Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was released in May 1969, and although it took awhile to gather steam—“Cinnamon Girl” was a minor pop hit, and FM radio made “Down by the River” a stoner anthem for an army of teenage boys eager to mangle its three chords themselves—Neil Young, for the first time since Ray Dee, had captured his vision without interference or disappointment.

  Peter Lewis, Young’s friend from Moby Grape, remembers stopping by his Topanga Canyon home and listening to an acetate of Everybody Knows while Neil sat proudly on the thronelike chair featured in many of the pictures inside the album. “He was waitin’ for me to say somethin’, and there really wasn’t much to say. The thing is, I knew he did what he wanted to do. With the Springfield stuff, I always felt it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do. That’s why I was so happy for him. He finally got the thing he wanted out of his music.”

  I liked Everybody Knows. I knew that was a good record. I also knew that it was raw. I knew that it was us.

  We practiced at my house. That’s where Crazy Horse first played. That’s when I discovered Old Black and the Deluxe—in the living room of my house, rehearsing. It was great. A small room with my Deluxe on a chair.

  There were no effects, it was just the guitar and the amp. Very clean. I didn’t have it turned up all the way. Volume’s not really that important. It’s the size of the room and the relationship of the sound to the enclosure it’s in that makes a difference.

  I remember lookin’ over at Ralph once, havin’ Ralph look up at me, and he was just so into it. It was like “Yeah, this is great. We’re right in it.” It was fabulous. And I remember the Buffalo Springfield guys comin’ over and makin’ me nervous every once in awhile.

  The direction change between the first and second album was pretty radical. The difference is, I wanted to play with people. But that shows radical direction changes were possible and were probably gonna happen—as early as between the first and second records. So what I was doin’ in the eighties was nothin’. Absolutely nothin’.

  —What did you hear in the Rockets?

  It wasn’t so much hearing as feeling. Just a vibe—funky, honest and soulful. Direct.

  —How different were they from the Springfield or other musicians? A lot deeper. Not that the lyrics were deeper, but there was this … depth. The sound. Something was going on there, I don’t know what it was. ’Cause none of ’em could hardly play at the time—I mean, they weren’t very good, but they were great in their own way. That White Whale record they did was pretty fuckin’ cosmic shit. It sounds exactly like they do now. Almost the same, Billy and Ralph. A little simpler.

  —Did you break the Rockets up?

  I don’t think so. I just wanted those three guys to play with me. It didn’t mean they couldn’t play with the Rockets.

  —You wrote some of the Everybody Knows songs from a sickbed?

  Sometimes if I get sick, get a fever, it’s easy to write. Everything opens up. You don’t have any resistance—you just let things go. Your guard is down. I wrote “Round and Round” up in my cabin. It was written for Buffalo Springfield—that’s when Danny and Robin and I used to sing it at Billy’s house.

  —Did you have a concept of doing longer songs?

  It just happened. We just started playin’ instrumentals and we didn’t stop. The energy was right. We just kept going.

  See, before that, the big instrumental was the ending of “Bluebird” by Buffalo Springfield. That was a big long jam that ended in crashing guitars, broken strings and all this shit … the long jam at the end of “Bluebird” lasted like eight minutes or something. So I guess the next thing for me was “Well, that was really cool—why not have one of those after every verse.” Then I started figuring, “Well, shit, we can have one of these all the way through. There can be three verses and three instrumental journeys. It could be a big thing and a lotta fun to play. Really explore the lyric with the guitar.”

  “Down by the River” was really edited. We got the vibe, but it was just too long and sometimes it fell apart, so we just took the shitty parts out. Made some radical cuts in there—I mean, you can hear ’em. But Danny just played so cool on that. He was playin’ & kinda things. He made the whole band sound good. Me and Billy and Ralph sounded like Crazy Horse right away. All I had to do was come up with the songs and the riffs. I started realizing how long we could jam. It was fantastic.

  Crazy Horse was really mellow. I really liked them all right from the very beginning. It was more of a camaraderie. It was much more mellow than hanging out with Buffalo Springfield.

  Those guys were my band. That was the difference. I called the shots. Plus I had Briggs—that’s important.

