Before Micah Nelson, before Nils Lofgren and before Frank “Poncho” Sampedro, there was Danny Whitten. Crazy Horse's original guitarist died more than 50 years ago, but the mark he left on Neil Young and the band lives on to this day. Just watch this clip from the recent, now-suspended tour, where Nelson sings backup on “Cinnamon Girl.” These harmonies—at once honeyed and subtle, providing just enough support without overshadowing, yet so powerful and full of potential—resonate with Whitten. It's the spirit of Crazy Horse that never really left.
“Every musician has one guy on the planet that he can play with better than anyone else,” Young once said. “You only have one man. My husband was Danny Whitten.”
Whitten died of an overdose of alcohol and Valium in November 1972. This was so long ago that it happened just a year after Jim Morrison and, remarkably, before Nick Drake and Gram Parsons. Like those artists, we usually associate Whitten with his death. His tragically short life is forever embedded in songs like “The Needle and the Damage Done,” “Don't Be Denied” and, most famously, Tonight is the night, where Young mourned the loss of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry. But Early DazeYoung's latest archival release, is a celebration of Whitten's life — before his untimely death.
Early Daze, a new Neil Young archival release, is a short record—just 10 tracks in 38 minutes—and contains no new songs, so casual fans might write it off. But it features the original Crazy Horse line-up (Young, Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, drummer Ralph Molina and keyboardist Jack Nitzsche) and is full of their magic, surprisingly even more relaxed and unfiltered than the 1969 classic. Everyone knows this is nowhere. There's “Look At All the Things,” a Whitten original as melodically dense as his heartbreaking “I do not want to talk about it“? and “Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown,” where Whitten's vocals are so eerily clear it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. If his posthumous version of “Downtown.” Tonight is the night makes it sound haunted, this shot is wildly alive, baked into the grit.
As Young diehards (or Rusties, they tell us) know, Early Daze it's been in the works for years. “I've made one Early Daze Horse record, and you can hear a different vocal on 'Cinnamon Girl' that includes more of Danny,” he wrote in his 2012 memoir Heavy Peace. “He sang the high part and had a great time. I changed it and sang the high part and took it out. That was a big mistake. i fucked I didn't know who Danny was. He was better than me. I did not see it. I was strong and maybe I helped destroy something sacred by not seeing it. He never got upset about it. It wasn't like that. I was young and maybe I didn't know what I was doing. Some things you wish never happened. But we got what we got.”
You can listen to that raw, Whitten-forward “Cinnamon Girl” here, which was originally released as a 7″ single. There's also the legendary Crazy Horse version of “Helpless,” available to the public for the first time. Young retired it and recorded again with CSNY for Deja Vu. And finally, a moment for the criminally underrated “Winterlong,” a fan favorite covered by the Pixies and eventually released by Young on Decade collection. Young has released many archival sets, but for true fans this hits as hard as any.
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