Crazy Horse is an American rock band best known for their association with the musician Neil Young. Since 1969, fifteen studio albums and eight live albums have been billed as being by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. They have also released six studio albums of their own between 1971 and 2009.
Billy Talbot (bass) and Ralph Molina (drums) have been the only consistent members of the band across its fifty-seven years. Founding guitarist Danny Whitten died in 1972 after recording two studio albums, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (with Young) and Crazy Horse. Except for two notable intervals, Frank "Poncho" Sampedro (rhythm guitar) regularly performed with the group from 1975 until 2014. On four of Crazy Horse's stand-alone studio albums, Talbot and Molina serve as the rhythm section to different sets of musicians.
Following Sampedro's retirement, Nils Lofgren, a member of Crazy Horse between 1970 and 1971, rejoined the group. The quartet of Young, Talbot, Molina and Lofgren recorded three studio albums between 2019 and 2022. In 2024, guitarist Micah Nelson, who had previously played with Young in Promise of the Real, replaced Lofgren.
History Early years The band's origins date to 1963 and the Los Angeles-based a cappella doo-wop group Danny & the Memories, which consisted of lead singer Danny Whitten and supporting vocalists Lou Bisbal (soon to be replaced by Benjamin Rocco, the husband of actress Lorna Maitland), Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina.
Sly Stone produced a single for the group (by then re-christened the Psyrcle) in San Francisco on Lorna Records (a subsidiary of Autumn Records) ; however, it did not sell very well either regionally or nationally.
Back in Los Angeles, the group evolved over the course of several years into the Rockets, a psychedelic pop/folk rock ensemble that juxtaposed the rudimentary instrumental abilities of Whitten (rhythm guitar), Talbot (bass) and Molina (drums) against the more accomplished Bobby Notkoff (violin) and Leon Whitsell (lead guitar). After leaving the group as sessions for their first album commenced, the mercurial and reclusive Whitsell was promptly replaced by his younger brother George, a R&B-influenced guitarist also respected in the band's social circle. After Leon petitioned to return, it was decided that both Whitsells would remain in the group.
This sextet recorded the Rockets' only album, a self-titled record released in 1968 on White Whale Records. Whitten and Leon Whitsell contributed four songs apiece, with one song credited to Talbot and Molina and another, "Pill's Blues", to George Whitsell. Whitten's "Let Me Go" was prominently covered by Three Dog Night on their 1968 debut album; during this period, vocalist Danny Hutton considered recruiting Whitten for that band.
Although their album sold only about 5,000 copies, the Rockets soon re-connected 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 played with the group during a Rockets performance at the Whisky a Go Go; Molina would later recall that Young's idiosyncratically distinctive guitar style "blew George Whitsell's away. He was kind of overshadowed."
With Neil Young, 1968–1970 Shortly after the club collaboration, Young enlisted Whitten, Talbot, and Molina to back him on his second solo album. Although all parties initially envisaged the Rockets continuing as a separate project, the older band soon folded due to Young's insistence on having his new backing trio keep to a strict practice schedule. According to George Whitsell, "My understanding was Neil was gonna use the guys for a record and a quick tour, bring 'em back and help us produce the next Rockets album. It took me a year and a half to realize that my band had been taken."
Credited to Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was released in May 1969. During a 98-week chart stay, it peaked at No. 34 on the Billboard 200 in August 1970 after Young had come to greater prominence as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It included the U.S. No. 55 pop hit "Cinnamon Girl"; the extended, jam-driven "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand"; and a panoply of country and folk-influenced songs exemplified by the spare title track and "Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)," a florid tribute to the defunct band that featured a guest appearance by Notkoff.
Crazy Horse toured clubs and theaters with Young throughout the first half of 1969 and, following the October 1969 addition of frequent Young collaborator Jack Nitzsche on electric piano, in early 1970. The latter tour was showcased on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East. Young would later say that "[on] some of the stuff, Nitzsche was in the way, tonally... Crazy Horse was so good with the two guitars, bass and drums it didn't need anything else."McDonough, p. 337 Although Nitzsche openly disdained the rhythm section of Talbot and Molina, he retrospectively lauded Whitten (who was of Scotch-Irish American ancestry) as "the only Black man in the band."McDonough, p. 328
While Young worked on his second album with Crazy Horse (including takes of Whitten's "Look at All the Things", Whitten & Young's "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" and Young's "Helpless" and "Winterlong") throughout the summer and autumn of 1969, Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash as a full fourth member contemporaneously, recording an album and touring with the ensemble in 1969 and 1970.McDonough, p. 322-23 When Young returned to his solo album in 1970, 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, which was credited solely to Young upon its September 1970 release: "When You Dance I Can Really Love", "I Believe in You", and a cover of Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" from the 1969 sessions.McDonough, p. 333-37 Even though Talbot's appearances on the album were confined to the Crazy Horse tracks, Molina was the project's main drummer (often performing in an ad hoc backing ensemble with emergent singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren and CSNY bassist Greg Reeves on the non-Crazy Horse tracks), while Whitten continued to contribute backing vocals and guitar to several songs (including "Southern Man" and "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", a U.S. No. 33 hit) despite his escalating heroin abuse.
