Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Music Hall, Ohio 1970-02-25 (Bootleg)

Size: 215 MB
Bitrate: 320
mp3
Found in Explorer World
Artwork Included
Sound Quality: A

(NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE FEBRUARY 25TH 1970 TRANSFER/EDITING NOTES): 
This is essentially the boot known as Danny by The River which is an upgrade to all previously available versions of this performance. The label it originates from, as mentioned in the source text where I downloaded this recording, says this version is derived directly from the SBD master. Whether this is true or not is anyones guess. If it is true, the master would seem to have deteriorated somewhat over time with some obvious distortions, imbalances, and other anomalies. Otherwise, this is a great recording and stands as the ultimate document of Neil Young & Crazy Horse live in 1970 in bootleg format. I did not attempt to completely rework this recording as it has been claimed to already have been remastered. To me , if this is a new source which was originally circulated by Seymour Records as the boot CD "Danny By The River" and taken from the master recording, it would not have been remastered but instead simply mastered from it's original analog format. I have thus made some small adjustments to eliminate some of the pesky anomalies present throughout the recording and bring out an even clearer overall sound. The first disc contained a boomy, muffled low to mid range frequency range which was a detriment to the music contained within. 

"California Country Rock Family Tree"
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I have thus cut back some of these unneccesary and non-musical low-mid sections, bringing out the brightness in Neil's guitar and giving his vocal a little more edge. I have also adjusted relative levels of each track so they coincide with one another. The 2nd disc was edited very minutely, with very slight EQ adjustments and amplitude boosts. This disc sounded a little better than the 1st to start with and didn't need really much work at all. I have removed a few clicks and pops here and there and adjusted overall relative track levels as well but it has remained very much the same as it began. I have included artwork that I found which reflects the tracks found here but I can't say for sure that this is the art for the "Danny By the River" CD as there is no mention of this title or the record company. This artwork has also been remastered for optimal color, contrast and brightness levels. The original art was way too bright in my opinion. Let this version circulate as the superior take on this classic Neil & Horse concert and forever put to rest the inferior copy still circulating known as the "Winterlong" boot. For those at tapecity who have been in awe over the "Winterlong" boot, this really is a show you need to have! Enjoy! [Source Unknown]

NEIL YOUNG GOING SOLO, CRAZY HORSE & CSNY (1968–1970):
After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, Young signed a solo deal with Reprise Records, home of his colleague and friend Joni Mitchell, with whom he shared a manager, Elliot Roberts, who manages Young to this day. Young and Roberts immediately began work on Young's first solo record, Neil Young (November 1968), which received mixed reviews. In a 1970 interview, Young deprecated the album as being "overdubbed rather than played," and the quest for music that expresses the spontaneity of the moment has long been a feature of his career. Nevertheless, the album contains some songs that remain a staple of his live shows, most notably "The Loner."

Neil Young - UK Single 1969

For his next album, Young recruited three musicians from a band called The Rockets: Danny Whitten on guitar, Billy Talbot on bass guitar, and Ralph Molina on drums. These three took the name Crazy Horse (after the historical figure of the same name), and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (May 1969), is credited to "Neil Young with Crazy Horse." Recorded in just two weeks, the album opens with one of Young's most familiar songs, "Cinnamon Girl," and is dominated by two more, "Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Down by the River," that feature lengthy jams showcasing Young's idiosyncratic guitar soloing accompanied sympathetically by Crazy Horse. Young reportedly wrote all three songs on the same day, while nursing a high fever of 103 °F (39 °C) in bed.

Shortly after the release of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Young reunited with Stephen Stills by joining Crosby, Stills, & Nash, who had already released one album as a trio. Young was originally offered a position as a sideman, but agreed to join only if he received full membership, and the group – winners of the 1969 "Best New Artist" Grammy Award – was renamed Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The quartet debuted in Chicago on August 16, 1969, and later performed at the famous Woodstock Festival, during which Young skipped the acoustic set and refused to be filmed during the electric set, even telling the cameramen: "One of you fuckin' guys comes near me and I'm gonna fuckin' hit you with my guitar". During the making of their first album, Déjà Vu, the musicians frequently argued, particularly Young and Stills, who both fought for control. Stills continued throughout their lifelong relationship to criticize Young, saying that he "wanted to play folk music in a rock band." Despite the tension, Young's tenure with CSN&Y coincided with the band's most creative and successful period, and greatly contributed to his subsequent success as a solo artist.

