheJack NitzscheBernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche was an arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others...
, keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, vocals
Other past members
- Nils LofgrenNils LofgrenNils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock music recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
, guitar, keyboards, vocals - George Whitsell, guitar, vocals
- Greg Leroy, guitar, vocals
- John Blanton, keyboards
- Rick Curtis, guitar, vocals
- Michael Curtis, keyboards
- Sonny Mone, guitar, vocals
- Matt Piucci, guitar
Crazy Horse
- Crazy HorseCrazy Horse (album)Crazy Horse is the 1971 debut album by Crazy Horse, released by Reprise Records. It peaked at number 84 on the Billboard album chart.- History :...
, Reprise 1971 - LooseLoose (Crazy Horse album)Loose is a 1972 album by the rock band Crazy Horse, the follow-up to their self-titled debut.- Track listing :#"Hit and Run" - 2:42#"Try" - 3:18#"One Thing I Love" - 2:37#"Move" - 3:14...
, Reprise 1972 - At Crooked Lake, Epic 1972
- Crazy MoonCrazy Moon (Crazy Horse album)-Track listing:#"She's Hot" - 3:11#"Going Down Again" - 3:26#"Lost and Lonely Feelin'" - 3:10#"Dancin' Lady" - 3:23#"End Of The Line" - 3:10#"New Orleans" - 3:11...
, Capitol 1978 - Left for Dead, Capitol 1989
- Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, Raven 2005
- Scratchy: The Complete Reprise RecordingsScratchy: The Complete Reprise RecordingsScratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings is a 2005 compilation album released by the group Crazy Horse. It is a re-issue of the first two Crazy Horse albums, Crazy Horse and Loose, on Reprise Records, with bonus tracks and the first single by the pre-Crazy Horse group Danny & The Memories.-Disc...
, Rhino Handmade 2005
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
- Everybody Knows This Is NowhereEverybody Knows This Is NowhereEverybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on Reprise Records catalogue RS 6349...
(1969) - After the Gold RushAfter the Gold RushAfter the Gold Rush is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young. Released in August 1970 on Reprise Records, it was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu...
(1970) - "Oh Lonesome MeOh Lonesome Me"Oh Lonesome Me" is a popular song written and recorded by Don Gibson with Chet Atkins producing for RCA Victor in Nashville in 1958. The song topped the country chart for eight non consecutive weeks, in addition to reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100...
," "When You Dance I Can Really LoveWhen You Dance I Can Really Love"When You Dance I Can Really Love" is the ninth track on Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush. It was written by Young.It was released as a single in the U.S...
," and "I Believe In You" - Tonight's the Night (1975) - "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" - recorded live at the Fillmore East on March 7, 1970
- ZumaZuma (album)Zuma is the seventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his second with Crazy Horse, released in 1975. Some believe the album was named after Zuma Beach in Malibu; however, it seems more logical that the title comes from Montezuma, as he is featured prominently in the song Cortez The...
(1975) - American Stars 'n Bars (1977)
- Comes a TimeComes a TimeComes a Time is the ninth album by Neil Young, and a return to the country/folk rock sound of Harvest . Many of the tracks include harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson. Originally, it had started out as a solo record, but when Young played it for Reprise executives they asked him if he wouldn't...
(1978) - "Look Out For My Love" and "Lotta LoveLotta Love"Lotta Love" is a Neil Young composition which as recorded by Nicolette Larson reached #8 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart in February 1979 and also reached #1 on the Easy Listening chart ranking as the #10 Adult Contemporary hit of the year....
" - Rust Never SleepsRust Never SleepsRust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
(1979) - "PowderfingerPowderfinger (song)"Powderfinger" is a song written by Neil Young, first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It subsequently appeared on several of Young's live recordings, and has been covered by several bands, including Cowboy Junkies, Beat Farmers, Rusted Root, and Jazz Mandolin Project...
," "Welfare Mothers," "Sedan Delivery," and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"Hey Hey, My My " is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey ", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps...
" - Live RustLive RustLive Rust is a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, recorded during his fall 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. The show at the Cow Palace, San Francisco was filmed and was the performance used in the concert film, Rust Never Sleeps; however, the album Live Rust was composed of performances...
