Early Daze by Neil Young with Crazy Horse
Neil Young continues to mine his vault of archival recordings. Young’s solo career ignited when he began collaborating with a trio he dubbed Crazy Horse—drummer Ralph Molina, bassist Billy Talbot and star-crossed guitarist Danny Whitten were cherry picked from Los Angeles band The Rockets. Young would later have the temerity to record a song subtitled “Requiem for The Rockets” that featured Rockets’ violinist Bobby Notkoff.
With Early Daze we get a clear-eyed snapshot, a what-might-have-been from that original, stillborn lineup of Crazy Horse. While there have been songs leaked on bootlegs and Young’s Live at the Fillmore East album, Early Daze offers another argument just how crucial Whitten was to the band. If you never knew his back story—Whitten would die of an overdose in 1972 after being fired by Young, who would write “The Needle and the Damage Done” and record the album Tonight’s the Night partly in elegy to Whitten—it sounds that he was often Young’s equal.
While none of the titles on Early Daze are revelations—all have previously seen the light of day—the versions and mixes that spotlight Whitten are the prize in the crackerjacks here.
A shit-kicking “Dance, Dance, Dance” opens the album—all twangy guitars and marching drums. If Whitten had a signature tune it was “Come on Baby, Let's Go Downtown,” the rollicking, paranoiac nod that foreshadows dangers of dope. Likewise, “Look at All the Things” shows how much promise was lost with his early demise. That mildly psychedelic Whitten-penned song would also be a standout on the Horse’s debut album from 1977.
Young’s “Winterlong” first appeared on Decade, the three LP collection from 1977 that foreshadowed his packrat archivist tendencies. Essentially a vocal duet, Young and Whitten frame the tune’s forlorn sentimentality as if could have been performed by Crazy Horse’s earliest incarnation as a doo wop vocal group. Fittingly, Young would recast a retro-sounding version on his controversial album, 1983’s Everybody's Rockin’.
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“Everybody’s Alone,” offers a glimpse of the guitar tone that Young would employ on “Cinnamon Girl” and “Down by the River.” That signature sound would become one of his trademarks. While the group’s membership has changed a few times in five decades, Crazy Horse’s Molina and Talbot still play with Young today.
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