50 years ago: When Crazy Horse debuted on 'Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere'

[BootinUp]

Neil Young decided to get real on his second solo album, eschewing typically endless studio overdubs for a gritty, live-in-the-studio approach. All he needed was a band that shared his vision. So, Young stole one.

Guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina were playing clubs on the Sunset Strip in a group called the Rockets when Young first encountered them. Young initially sat in with the Rockets during an August 1968 gig at the Whisky a Go-Go, before inviting the trio back to the studio.

By the time Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere arrived on May 14, 1969, they had been renamed Crazy Horse – and a life-long association with Young was underway.

"The truth is, I probably did steal them away from the other band – which was a good band," Young said in Long May You Run: The Illustrated History. "But only because what we did, we went somewhere."

They fit his new mindset almost telepathically, adding a tough garage-band aesthetic that deftly offset Young's always-mournful vocals. They played fast and loose, leaving the accidents in. They tried new things, pulled out old ideas, let things unspool. "We don't know the songs; we don't have charts," Molina told Rolling Stone in 2011. "We just start playing. The magic just seems to happen."

Cont'd at Ultimate Classic Rock.