Neil Young & Crazy Horse Live At The Fillmore East CD

This set is the first released from Young's long awaited Archive Performance series. In 1970, Young toured with CSN&Y and released his platinum album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, after which he performed a series of shows at New York's then-new Fillmore East with his band Crazy Horse. That concert finally makes its official debut in the annals of rock history with this set, and the circle is unbroken for one of rock's greatest singer-songwriters. The DVD includes high-resolution audio of the entire album and a photo montage.

Neil Young: Neil Young; Billy Talbot (bass guitar); Danny Whitten, Jack Nitzsche, Ralph Molina.
Personnel: Neil Young (vocals, guitar); Danny Whitten (vocals, guitar); Ralph Molina (vocals, drums); Jack Nitzsche (electric piano).
Audio Mixers: Neil Young; John Nowland; Peter K. Siegel.
Recording information: The Fillmore East (03/06/1970/03/07/1973).
Neil Young's in-concert guitar prowess with Crazy Horse is well documented. LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST, recorded at a 1970 performance, nevertheless, fills a major hole in the Young legacy, containing the only live recordings of Young's legendary guitar interplay with original Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten, who died the following year. Performing songs from their most recent release, EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE, the band simultaneously digs in with a visceral, gritty gestalt, and expands outward with Young and Whitten's exploratory six-string journeys.
Of added interest to hardcore Young fans are performances of three songs that wouldn't be recorded until years later--the countrified "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown," the elegiac "Winterlong," and the lovelorn shuffle "Wonderin'." Augmenting the basic quartet of Young, Whitten, and the stalwart rhythm section of Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot is Young's once-and-future producer Jack Nitzsche on electric piano. Together the five create a thick, sprawling sonic beast that unfolds itself with undeniable gravitas over the course of this priceless set.
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Ever since he started rumbling about releasing his archives some 20, 30 years ago -- it's been so long, it's hard to keep track of the specifics -- Neil Young talked about it as a mammoth box set, or perhaps a series of box sets each chronicling a different era in his career, comprised entirely of unreleased recordings, some live, some studio. It was an eagerly anticipated set, since everybody knew that he had scores of unreleased recordings in his vaults. Not just songs, but full albums that were scrapped at the last minute. He regularly tested out new songs on tour, sometimes rewriting them later, sometimes never releasing them on album. Some of his peers had similar habits -- Bob Dylan had a similar treasure trove of unreleased recordings -- but unlike Dylan, Young took an active interest in archiving this material himself. Given the amount of unreleased tapes, some patience was in order, but as the years stretched into decades, with Neil tinkering away, changing his mind, waiting for digital sound to get out of the dark ages, it was easy to wonder if the set would ever come out. When it did, it was not with a splash, as was the official Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, which was inaugurated as a triple-disc box in 1991. No, Young eased his way into the series by releasing a single disc called Live at the Fillmore East late in 2006.
Billed as the second volume of the "Performance Series" -- clearly, the numbers are assigned chronologically in order of recording, not release -- Live at the Fillmore East is not dissimilar to the subsequent entries in Dylan's bootleg series: it focuses on a specific, significant tour in Young's past. In this case, it's Neil's 1970 tour with Crazy Horse, supporting Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, his first record with the band. This was the original lineup of Crazy Horse featuring Danny Whitten, who would die tragically of a heroin overdose a mere two years later, making this a pivotal tour in Young's hRolling Stone (p.130) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "The guitar interplay between Young and original Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten is breathtakingly sharp..."
Rolling Stone (p.110) - Ranked #2 in Rolling Stone's "The Top 10 Reissues Of 2006" -- "'Cowgirl in the Sand' is stuttering fuzz-guitar ecstasy."
Spin (p.83) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[O]n the 14-minute 'Cowgirl in the Sand,' everyone is immortal."
Entertainment Weekly (p.109) - "[The album] finds him in March 1970, transforming the twang of his second solo LP into a string-scraping squall." -- Grade: B+
Q (p.146) - "Live At The Fillmore East finds Young and Crazy Horse in fine form. As ever, Young's plaintive voice is set against the band's rolling thunder..."
CMJ (p.43) - "[T]his backwards glance features original Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten....[A] significant piece of history..."
Dirty Linen (p.43) - "[The album] rocks hard, and after almost 36 years still sounds fresh and contemporary."