Crazy Horse (band)

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For other uses, see Crazy Horse (disambiguation).
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Crazy Horse
Also known as Danny & the Memories
The Rockets
Origin Columbus, Georgia
Genres Rock
Hard rock
Folk rock
Country rock
Years active 1969 – Present
Labels Reprise
Epic
Rhino
Associated acts Neil Young
Members
Billy Talbot
Ralph Molina
Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
Former members
Danny Whitten
Jack Nitzsche
Nils Lofgren
George Whitsell
Greg LeRoy
John Blanton
Rick Curtis
Michael Curtis
Sonny Mone
Matt Piucci

Crazy Horse is a rock band best known for its association with Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career, from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) to Live at the Fillmore East (2006). In addition the group has released five albums of its own.

Contents

[edit] History

The band's origins date back to 1963 and the Los Angeles-based a cappella 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 Crazy Horse stalwarts and be the only members 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.

With their album complete, the Rockets made a point of reconnecting with Neil Young, whom they had met two years prior during the early days of Buffalo Springfield. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets at a show of theirs 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 (as Young would christen the trio), Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere proved the partnership to be a match made in heaven. The album includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl" and the awe-inspiring 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 would receive a spectacular showcase on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East. In the wake of Crazy Horse's success with Young, the Rockets quietly disbanded while "The Horse" carried on as an enduring unit.

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 with the unit and touring with them in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. Molina retained his position behind the drum kit, and Whitten would eventually contribute overdubs. But, during what proved to be the main sessions for his breakthrough album After the Gold Rush, Young would use the full Crazy Horse unit on just one song ("When You Dance I Can Really Love," with Nitzsche on piano). Accordingly, the group as a whole appears on just three of the album's eleven tracks: "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.

With Young experiencing back problems and committed to other endeavors from late 1970 through most of 1971, Crazy Horse capitalized on its newfound exposure and recorded its eponymous debut album for Reprise Records. Retaining Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and adding guitarist Nils Lofgren (whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush), the group completed a strong debut whose high points included Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It," which would 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 the critically-acclaimed group Everything but the Girl.

With Lofgren returning to his band Grin and Nitzsche moving on to work with Young on the album Harvest, the burden—and opportunity—would seem to fall to Whitten to serve as Crazy Horse's dominant creative force. Sadly though, a serious drug habit severely curtailed Whitten's promise as guitarist, songwriter, and bandleader and he became a growing liability to the group. With Whitten unravelling fast, his bandmates had to turn to outside musicians to keep going. Even still they managed to release two albums in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake.

Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band. Due to Whitten's exceedingly poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young tried anything and everything to avoid the measure, letting Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and working with him one-on-one during off-hours in an effort to keep in him in the group. Sadly it proved to be a lost cause and Whitten returned to Los Angeles. A few days later he would pass away, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and valium.[1]

After Whitten's death Crazy Horse suffered an identity crisis. Talbot and Molina were now the only full-fledged members. Could Crazy Horse exist without Whitten, whose stylistic and visionary contributions had so strongly defined the band? Talbot, Molina, and Young all seemed to feel quite strongly that Whitten was "irreplacable." They seemed to feel just as strongly, however, that they could somehow find a way to carry on the spirit of what Whitten brought to the formula without replicating his exact style. Doing so would require just the right circumstances, however, so they did not seek to find an answer quickly. Instead they let the Crazy Horse name go unused awhile without retiring it altogether.

Meanwhile, in mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith. The group toured behind and recorded a gut-wrenching set of new Neil Young songs shot through with pain and darkness. The recordings, decidedly uncommercial in sound and subject matter, sat on Young's shelf for almost two years before he finally felt the time was right and, putting them alongside some synergistic material, released them as Tonight's the Night in 1975.

Also in 1975, Young, Talbot, and Molina would convene at Talbot's Echo Park home with guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, who proved to be just the right person to help resurrect the Crazy Horse moniker. "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."[2] After a five-year hiatus Neil Young and Crazy Horse was born again, and Young marked the occasion in high style by finishing off the lyrics to "Powderfinger," soon to become one of the new lineup's signature songs.

With Sampedro happily in tow, Young and the Horse quickly recorded Zuma, a classic Neil Young and Crazy Horse album if ever there was one. They followed this effort with American Stars 'n Bars, which seemed to break new musical ground on every track and yet, with its centerpiece song "Like a Hurricane," triumphantly maintained a connection to the Neil Young and Crazy Horse sound of old.

1978 proved to be a big year for Crazy Horse as they not only released the fourth album of their own (Crazy Moon, which features some lead guitar by Young), but also joined Young on a tour that led to two further classic albums, Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust. The group's garage-band approach fit in well in the post-punk rock and roll world of the late seventies, with Young and the band running through songs old and new with fire and abandon. Quite rightly hailed as two of the best of Young's career, the exuberant drive of the Rust albums proved once and for all the power of what Crazy Horse brings to Young's music.

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, Life, and an unspecified portion of Trans. Initially Young included all three members of Crazy Horse in his late-1980s outfit 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. Talbot and Molina, meanwhile, 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, the group's fifth and, to date, final album independent of Young.

The split with Sampedro and Young proved relatively short-lived as Young and Crazy Horse reunited in 1990 for the acclaimed album Ragged Glory and for a tour in 1991 that generated the definitive live album Weld. Over the next twelve years Crazy Horse would join Young for Sleeps With Angels, Broken Arrow, Year of the Horse, one song on Are You Passionate?, and Greendale. Sampedro agreed to sit out the recording of Greendale, as Young felt the material called for one guitar only.

In 2005 Rhino Records' Handmade division released a two-disc set, Scratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings, in a limited edition of 2500 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 Records put out a twenty-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.

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.[3]

[edit] Lineup

[edit] Current

[edit] Past members of Neil Young and Crazy Horse

[edit] Other past members

  • Nils Lofgren, 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

[edit] Discography

[edit] The Rockets

[edit] Crazy Horse

  • Crazy Horse, Reprise 1971
  • Loose, Reprise 1972
  • At Crooked Lake, Epic 1972
  • Crazy Moon, Capitol 1978
  • Left for Dead, Capitol 1989
  • Gone Dead Train: The Best of Crazy Horse 1971-1989, Raven 2005
  • Scratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings, Rhino Handmade 2005

[edit] Neil Young and Crazy Horse

[edit] 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 Horse (1997)
  • Greendale (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)

[edit] Billy Talbot solo

  • Alive In The Spirit World (2004)

[edit] Other collaborations

[edit] Footnotes

  • McDonough, Jimmy. Shakey: Neil Young's Biography (first Anchor Books edition, 2003)
  1. ^ McDonough, p. 388
  2. ^ McDonough, pp. 481–482
  3. ^ McDonough, p. 723

[edit] References

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_(band)"