Crazy Horse (album)

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Crazy Horse

Studio album by Crazy Horse
Released	February, 1971
Genre	Country-rock, Rock
Label	Reprise Records
Producer(s)	Jack Nitzsche, Russ Titelman
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (A-) link
Crazy Horse chronology
	Crazy Horse (1971)	Loose (1972)

Crazy Horse is the eponymous debut album by the rock band famous for their long-time collaboration with Neil Young.

1 History
2 Personnel
- 2.1 Additional personnel
3 Track listing
4 External link

[edit] History

Members of this band had already released an album in 1968 as The Rockets, and had appeared on record twice with Young as Crazy Horse.

The core trio from the Rockets, Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina, provided instrumental backing for Young's 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and performed on some songs from Young's 1970 album After the Goldrush. During sessions for the latter, they met guitar prodigy Nils Lofgren, and producer/keyboardist Jack Nitzsche of Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew and the Rolling Stones fame, also on hand in supportive roles. They meshed, and Crazy Horse expanded into a quintet, picking up a recording contract with Reprise Records after the exposure garnered from Gold Rush.

For the recording of this album in the fall of 1970, they recruited fretboard virtuoso Ry Cooder, who had worked previously with Nitzsche on sessions for the Stones, adding his talents to three tracks. The album contains strong compositions from four principal writers, the fourth being Young, the band covering his "Dance Dance Dance," which has yet to see an official version by Young himself. Songwriter Randy Newman had already performed "Gone Dead Train" on the soundtrack for the 1970 cult film Performance by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, and a live version of "Downtown," by Whitten and Young, would appear on Young's Tonight's the Night album of 1975. The spirit of Whitten hovered over the tour of the same name from 1973, the remaining quartet from this album backing Young on a notoriously bleak round of concerts in the wake of Whitten's death from an overdose in late 1972.

A pity, for Whitten's songs on this album indicated a promising talent. In particular, the ballad "I Don't Want to Talk About It" received a number of cover versions from a variety of artists, among them Rita Coolidge, Everything But the Girl on their Idlewild album of 1988, and Rod Stewart, who had a big hit with the song in the U.K., taken from his 1975 album Atlantic Crossing.

The album was re-released for compact disc on March 22 1994, and appeared in its entirety as part of Rhino Handmade's Scratchy compilation from 2005, which also included outtakes from the sessions for this album. That compilation is no longer in print.