Crazy Horse

Since Crazy Horse first came to public attention as the backing band for Neil Young in concert and on his albums Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Gold Rush, it makes sense to expect that the band on its own would play something similar to the hard guitar rock and country-rock heard on those albums, albeit without Young's distinctively quirky singing and songwriting, and that is what one hears to a large extent on the debut album Crazy Horse. (Although this is their first recording under that name, core members Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina have appeared previously on record as part of the doo wop group Danny & the Memories and the rock band the Rockets.) But there is more going on than that. Also joining in, as singers and songwriters as well as sidemen, are veteran arranger/producer Jack Nitzsche and guitarist Nils Lofgren, while Ry Cooder adds slide guitar to a number of tracks. The result is a varied group of songs that range in style from rock and country to blues and folk.

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/guitarist Frank 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 Horse tracks 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.

Return to Greendale is the next installment in Neil Young’s Performance Series and features a concert (audio and on film) from the historic and unique 2003 tour supporting the release of the Neil Young with Crazy Horse album Greendale. On the 2003 tour, Neil Young and Crazy Horse were joined on stage by a large cast of singers and actors to perform the story Neil Young wrote about the small town of Greendale and how a dramatic event affects the people living there. The ten songs from the powerful original album are performed in sequence, with the cast speaking the sung words - adding to the intensity of the performance.

Way Down in the Rust Bucket is an upcoming live album and concert film from Canadian-American rock musician Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse, to be released on February 26, 2021. It is Volume 11.5 in the Performance Series of Neil Young Archives.

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.

Though he never really slowed down at any point, Neil Young stayed on an especially prolific streak as the 2010s bled into the 2020s. In addition to a steady rollout of archival material, official versions of long-bootlegged shows, and other miscellanea, Neil has produced albums of entirely new material at a rate unmatched by most artists in his age bracket who have been at it for as long as he has. World Record follows quickly behind the mellow rocking of 2021's Barn, and again finds Young ably backed by his longest-running comrades, Crazy Horse. This time around, however, the band worked with producer Rick Rubin, capturing everything live in the studio and sticking to an analog-heavy recording process. World Record is an album built of unlikely combinations that somehow work.

Barn, the new Neil Young/Crazy Horse album was recorded in a remote, restored, 19th century log barn. This musical family has played together for a half century, yet they continue creating new music. Neil and the Horse fans have long shouted for “more barn” and here it is… 10 new songs that capture the wild, rock and roll spirit, the idiosyncratic raw sound and the lyrical beauty that epitomizes a classic NYCH collaboration. The last song appeared on the last morning and was recorded just an hour later during a pounding hailstorm and during the full moon.

Greendale ranks as one of the more elaborate projects Neil Young ever conceived, a concept album inspired by Thornton Wilder's Our Town which was accompanied by a film telling the record's story – the film was then used as a backdrop for a theatrical production featuring Young and Crazy Horse. Nearly 20 years after the album's 2003 release, Young revisited the project through the aptly titled Return to Greendale, a live effort capturing a September 4, 2003 concert held in Toronto just a few weeks after the August appearance of Greendale…