Crazy Horse is also
Neil Young's on-again-off-again
backing band, since
Everybody Knows this Is Nowhere in
1969.
They existed before
Neil came along, under the name
The Rockets (hence the title of "
Running Dry (Requiem tor the Rockets)" on
Nowhere). They released a nifty self-titled
album in
1968 (
in print), at which point they appear to have been constituted as follows:
- Bobby Notkoff Violin
- Leon Whitsell Guitar
- George Whitsell Guitar
- Danny Whitten Guitar
- Billy Talbot Bass
- Ralph Molina Drums
The lineup that originally played with
Young was
Ralph Molina,
Billy Talbot, and
Danny Whitten.
Notkoff shows up for a song or two on
Nowhere.
Whitten died in
1973 of a
heroin overdose, and was replaced temporarily by
Nils Lofgren on
Tonight's the Night; later, he was permanently replaced by
Frank Sampedro.
Crazy Horse has released several
albums without
Neil. The best of them was
Crazy Horse (
1971), which is
AFAIK still in print and well worth finding; it features a take of the
Whitten/
Young classic "
Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown" (here titled "Downtown") which is very different from the fierce live version on
Tonight's the Night. There are other gems as well, some written by
Whitten; "
I Don't Want to Talk About It" has been
covered poorly by musical
magpie1 Rod Stewart among others.
Jack Nitzsche and
Nils Lofgren both played on
Crazy Horse and contributed some songs.
Nitzsche's "
Gone Dead Train" is a killer. It may not be a landmark, but it's a solid, enjoyable, well-crafted message from
1971: This is where rock and roll was at in those years: A bunch of guys got drunk and made a
record and somebody released it. It's
a good thing. As on all records made at that time and most of them since,
Ry Cooder is in there somewhere.
I've got a couple of their later attempts, and they're just not worth the trouble. After
Crazy Horse, their records are generally
Billy Talbot and
Ralph Molina with one or more random
guitarists,
singers, etc. The guests always seem to write all the songs, with
predictably unpredictable results: It's essentially a different band each time. On
Loose (
1972), ex-
Rocket George Whitsell plays
guitar, sings, and writes most of the songs; I haven't gotten my hands on that one yet. It's on order; I'll update this in a week or three when/if it arrives (
much later: I got it. It's not bad at all. It's at work, I'm at home; I'll do a separate review/writeup on it real soon now, I swear . . . that and a mess of marginal quasi-legal Stooges and Modern Lovers live/demo/rehearsal/etc. records)
Left for Dead (
1989) is mostly a crude attempt at
heavy metal or something, with (bizarrely) ex-
Rain Parade guitarist
Matt Piucci (what the hell gave them
that idea?!) filling in for
Sampedro. There are a few brief moments of mindbending
Piucci-ish
psychedelic goodness
2 tucked into odd corners, but it takes a lot more than that
to make a pig sing.
Crazy Moon (
1978) made so little impression on me that I can't say anything meaningful about it.
Crazy Horse,
1971
Produced by
Jack Nitzsche and
Bruce Botnick, engineered by
Bruce Botnick
- Gone Dead Train (Russ Titleman/Jack Nitzsche)
- Dance, Dance, Dance (Neil Young; later re-lyric'd as "Love Is a Rose")
- Look at All the Things (Danny Whitten)
- Beggars' Day (Nils Lofgren)
- I Don't Want to Talk about It (Danny Whitten)
- Downtown (Danny Whitten/Neil Young)
- Carolay (Russ Titleman/Jack Nitzsche)
- Dirty, Dirty (Danny Whitten)
- Nobody (Nils Lofgren)
- I'll Get By (Danny Whitten)
- Crow Jane Lady (Jack Nitzsche)
Ry Cooder plays
bottleneck on "
Dirty, Dirty", "
Crow Jane Lady", and "
I Don't Want to Talk About It".
Gib Gilbeau plays
fiddle on "
Dance, Dance, Dance".
Discography:
- The Rockets, 1968
- Crazy Horse, 1971
- Loose, 1972
- At Crooked Lake, 1972
- Crazy Moon, 1978
- Left For Dead, 1989
1 As in, "collector of
shiny things he doesn't understand", like for example
Tom Waits' "
Downtown Train".
2 Bottleneck with
crunchy distortion and short loud
delay, mmm, yum.