Neil Young - US Promo Single 1969

"Ohio" was written following the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970, and was a staple of anti-war rallies in the 1970s. The song was quickly recorded by CSN&Y and immediately released as a single, even though CSN&Y's "Teach Your Children" was still climbing the singles charts. In the late 1970s and for much of the 1980s, Young refrained from performing "Ohio" live, as he considered the song to be dated. In the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Young revived the song in concert, often dedicating it to the Chinese students who were killed in the massacre. Crosby, Stills & Nash, as a trio, also returned the song to their live repertoire around the same time, even though Young had provided the lead vocals on the original recording.

AFTER THE GOLD RUSH, ACOUSTIC TOUR AND HARVEST (1970-1972):
Later in the year, Young released his third solo album, After the Gold Rush (1970), which featured, among others, a young Nils Lofgren, Stephen Stills, and CSNY bassist Greg Reeves. Young also recorded some tracks with Crazy Horse, but dismissed them early in the sessions. The eventual recording was less amplified than Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, with a wider range of sounds. Young's newfound fame with CSNY made the album his commercial breakthrough as a solo artist, and it contains some of his best known work, including "Tell Me Why" and "Don't Let It Bring You Down," the country-influenced singles "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "When You Dance," and the title track, played on piano, with dream-like lyrics that ran a gamut of subjects from drugs and interpersonal relationships to environmental concerns. Young’s bitter condemnation of racism in the heavy blues rock song "Southern Man" (along with a later song entitled "Alabama") was also controversial with southerners in an era of desegregation, prompting Lynyrd Skynyrd to decry Young by name in the lyrics to their hit "Sweet Home Alabama". However, Young said he was a fan of Skynyrd's music, and the band's front man Ronnie Van Zant was later photographed wearing a Tonight's the Night T-shirt on the cover of an album.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Advertise Billboard Magazine 1970

In the autumn of 1970, Young began a solo acoustic tour of North America, during which he played a variety of his Buffalo Springfield and CSNY songs on guitar and piano, along with material from his solo albums and a number of new songs. Some songs premiered by Young on the tour, like "Journey through the Past", would never find a home on a studio album, while other songs, like "See the Sky About to Rain", would only be released in coming years. With CSNY splitting up and Crazy Horse having signed their own record deal, Young's tour, now entitled "Journey Through the Past", continued into early 1971, and its focus shifted more to newer songs he had been writing; he famously remarked that having written so many, he could not think of anything to do but play them. Many gigs were sold out, including concerts at Carnegie Hall and a pair of acclaimed hometown shows at Toronto's Massey Hall, which were taped for a planned live album. The show became legendary among Young fans, and the recordings were officially released nearly 40 years later as an official bootleg in Young's Archive series.

Near the end of his tour, Young performed one of the new acoustic songs on the Johnny Cash on Campus TV show. "The Needle and the Damage Done", a somber lament on the pain caused by heroin addiction, had been inspired in part by the heavy heroin use of Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten, who eventually died of an overdose. While in Nashville for the Cash taping, Young made a sudden connection with a new group of country-music session musicians, whom he christened The Stray Gators, and began playing with them; Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor also began to work with the group.

The Rockets (Crazy Horse) - Front Cover (1968)

Against the advice of his producer David Briggs, he scrapped plans for the imminent release of the live acoustic recording and quickly recorded much of his new material with the Stray Gators in Nashville, later adding two recordings made with an orchestra in London. The result was Young's fourth album, Harvest (1972), which would prove to be a massive hit. The only remnant left of the original concept was the album's live acoustic performance of the harrowing "Needle."

Young's more settled personal life was reflected in the rest of the Harvest album's mellow, pastoral tone. After his success with CSNY, Young had been able to purchase a ranch in rural Northern California (where he has lived since), writing the song "Old Man" in honor of the land's longtime caretaker, Louis Avila. On September 8, 1972, the actress Carrie Snodgress, with whom he had been living, gave birth to Neil Young's first child. (The boy, Zeke, was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy.) Young fell in love with Snodgress after seeing her in a movie, Diary of a Mad Housewife; Young wrote about this experience in the song "A Man Needs a Maid". (Snodgress sued Young in 1983 for child support and was awarded $10,000 per month and $300,000 on a home for mother and child.) Originally, for example in his Massey Hall concert, Young had played a fragment of another new song, "Heart of Gold," as part of "A Man Needs a Maid," but eventually, he separated the songs. "Heart of Gold," now played on guitar and harmonica, was released as the first single from Harvest, became a US number one single and remains the only No. 1 hit in his long career. "Old Man" was also immensely popular.

