Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse

With Neil Young

Crazy Horse is an American rock band best known for their association with Neil Young. They have been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and have released five albums of their own. With their album complete, the Rockets reconnected with Neil Young, whom they had met two years earlier during the early days of Buffalo Springfield. In August 1968, three months after Buffalo Springfield dissolved, Young jammed with the Rockets on stage during their show 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, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere includes the minor pop hit "Cinnamon Girl" and the extended 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 was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East.

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 and touring in 1969 and 1970. When Young returned to his solo album, Crazy Horse found its participation more limited. The group as a whole appears on just three of the eleven tracks on After the Gold Rush: "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.

As Young experienced back problems and remained 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 that year. The band retained Nitzsche as producer and keyboardist, and added second guitarist Nils Lofgren (whom the band met during the 1970 sessions for After the Gold Rush). Whitten's "I Don't Want to Talk About It" would later 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 No. 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 No. 3 for Everything but the Girl.

Shortly thereafter, Lofgren and Nitzsche moved on to other endeavors, while Whitten's drug problems pushed the group to turn to outside musicians. Crazy Horse released two albums with different lineups (save for the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina) in 1972, Loose and At Crooked Lake. The former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold as frontman, while the latter was dominated by the rootsier stylings of Rick and Mike Curtis (formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as The Curtis Brothers). Meanwhile, Young placed Whitten on retainer in the fall of 1972 with a view toward including the guitarist in his touring band, the Stray Gators. Because of Whitten's poor performance in tour rehearsals, however, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Young let Whitten live on his ranch in Northern California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep him in the group. Whitten returned to Los Angeles and died that night, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.