Neil Young & Crazy Horse

When hugely influential Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young – born November 12, 1945, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada - decided he needed a backing band after disappointment with his debut solo album in 1968, he recruited guitarist Danny Whitten, bass player Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina from California psychedelic folk band The Rockets - who'd recently released their own self-titled debut album. Young re-christened them Crazy Horse and they recorded the Everybody Knows This is Nowhere album, which included the classic song “Cinnamon Girl.” Although associated closely with Neil Young, Crazy Horse didn’t work with Neil Young on every album. The next time they recorded with him, it was on three tracks on his 1970 breakthrough album, After the Goldrush. When not working with Young, Crazy Horse recorded three albums in the early 1970s including their self-titled 1971 debut which featured Danny Whitten's now-classic song “I Don't Want to Talk About It” produced by Jack Nitzsche. Fighting drug problems, however, Whitten died in 1972. After a period working with Nils Lofgren and pedal steel player Ben Keith, Crazy Horse found a permanent replacement in guitarist Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro. The group reconnected with Neil Young again and backed him on the classic albums Zuma, Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust, as well as Crazy Horse's own album Crazy Moon (1978). They continued to work sporadically with Young, recording the albums Re·ac·tor (1981), Life (1987), Ragged Glory (1990), Sleeps with Angels (1994), Broken Arrow (1996), Greendale (2003), Americana (2012), Psychedelic Pill (2012), Colorado (2019), Barn (2021), Toast (2021), and World Record (2022). They also toured with Neil Young and released the live albums Weld (1991), Arc (1991), Year of the Horse (1997), Live at the Fillmore East (2006), Return to Greendale (2020), Way Down in the Rust Bucket (2021), and Fuckin’ Up (2024). Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro retired from Crazy Horse for health reasons and Nils Lofgren returned to the fold between 2018 and 2023. Due to Lofgren’s commitments to Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, he left Crazy Horse and was replaced by Willie Nelson’s son Michah Nelson, who is also a member of Promise of the Real along with his brother Lukas.

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