Crazy Horse

Certain Songs #1256: Neil Young with Crazy Horse – “Don’t Cry No Tears”

July 2, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Zuma
Year: 1975

Recorded at House, Point Dume, CA on June 1, 1975

Life came at you fast if you were a Neil Young fan in the the mid-1970s. After scrapping Tonight’s The Night and releasing On The Beach in July of 1974, Neil Young then started & scrapped a CSNY album to coincide with their 1974 tour, and later in the year recorded a whole album called Homegrown, which he then scrapped in favor of finally releasing Tonight’s The Night in June, 1975.

At the same time, he was recording most of the songs for the follow-up: Zuma, which was released on our birthday week in 1975. Here’s the thing about Zuma: it was mostly an album of short hooky garage-pop songs, complimented with a couple of longish jam songs.

Certain Songs #1252: Neil Young with Crazy Horse – “C’mon Baby Let’s Go Downtown”

June 28, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Tonight’s The Night
Year: 1970

Recorded at the Fillmore East, New York on March 7, 1970

I almost didn’t write about this song. After all, as you know, I usually like to go chronologically, and not only was this song recorded five years before it was released on Tonight’s The Night, it has since been released in the proper context: the amazing Live at The Fillmore 1970; one of the very first of the Archives-oriented reissues.

Not to mention, Neil doesn’t even really sing lead on this, and even his co-write status is a bit dodgy.

Certain Songs #1234: Neil Young with Crazy Horse – “Cinnamon Girl”

June 10, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Year: 1969

Recorded at Wally Heider Recording Studios, Hollywood, on March 20, 1969

This is where it all begins, isn’t it? Sure, after the Buffalo Springfield broke up, Neil Young holed up with Jack Nitzche, Ry Cooder and made an overwrought and overthought self-titled debut solo album that buried what might have been good songs — only “The Loner” truly shines — with some weird production choices.

Realizing that he was missing the spontaneity and the interplay of working with a band, Neil recruited guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot & drummer Ralph Molina from a local psychedelic group called The Rockets, and rechristened them Crazy Horse. It was magic: the technical limitations of Talbot & Molina kept the songs simple, while Whitten & Young developed a two-guitar interplay that was less balanced than what he’d previously had with Stephen Stills — Neil was the lead guitarist, no question — but more explosive.

It’s All One Song: Neil Young & Crazy Horse in Fresno, May 2, 2018

May 3, 2018 by Jim Connelly

It had been so long since any of us had been to the Warnors Theatre that none of us could remember the last time they’d been to the Warnors Theatre.

R.E.M.? That was 1985, so that can’t be right. There had to have been something else, right?

But of course, that’s how time works: sometimes things disappear from your life and you don’t even realize that they’ve left. So there were shows at the Star Palace or the Wilson and of course the Blue and the Oly and that’s where life was for me until I left in 1994, at which time I could still probably remember when the last time I saw a show at the Warnors.