Neil Young has given fans a sneak peek at his long-awaited new collaboration with Crazy Horse, posting a sizzling, 37-minute long track — appropriately titled “Horse Back.”
Recorded at Audio Casa studios on January 6, the track is streaming at NeilYoung.com. Thus far, there has been no confirmed track listing for the new Crazy Horse project, the first with Young since 2003. No one is even sure if this song is part of the forthcoming album. The video, however, includes shots of lyrics sheets for a number of songs — including “Clementine,” “Gallows Pole,” “Gotta Travel On (Done Laid Around),” and “Oh Susanna!”
Are these clues, or jam-session incidentals? No one knows. Either way, this feedback soaked blast of guitar fuzz certainly jibes with Young’s rock-and-roll rebel mood lately, one in which he went on a rant about the sound of modern records — calling them “the worst we’ve ever had,” in a recent interview.
“I’m finding that I have a little bit of trouble with the quality of the sound of music today. I don’t like it,” Young said. “It just makes me angry. Not the quality of the music, but we’re in the 21st century and we have the worst sound that we’ve ever had. It’s worse than a 78 (rpm record). Where are our geniuses? What happened?”
Here’s a look back at our recent thoughts on Neil Young, including a report by Glen Boyd — author of the forthcoming book ‘Neil Young FAQ’ from Backbeat Books/Hal Leonard Publishing. Click through the headlines for complete reviews …
SOMETHING ELSE! INTERVIEW: NILS LOFGREN OF CRAZY HORSE: Working on seminal recordings like After the Gold Rush and Tonight’s the Night, Lofgren told us, “was obviously a gift from musical heaven. I would sneak backstage all the time to ask advice from my musical heroes. Neil’s first Crazy Horse tour came through town to the Cellar Door, and I go back to a little dressing room. He was kind enough to hand me a guitar and let me sing. The next thing I knew, I spent the weekend hanging out with him. He said: ‘Look me up when you get to L.A.,’ and I did. So at 18 years of age, when he asked me to do After the Gold Rush, as intimidating as it was, I recognized it as a very blessed opportunity – and fortunately, it was with somebody that I knew a bit. As overwhelming as it might have been, I had a comfort level. That made it possible for me to hang in there and get the job done. It was a great adventure.
NEIL YOUNG – LE NOISE (2010): Even after a damaging season of loss, Neil Young remains, as always, restless and relentless — imbuing the modernistic, reverb-soaked Le Noise with a kind of anti-melancholy. He hasn’t stopped searching for light in the darkness and, even now, somehow never sounds quite the same from album to album. This time, Young partners with producer Daniel Lanois, recording alone with his guitar in an atmosphere that sounds nothing like the typical unplugged session. There’s no Stills, no Crosby or Nash and no Crazy Horse. Instead, this textured, live-sounding project finds a place in between Young’s acoustic work and his more muscular full-band rock music.
FORGOTTEN SERIES: NEIL YOUNG AND THE INTERNATIONAL HARVESTERS – AUSTIN CITY LIMITS (1984): Of all of Neil Young’s 1980s genre experiments, his country period is perhaps the most misunderstood of them all.For one thing, Neil had a hell of a band back then in the International Harvesters. This band of Nashville cats may not have blown down arena doors with the same ferocity as Crazy Horse or, for that matter, Pearl Jam. But as this 1984 ACL concert proves, they could more than hold their own with Neil Young on an extended version of “Down By The River.” In fact, a very young at the time Anthony Crawford’s guitar interplay with Neil here, very nearly pulls off the enviable trick of summoning up the ghost of the late Danny Whitten himself.
NEIL YOUNG – LIVE AT MASSEY HALL 1971 (2007): A showcase for Young and his songwriting at an early career peak. Played on acoustic guitar and sometimes piano, Young definitely had that audience in full control. Many of the songs, new at the time, went on to become part of his classic Harvest LP. It’s a fine album. The content of the songs is cranked up quite a bit with this intimate setting. There may be no Crazy Horse sonic heaviness on “Cowgirl In The Sand,” but the emotional directness of the setting more than makes up for it.
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