  —What did Briggs bring to Everybody Knows?

  Stability. The singing had to be coaxed outta me. Learning to sing live. Learning the need. Learning why to sing live. I was still overdubbing, because I wanted it to be really right—yet I was overdubbing. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. Relearning the simplest basic thing—that music feels good—and should feel unified.

  —Where did the inspiration come from for the hand claps on “Cinnamon Girl”?

  Remember “My Boyfriend’s Back”?

  —Is there a link between Jimmy Reed and Crazy Horse?

  Yeah. Groove.

  —Nitzsche said you told him over and over, “I wanna cross Dylan with the Stones.”

  Probably that was about the time I had already met Crazy Horse. That wasn’t really an idea—heh heh—it was like, you had me and you had them.

  I wanted to break out of that perfection thing. In reaction to Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills and Nash, my first solo album, all that stuff. Buffalo Springfield was always trying to make clean records, make “real” records, and then my first record with David was the same kinda thing—tryin’ to make a great record of, y’know, craft.

  —How important were the Stones to you?

  Very important. In the early times, I never thought of what was funky and what wasn’t. It was all music—either you liked it or you didn’t. There wasn’t a funky music or a black music or a white music, it was just fuckin’ music. I never categorized it. And then when I got down to L.A., there’s like black music, funky music, white music, & and soul. Get down there and they’re talking about all these different kinds of music. I’d go, “This is all the same shit I’ve been listening to. What are they talking about?”

  So when I joined Crazy Horse and we started playing, it became obvious to me that this band was much funkier than all the other bands I’d been in. And I noticed that some of the musicians that I’d played with in the other bands didn’t think these guys were very good. Yet I liked them. Even more, as a matter offact. I was having a really good fuckin’ time playing with them. Where else could I go and play my guitar for fuckin’ seven minutes, sing a verse and play another five-minute solo? Not in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. But even more than that, it was a simple thing—everybody just wanted to make the music and nothin’ else mattered. It wasn’t like “Whose name is gonna be on the record?”

  So then I realized, “Hey, these Crazy Horse guys are a lot closer to the Rolling Stones. More than Buffalo Springfield was the Beatles.”

  So I’d taken rock and roll and divided it into two categories, Rolling Stones and Beatles, okay? And I realized that if you divided into those two categories, color made no difference, what part of the world made no difference. Beatles are on one side, Rolling Stones on the other side, everybody else line up, okay? Crazy Horse and the Mynah Birds, they were on the Rolling Stones side.

  —Buffalo Springfield were the Beatles?

  Yup.

  —CSNY?

  Beatles.

  —Pearl Jam?

  Rolling Stones.

  —The Harvest band, the Stray Gators?

  Beatles, heh heh … See, it’s just like that—pretty simple.

  —Where did Dylan fit in this equation?

  Where did he fit in? Rolling Stones. Dylan was never as tight a
s the Beatles.

  —Was the fact that Crazy Horse couldn’t “play” a big attraction for you?

  The most important thing to me was that they really loved playing. And they were a hundred percent into it. Second most important thing was that they couldn’t play for shit—so that left a lotta room for me to play very little and have it sound fuckin’ phenomenal. If a good musician plays with me, they play way too much. They always play too much. Always trying to show me how great they are.

  —Nitzsche said, “Neil has a death wish when it comes to rhythm sections.” What does he mean?

  He means that I like playin’ with Billy and Ralph, heh heh.

  Billy’s a mystery, isn’t he? Billy’s great. Billy’s the reason why Crazy Horse is great, and Billy’s also the reason why Crazy Horse has never had a hit record. ’Cause Billy’s great but not “I can dance to it” great, know what I mean?

  It’s like as sensual as Billy is, his bass playing is not sensual. His bass playing is fuckin’ heartfelt and big. The notes are huge. It’s teenage guys. You can see it in all of our big hits—it’s like a bunch of guys in flannel shirts goin’ out of their minds, “LET’S GO THERE NEIL, ARRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!” It’s not so much a bunch of chicks goin’, “Hey, wow, this is cool” and gettin’ into the groove….