Young "fired" the group in the aftermath of the 1970 tour due to Whitten's addiction (partially attributable to his severe rheumatoid arthritis, for which he had previously received a medical discharge from the United States Navy) following an incapacitated performance during the Fillmore East engagement. According to Molina, Whitten also felt that Young was "holdin' him back" as a guitarist and songwriter.McDonough, p. 387-88 Decades later, the extant recordings from the 1969 sessions (most notably a heretofore unknown iteration of "Helpless", long presumed lost due to an engineering error) were combined with select alternate mixes from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere on Early Daze (2024).
With and without Young, late 1970–1989
Despite Young's dismissal, Crazy Horse capitalized on its newfound exposure and recorded its eponymous debut album for Reprise Records that year. The band retained Nitzsche (who co-produced the album with Bruce Botnick) and added Lofgren as a second guitarist; singer-songwriter and guitarist Ry Cooder also sat in on three tracks at the behest of Nitzsche to substitute for the ailing Whitten. Although the album peaked at only No. 84 on the Billboard 200 chart in 1971, 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, Pegi Young, and Rod Stewart.
Following the commercial failure of Crazy Horse, Lofgren and Nitzsche left the group to resume their solo careers; meanwhile, Whitten's drug problems pushed Talbot and Molina to dismiss him and turn to outside musicians. The band released two albums (Loose and At Crooked Lake) on different labels to critical and commercial failure in 1972; along with Talbot and Molina, guitarist/singer-songwriter Greg Leroy was the only musician to appear on both albums. While the former saw Rockets guitarist George Whitsell briefly return to the fold, fronting the band in conjunction with Leroy and keyboardist John Blanton, the latter was dominated by the polished country rock of Rick and Mike Curtis, formerly of These Vizitors and best known for their later work as the Curtis Brothers.
In the fall of 1972, Young placed Whitten on retainer with a view toward including the guitarist in his new touring band, the Stray Gators. However, following his poor performance in rehearsals at Dress Review Sound Studio in Hollywood, the band pressured Young to dismiss him. Although Young let Whitten live on his ranch near Woodside, California and worked with him one-on-one during off-hours in an unsuccessful effort to keep him in the group, Young fired him and Whitten died several hours later after returning to Los Angeles, his death attributed to a fatal overdose of alcohol and Valium.McDonough, p. 388
After Whitten's death and the tepid reception of their most recent albums, Talbot and Molina were left as the only members of the band. They let the Crazy Horse name go unused while resolving not to retire it altogether. In mid-1973, Young brought together a band comprising Talbot, Molina, Lofgren, and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith to record a new album, the majority of which became the basis of 1975's Tonight's the Night. In the autumn of 1973, that ensemble (initially billed as Crazy Horse for the inaugural concerts at the Roxy in September 1973) toured Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States as the Santa Monica Flyers. Molina and Whitsell would subsequently contribute to Young's On the Beach in 1974.
Shortly after aborted Young sessions involving Talbot, Molina and Keith at Chicago's Chess Studios in late 1974, the band spontaneously reconvened without Keith at Talbot's Echo Park home in 1975. These jam sessions cemented the role of rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, a friend of Talbot who began to play with the group during the Chicago sessions and would go on to be a long-time member of Crazy Horse. "It was great," Talbot would say of the gathering 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."McDonough, pp. 481–482
After the five-year hiatus since 1970, Young, Crazy Horse, and producer David Briggs, quickly recorded Zuma in the summer of 1975, in the basement of Briggs' rented house in Malibu. Sampedro's lack of technical proficiency at the time ("Neil kept writin' simpler songs so I could play them") and desire to see Young "rockin' and having fun" would greatly inform the sound of the record.
Following a warmup tour of unannounced appearances at various San Francisco Bay Area bars (dubbed by the media as the Rolling Zuma Revue in contrast to Bob Dylan's contemporaneous Rolling Thunder Revue) in December 1975, Young and the band toured Japan and Europe from March to April 1976. However, they were shut out of a proposed leg of touring when Young re-kindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills. Crazy Horse toured America that autumn when Young was forced to make up a series of canceled concert dates after leaving the Stills-Young tour before it was finished.