Girl Crazy

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.

After the Buffalo Springfield imploded, Neil Young recorded his first, eponymous solo album, an elaborately overdubbed affair that cast him in the role of brooding singer-songwriter.