CD Reviews

Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Live at the Fillmore East 1970 | Reprise

By TED DROZDOWSKI | December 11, 2006

3.5 Stars

Neil Young was starting his transition from pop melodist to free-ranging noisemaker when he played these songs at New York City’s most famous rock hall on a bill with the Steve Miller Band and Miles Davis. Now they’re among the few non-bootleg recordings of Young and the original Crazy Horse — and the first of a series of live releases that will visit Young’s back pages. After nice, clean-cut renditions of “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” and the ballad “Winterlong,” Young and Horse guitarist Danny Whitten start six-string sumo wrestling. Twelve minutes later they end a tai-chi-speed psychedelic barrage of stabbing phrases, mini-melodies, and feedback. Two years later, Whitten would die of an overdose, but he and Young sound entirely alive on a restless version of “Cowgirl in the Sand” — a dash to the outer limits of their playing. Young’s first solo is probing, full of notes that seem to raise unanswerable questions about love and life. Whitten, whose tone is smoother than Young’s heavy-gauge sandpaper, lays down jazzy chords to pave the way back to the verse. And when Young is done singing, he and Whitten spill their instruments’ guts for another nine beautiful minutes. This is music that helped put the “classic” in classic rock.

Related: St. Anger, Happy endings, North American idol, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, More

| More

ARTICLES BY TED DROZDOWSKI

TOM HAMBRIDGE | BOOM! | August 23, 2011
Roots rock is the new country and ex-Bostonian Tom Hambridge is the style's current MPV.

COUNTRY STRONG | SOUNDTRACK | January 11, 2011
This steaming pile of songs is emblematic of the state of mainstream country music — all artifice, no heart, calculated anthems written to formula and meant, like the film itself, to do no more than capitalize on the genre's current success and rob its undiscriminating fans.

MARC RIBOT | SILENT MOVIES | November 02, 2010
This exceptional, eccentric guitarist has traced a slow evolution from screamer to dreamer.

IN MEMORIAM: SOLOMON BURKE, 1940 — 2010 | October 11, 2010

REVIEW: RONNIE EARL AND THE BROADCASTERS | SPREAD THE LOVE | September 07, 2010
Boston-based blues-guitar virtuoso Ronnie Earl seems to be considering his past on his 23rd album as a leader.