  I mean, I don’t know what it is—but it’s never been about a hit record. And the only record that Crazy Horse ever had that was really truly a hit record was “Cinnamon Girl.” That’s the only one. All the other ones have been underground hits. “Cinnamon Girl” had a groove to it, a different kind of groove. And it had Danny.

  “Danny was a world-class singer,” said Briggs. “So all of a sudden Neil had right up in his face a guy who could really sing his fuckin’ ass off and play the best guitar of anybody who ever played with Neil. That’s how you get good—by being with people who are good.” Many point to Danny Whitten for bringing Young out as a vocalist and guitarist. “Danny gave Neil the blackness he lacks,” said Jack Nitzsche.

  Whitten’s hillbilly/& roots helped the Horse avoid any airy-fairy hippie clichés. His second-lead playing on “Cowgirl in the Sand”—to call it rhythm guitar would be an insult—shows an understanding of Young’s music that borders on telepathic (all the later versions I’ve heard without Danny fail to fly). “Danny was one of those guys who played less, and you can hear it on Everybody Knows, “said Willie B. Hinds. “It’s the notes he didn’t play that were important. Danny was actually the backbeat of the rhythm section. The rhythm guitar usually follows the drummer, but not in this case. Everybody followed Danny.”

  Yet there were none of the ego clashes that had soured the Springfield. “Danny really supported Neil,” said Robin Lane. “See, Danny really took a backseat to anyone he did anything with. He never played me anything he wrote. He’d go, ‘So play me a song, Robin.’”

  “Danny Whitten,” said Briggs, “was the Brian Jones of Crazy Horse.”

  What did Danny bring to Crazy Horse? The glue. The glue that held it together. Danny was funny. I can’t really describe it. He had a lot of little things he would say that were really fuckin’ funny—most of them at Billy or Ralph’s expense. And he definitely ran the show. Everyone listened to Danny. He was basically the leader of the Rockets, from what I can tell.

  That’s what was so great about Crazy Horse in those days—Danny understood my music, and everyone listened to Danny. He understood what we were doing. A really great second guitar player, the perfect counterpoint to everything else that was happening. His style of playing was so adventuresome. So sympathetic. So unthoughtful. And just so natural. That’s really what made “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Down by the River” happen—Danny’s guitar parts. Nobody played guitar with me like that—that rhythm. When you listen to “Cowgirl in the Sand,” he keeps changing—plays something one and a half, maybe two, times, and he’s on to the next thing. Billy and Ralph will get into a groove and everything will be goin’ along and all of a sudden Danny’ll start doin’ somethin’ else. He just led those guys from one groove to another—all within the same groove. So when I played these long guitar solos, it seemed like they weren’t all that long, that I was making all these changes, when in reality what was changing was not one thing, but the whole band. Danny was the key.

  I was singin’ by myself on the first record. I was by myself. Danny influenced my singing and especially my playing—his rhythms. Danny was ahead of Billy and Ralph at that time, but they were catchin’up fast. Danny was more like me—he just played. Some people just have it.

  We did a tour of clubs when we first started—all I had was the Deluxe, Billy had a little amp and Danny had the Bandmaster—very little stuff. No big crowds. No excitement. We’d just be back in the dressing room smoking weed and getting ready to go out there and play “Losing End,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Everybody Knows” and “Down by the River” or “Cowgirl in the Sand”—never the two of them together, because we didn’t think it was a good idea to do that much playing in one set.

  We were a fuckin’ funky bunch, between me being stoned on grass and everybody else doin’ whatever the hell they were doin’. It’s really a trip that most of the band is still here.

  Danny was great … everybody loved Danny. I liked hangin’ out with him, but what I really liked was makin’ music with him. The very beginning of the first Crazy Horse was great. Great. But there’s no way to get that particular thing back. That’s not gonna happen again.

  Young took Crazy Horse on the road immediately, in between the January and March 1969 recording dates and again in May. Talbot remembers a test gig somewhere in the Valley. “It was a typical gig, Neil Young-style. Nobody knew we were playin’ there.”

