6. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “Cowgirl In The Sand” (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 1969)
That’s what was so great about Crazy Horse in those days - Danny [Whitten] 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…no one 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’ something 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.
…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. - from “Shakey”