(live, 1979) - Re·ac·torRe-ac-torRe-ac-tor is the eleventh studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, and his third with Crazy Horse, released in 1981. The album married the electric guitar crunch of the late '70s Crazy Horse sound with early '80s new wave rhythms...
(1981) - TransTrans (album)Trans is the twelfth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 1982. Recorded partially and released during his notorious Geffen era in the 1980s, Trans baffled many Neil Young fans. Some suggested that the album could be a satirical message that Young was trying to send about the...
(1982) - unspecified which track or tracks, if any—All Crazy Horse players appear on the album, but not necessarily together; the album sleeve does not list track-by-track credits. - LifeLife (1987 album)Life is the sixteenth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fourth with Crazy Horse, Young's first with his erstwhile backing band since 1981's Re-ac-tor, and Young's last release on the Geffen label....
(1987) - Ragged GloryRagged GloryRagged Glory is the twentieth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his fifth with Crazy Horse, released in 1990.The album revisits the hard rock style previously explored on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Zuma...
(1990) - WeldWeld (album)Weld is a live album and concert video by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album...
(live, 1991) - ArcArc (album)Arc is a composition of feedback, guitar noise, and vocal fragments that was realized from various shows on the 1991 Neil Young and Crazy Horse US tour, which was originally released with Weld in a special-edition 3-CD set called Arc-Weld...
(live, 1991) - a 35-minute composite of feedback, guitar noise, and vocal fragments culled from endings of songs performed live - Sleeps with AngelsSleeps with AngelsSleeps With Angels is the twenty-second studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, his sixth with Crazy Horse, released on the Warner Bros. Records/Reprise label....
(1994) - The Complex Sessions (EP, 1995, promo only)
- Broken ArrowBroken Arrow (album)Broken Arrow is the twenty-fourth studio album by Neil Young, and his seventh with Crazy Horse. The first three songs are in the form of long, structured jams...
(1996) - Year of the HorseYear of the HorseYear of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
(live, 1997) - Are You Passionate?Are You Passionate?Are You Passionate? is the twenty-sixth studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, the only album to feature Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and his eighth with Crazy Horse, released in 2002. It represents Young's foray into soul music, not sounding like anything he had previously released...
(2002) - "Goin' Home" - GreendaleGreendale (album)Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
(2003) - Live at the Fillmore EastLive at the Fillmore East (Neil Young album)Live at the Fillmore East is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse featuring guitarist Danny Whitten. In February and March 1970, Young and Crazy Horse went on tour to support Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Live at the Fillmore East, released in 2006, features performances from the tour...
(live, 2006, recorded March 6–7, 1970)
Neil Young and Crazy Horse on film and video
- Rust Never Sleeps (1979)
- Weld (1991)
- Sleeps With Angels (c. 1995, promo only)
- The Complex Sessions (1995)
- Year of the HorseYear of the HorseYear of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
(1997) - GreendaleGreendale (album)Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
(2004)- includes "Be The Rain" live at the Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario, 9/4/03
- Be The Rain (2004, promo only)
- Farm Aid 2003: A Soundstage Special Event (c. 2004)
- includes "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"Hey Hey, My My " is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with its acoustic counterpart "My My, Hey Hey ", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps...
" live at the Germain Amptheater, Columbus, Ohio, 9/7/03
- includes "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
Other collaborations
- She Used to Wanna Be a BallerinaShe Used to Wanna Be a BallerinaShe Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina was the seventh album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 1971.Her previous album Illuminations having sold so poorly as to lose Vanguard a considerable sum of money, the label placed considerable pressure on Sainte-Marie to come up with something that would sell in...
, Buffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-Marie, OC is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes...
, VanguardVanguard RecordsVanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...
, 1971 - Head like a Rock, Ian McNabbIan McNabbRobert Ian McNabb is a British singer-songwriter and musician from Liverpool, England. He is known both for his work as leader and songwriter-in-chief of The Icicle Works in the 1980s, and his critically acclaimed solo career throughout from the early 1990s to date...
, 1994 (on four songs only, and without Frank SampedroFrank SampedroFrank "Poncho" Sampedro is an American guitarist and member of the rock and roll band Crazy Horse, known mainly for its longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young....
)
Footnotes