  Young had already hit the road solo for a few dates the previous October and November. On November 10, at the end of a two-day gig at the Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he made his first known live recordings as a solo artist, which resulted in the definitive “Clancy” and the “Sugar Mountain” that would soon become a B-side staple.

  At the end of January and in early February, he appeared solo in Canada, first at Le Hibou coffeehouse, then for a six-day stand at his old haunt, the Riverboat in Toronto. The Canadian shows were all taped and contain a number of gems, particularly a note-perfect “Flying on the Ground Is Wrong.”

  “The Riverboat series is very important, unquestionably,” said archivist Joel Bernstein. “Neil has that very innocent, soft voice that is not really present in the Springfield. His guitar playing has improved immensely. I think he was really comfortable being solo, playing in small clubs—he doesn’t have an urge to be in a group, he doesn’t want somebody singing harmony—he’s retelling all the Buffalo Springfield songs in a way that’s very poignant.”

  But a band would join Young directly after these shows, at the Bitter End in New York City, beginning February 12. Young would do a short acoustic set, then Crazy Horse would crowd onto the Bitter End’s tiny stage. To hear intimate acoustic performances—followed by Young and the Horse bashing away at as yet unreleased jams like “Down by the River”—must have been mind-bending.

  Ken Viola recalled seeing the band play to a handful of people on the bottom of a quadruple bill (topped by Deep Purple) at New York’s Felt Forum in May. “Hearing Crazy Horse was like standing on a mountaintop and breathing in all that fresh air. It almost hurt to experience it, it was so pure.”

  Playing dives, the Horse stayed in cheap motels, splitting the meager take after gigs, Susan and Neil cooking in their room. Ralph Molina remembers playing a high school gym in San Diego where Young was too stoned to go on. “Neil was lying back in the locker room, man, and he was paralyzed. They had to make an announcement.” One night at a Mafia gambling joint in Providence, Rhode Island, the band got so gone playing “Cowgirl” that they didn’t even notice a drunken brawl had emptied the house. “It was really groovy,” Young said of the tour to Tony Pig. “Six weeks on the road and not one argument.”

>   Innocent, happy times, but they wouldn’t last. Toward the end of the Crazy Horse tour, a couple of visitors showed up—Stephen Stills, along with CSN drummer Dallas Taylor. Stills came to talk to Young about going on the road with his new outfit. “After our set, they’d sit in with Neil,” said Molina. “They wanted Neil bad.” What happened next would hot-wire Young’s career and test the sanity of everyone involved. “How can I bring you to this sea of madness?” Young would sing on one of the few CSNY tunes that kind of rocked. “I love you so much, it’s gonna bring me sadness.”

  *Actress Charlotte Stewart, who was at drummer Dallas Taylor’s the night of the LaBianca murders, recalls a panicked Stephen Stills and David Crosby barging in armed, saying, “They’re killin’ all the people with estates!”

  *Although Neil Young was overdubbed piece by piece, glimmers of the Briggs/Young “the more you think, the more you stink” ethos were already in evidence. Jim Messina once stepped up to the mike to record a song and found out he’d already done it. “As I was warming up—learning the chart—they recorded me,” said Messina, still annoyed. “I said, ‘ Wait a minute—I want to do it again.’ Neil said, ‘No—it’s fine the way it is.’”

  According to Jack Nitzsche, many L.A. session players looked down their noses at Neil Young, and Ry Cooder was no exception. “Ry hated Neil and let it show and I hated him for it, because Neil was so scared.”

  *According to Briggs, the psycho guitar noises featured on both “The Loner” and “I’ve Been Waiting for You”—where it sounds like Young is sticking the instrument into a garbage disposal and shredding the strings—were made by “putting Neil’s guitar through an organ Leslie, not even through an amp, just the Leslie into the board.”

  *Apparently Young thinks the nightmarish lyrics of this song are a laugh riot. “I always thought there was a funny side to my music,” Young told Nick Kent. ” ‘Last Trip to Tulsa’ … that’s my idea of a really funny song.”

  *Young first used Old Black for some uncredited wild guitar on a 1969 Tetragrammaton record Briggs produced for Elyse Weinberg, Neil’s old friend from his Toronto folkie days.