Neil Young With Crazy Horse - UK Promo Single 1970

The album's recording had been almost accidental. Its mainstream success caught Young off guard, and his first instinct was to back away from stardom. In the Decade compilation, Young chose to include his greatest hits from the period, but his handwritten liner notes famously described "Heart of Gold" as the song that "put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."

THE ROCKETS (Crazy Horse):
Crazy Horse is a rock band best known for its long association with Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young, despite having released five albums of its own over a 19-year span. It has been co-credited with Young as Neil Young and Crazy Horse on 13 albums, from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) to Live at the Fillmore East (2006), and has made contributions to an additional 10 albums by the singer, including his three compilations.

The band began in 1962 as the doo wop group Danny & the Memories, with guitarist/singer Danny Whitten, and counting future Crazy Horse stalwarts Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina as members, the latter two are the only individuals present in every incarnation of the band. The group evolved through nascent San Francisco folk-psychedelia, eventually ending up in Los Angeles and becoming The Rockets by 1966 with Whitten on guitar, Talbot on bass, and Molina on drums, along with Bobby Notkoff on violin and guitarist brothers Leon Whitsell and George Whitsell, who played on the Rockets' only album, a self-titled set in 1968.

Neil Young With Crazy Horse - US Promo Single 1969

During that year, Whitten had encountered Young, recently departed for good from Buffalo Springfield, playing gigs at the famed sixties Whisky a Go Go club in L.A. Young jammed with the Rockets on several occasions, and asked Whitten, Talbot and Molina to back him up for his second solo album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, which included "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand", all distinctive guitar work-outs that would be vastly influential on alternative and grunge bands in the 1980s and 1990s, and remain staples of Young's concert sets to this day. The trio broke up the Rockets and formed Crazy Horse in 1969 as a permanent unit, touring with Young in early 1970. This tour would be featured on the 2006 album Live at the Fillmore East.

Young accepted an invitation to join Crosby, Stills & Nash, but used Crazy Horse on his third solo album After the Gold Rush, the band riding the coattails of Young's high visibility as a result of his recent projects. Most of the band (except Molina) were dismissed early in the album sessions, and ended up playing on only three tracks.

With Young experiencing health problems and committed to other projects from late 1970 through most of 1971, Crazy Horse capitalized on its new-found fame and signed its own recording contract, releasing two albums on Young's label, Reprise Records. Adding producer/keyboardist Jack Nitzsche and guitarist Nils Lofgren as semi-permanent members, whom the band met while recording After the Gold Rush, this quintet recorded its eponymous debut album, which arrived in stores in early 1971. The album contained many strong compositions, the highlight being a song by Whitten that received several cover versions, "I Don't Want to Talk About It," most prominently that by Rod Stewart on his Atlantic Crossing album of 1975. Also in 1971, the core band with Young recorded in a support capacity for Buffy Sainte Marie, appearing on her She Used to Wanna Be A Ballerina album. [AMG]

"Danny By The River"
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
February 25th 1970
Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio

* Neil Young - vocals, guitar 
* Danny Whitten - guitar, vocals 
* Billy Talbot - bass, vocals 
* Ralph Molina - drums, vocals 
* Jack Nitzsche - electric piano

Disc 1
01. On the Way Home  03:38 
02. Broken Arrow  05:48 
03. I Am a Child  03:43 
04. Helpless  06:01 
05. Dance, Dance, Dance  03:30 
06. Sugar Mountain  06:03 
07. Don't Let It Bring You Down  02:27 
08. The Old Laughing Lady  05:36 

Disc 2
01. The Loner  05:28 
02. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere  04:23 
03. Winterlong  05:21 
04. Come on Baby, Let's Go Downtown  04:36 
05. Wonderin'  03:44 
06. It Might Have Been  06:10 
07. Down by the River  19:40 
08. Cinnamon Girl  04:43 
09. Outro  02:23

Runtime: 1hr 33mins

Part 1: Link
Part 2: Link
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