Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 164

Record label: Reprise

Produced: David Briggs and Neil Young

Recorded: Los Angeles; March 1969

Released: May 14, 1969

Chart peaks: None (UK) 34 (US)

Personnel: Neil Young (g, v); Danny Whitten (g, bv); Ralph Molina (d, bv); Billy Talbot (b, bv); Robin Lane (v); Bobby Notkoff (vn)

Track listing: Cinnamon Girl (S/US); Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (S/US); Round And Round; Down By The River (S); The Losing End; Running Dry (Requiem For The Rockets); Cowgirl In The Sand

Running time: 40.32

Current CD: Reprise 7599272422

Further listening: Tonight’s The Night (1975); Zuma (1976); Rust Never Sleeps (1979); Arc/Weld (1991)

Further reading: Neil Young: Here We Are In The Years (Johnny Rogan, 1982); http://hyperrust.org (fan site); www.neilyoung.com (official)

Download: iTunes; HMV Digital

Neil Young was in search of something new. Freed from the burning intensity of Buffalo Springfield, he had signed to Reprise as a solo artist and issued a lavishly arranged, predominantly acoustic album which gained solid reviews but sold poorly. His voice had been buried in the mix, which briefly caused him to disown the album. Now, he was determined to start afresh. His new direction owed much to a debilitating bout of flu which had rendered him helpless but simultaneously unleashed his imagination. High with fever, he’d written three songs – Cinnamon Girl, Cowgirl In The Sand and Down By The River. The lyrics were understandably vague and dreamy and the chords simple yet arresting. In his mind, Young began to hear a hypnotic beat that cried for electric instrumentation. He could have assembled a crack team of LA session players but instead he chose a bar band that he knew from the Springfield days. The Rockets had made one album for White Whale but weren’t exactly setting Hollywood alight. ‘He took the rhythm section, which was me, Billy Talbot and Danny Whitten,’ drummer Ralph Molina recalls. ‘It evolved into Crazy Horse. We hadn’t played many shows as The Rockets anyway.’

Crazy Horse was one of Young’s most inspired moves. They provided him with the same excitement he remembered from the heyday of Buffalo Springfield, albeit without the mind games and rivalry that characterised his dealings with the fiery Stephen Stills. Although the partnership would drift at various points in his career, Young would always return to Crazy Horse in search of renewal. This album proved one of the best electric guitar albums of its era and established Young’s reputation as a player of great passion and unrestrained intensity.

‘I still think that us being with Neil was fate,’ Molina concludes. ‘We were just four guys. That Crazy Horse sound came from all four of us. Neil wouldn’t have found that sound with anybody else. That was the way we played – with raw emotion.’