Crazy Horse - At Crooked Lake 1972

After releasing a promising debut album, Crazy Horse, in February 1971, Neil Young's former backup band was reduced to its rhythm section of bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina, who enlisted three new members -- George Whitsell, Greg Leroy, and John Blanton -- to make Loose (January 1972), essentially the work of a different, inferior group. Nine months later, 40 percent of the membership of Crazy Horse has turned over again for the band's third album, At Crooked Lake, with the departure of Whitsell and Blanton and the arrival of Rick and Michael Curtis. This lineup turns out to be better than the one that made Loose but still nowhere near the one that made Crazy Horse. And, as fronted by yet another couple of lead singers and songwriters, it again seems like a different band. The Curtis brothers are competent performers, particularly Rick, who writes or co-writes five of the ten selections and sings in a slightly whiny voice while contributing rhythm guitar and banjo. Keyboardist Michael Curtis gets his name on a couple of tracks, and Leroy writes three, among them the attractive ballad "Your Song," while adding effective lead guitar and bottleneck playing. With the acoustic guitars strumming and occasional steel guitar interludes, this is a country rock in the style of Poco, sometimes, as in Leroy's "85 El Paso's," going into the straight country. But the songwriting still isn't as good as that of Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Eagles, or for that matter, the material banished Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten (who finally died of a drug overdose the month after this LP was released) contributed to the first album. AMG.

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Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere 1969

Neil Young's second solo album, released only four months after his first, was nearly a total rejection of that polished effort. Though a couple of songs, "Round Round (It Won't Be Long)" and "The Losing End (When You're On)," shared that album's country-folk style, they were altogether livelier and more assured. The difference was that, while Neil Young was a solo effort, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere marked the beginning of Young's recording association with Crazy Horse, the trio of Danny Whitten (guitar), Ralph Molina (drums), and Billy Talbot (bass) that Young had drawn from the struggling local Los Angeles group the Rockets. With them, Young quickly cut a set of loose, guitar-heavy rock songs -- "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" -- that redefined him as a rock & roll artist. The songs were deliberately underwritten and sketchy as compositions, their lyrics more suggestive than complete, but that made them useful as frames on which to hang the extended improvisations ("River" and "Cowgirl" were each in the nine-to-ten-minute range) Young played with Crazy Horse and to reflect the ominous tone of his singing. Young lowered his voice from the near-falsetto employed on his debut to a more expressive range, and he sang with greater confidence, accompanied by Whitten and, on "Round Round," by Robin Lane. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was breathtakingly different when it appeared in May 1969, both for Young and for rock in general, and it reversed his commercial fortunes, becoming a moderate hit. (Young's joining Crosby, Stills & Nash the month after its release didn't hurt his profile, of course.) A year and a half after its release, it became a gold album, and it has since gone platinum. And it set a musical pattern Young and his many musical descendants have followed ever since; almost 30 years later, he was still playing this sort of music with Crazy Horse, and a lot of contemporary bands were playing music clearly influenced by it. AMG.

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RE-POST: Crazy Horse - Crazy Moon 1978

Six years went by between the release of Crazy Horse's third album, At Crooked Lake, and its fourth,Crazy Moon, and a lot of water went under the bridge in the meantime. Crazy Horse was, in effect, three different bands on its first three albums because the only constants were bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina as lead singers, songwriters, guitarists, and keyboardists came and went. The band name seemed to be retired by 1973, but in 1974 Talbot and Molina hooked up with singer/guitaristFrank Sampedro as Crazy Horse, leading to sessions with their erstwhile employer Neil Young that resulted in the Young/Crazy Horse album Zuma. At the same time, they recorded some Crazy Horsetracks that sat around for years, finally being finished off in the summer of 1978 for release here. The result is the first album since their debut, 1971's Crazy Horse, that sounds identifiable as the band that backs Young. In part, that's because Young himself is present on guitar on the tracks "She's Hot," "Going Down Again," "New Orleans," "Downhill," and "Thunder and Lighting," and brings along his production associates David Briggs and Tim Mulligan as well as his pedal steel player Ben Keith. But it's also because this is a well-realized effort on which Sampedro proves to be the first of the many successors to original guitarist Danny Whitten to fit in well with Molina and Talbot; because Molina and Talbot have upped their participation beyond providing the rhythm and some vocals, contributing to the songwriting as well; and because the guest musicians include a bevy of Crazy Horse alumni and friends including keyboardist Barry Goldberg (producer of the pre-Crazy Horse band the Rockets); Greg Leroy (Crazy Horse guitarist, 1971-1972); Bobby Notkoff (Rockets violinist); and Michael Curtis (Crazy Horsekeyboardist, 1972). This is something of a Crazy Horse reunion effort, and it shows the band off at its best, or at least probably as good as it could be without co-founder Whitten, who died in 1972. AMG.

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Crazy Horse - At Crooked Lake 1972

After releasing a promising debut album, Crazy Horse, in February 1971, Neil Young's former backup band was reduced to its rhythm section of bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina, who enlisted three new members -- George Whitsell, Greg Leroy, and John Blanton -- to make Loose (January 1972), essentially the work of a different, inferior group. Nine months later, 40 percent of the membership ofCrazy Horse has turned over again for the band's third album, At Crooked Lake, with the departure ofWhitsell and Blanton and the arrival of Rick and Michael Curtis. This lineup turns out to be better than the one that made Loose, but still nowhere near the one that made Crazy Horse. And, as fronted by yet another couple of lead singers and songwriters, it again seems like a different band. The Curtis brothers are competent performers, particularly Rick, who writes or co-writes five of the ten selections and sings in a slightly whiny voice while contributing rhythm guitar and banjo. Keyboardist Michael Curtis gets his name on a couple of tracks, and Leroy writes three, among them the attractive ballad "Your Song," while adding effective lead guitar and bottleneck playing. With the acoustic guitars strumming and occasional steel guitar interludes, this is country-rock in the style of Poco, sometimes, as in Leroy's "85 El Paso's," going into straight country. But the songwriting still isn't as good as that of Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Eagles, or for that matter, the material banished Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten(who finally died of a drug overdose the month after this LP was released) contributed to the first album. AMG.

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Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps 1979

Rust Never Sleeps, its aphoristic title drawn from an intended advertising slogan, was an album of new songs, some of them recorded on Neil Young's 1978 concert tour. His strongest collection since Tonight's the Night, its obvious antecedent was Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home, and, as Dylan did, Youngdivided his record into acoustic and electric sides while filling his songs with wildly imaginative imagery. The leadoff track, "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" (repeated in an electric version at album's end as "Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black]" with slightly altered lyrics), is the most concise and knowing description of the entertainment industry ever written; it was followed by "Thrasher," which describesYoung's parallel artistic quest in an extended metaphor that also reflected the album's overall theme -- the inevitability of deterioration and the challenge of overcoming it. Young then spent the rest of the album demonstrating that his chief weapons against rusting were his imagination and his daring, creating an archetypal album that encapsulated his many styles on a single disc with great songs -- in particular the remarkable "Powderfinger" -- unlike any he had written before. AMG.

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