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Sooner or Later It All Gets Real

Zuma, The Stills-Young Band, and the Return of the Horse

When Neil Young finally emerged from the dark early seventies period that gave birth to the Ditch Trilogy, he did so with a vengeance.

The remainder of the seventies would in fact mark one of the most prolific, creatively fertile periods of his career. Young went on something of a recording tear during this period, making a series of albums that melded themselves one into another in a way that seemed more like the product of a no-stop, five-year recording session than a series of individual projects.

In addition to four new Neil Young solo albums, a collaboration with his old bandmate Stephen Stills, a three-album retrospective set, and a double live album with Crazy Horse, this insanely prolific period also produced at least three albums that were never officially released at all.

See the Colors Floating in the Sky

Homegrown, an album said to be in the commercial folk-pop vein of Young’s megahit Harvest, was shelved in favor of the rawer-sounding Tonight’s the Night (and reportedly after The Band’s Rick Danko urged Young to “go with the rawer one” after hearing the two albums back to back during a stoned get-together in a Hollywood hotel room). In subsequent interviews, Young has also said that the very personal nature of Homegrown’s songs—many of which were written in the aftermath of his breakup with Carrie Snodgress and deal directly with that very subject—cut a little too close to the bone for him to put out there for the entire world to see.

Chrome Dreams was likewise cast aside by Young at the last minute in favor of American Stars and Bars, an album that features many of the same songs intended for Chrome Dreams, as well as several more country-flavored tunes cut with backing vocals by both Emmylou Harris and a duo featuring Linda Ronstadt and Nicolette Larson dubbed the Saddlebags. In the case of both of these albums, many of the songs were eventually parceled out to other Neil Young projects ranging from American Stars and Bars and Decade to Rust Never Sleeps and Hawks and Doves.

The third unreleased album made during this rush of creative productivity was an acoustic version of the songs that eventually were released in full-band format on the album Comes a Time. When Young played the original solo acoustic version of the album for label executives, they suggested he try recording the same songs with other musicians. In a rare example of the artist letting the label influence his creative direction, Young agreed.

The unreleased acoustic album, Oceanside, Countryside, is reportedly going to finally see the light of day as part of Young’s ongoing Archives series, as are both the Homegrown and Chrome Dreams albums.

I Saw You in My Nightmares, but I’ll See You in My Dreams

In addition to the rush of creative activity, there were also significant changes in Young’s personal life. His relationship with Carrie Snodgress, which had been on the rocks for some time, finally came to an end when he dispatched his famously overbearing mother Rassy to vacate Snodgress and her things from the Broken Arrow Ranch. Young himself was also spending less time at Broken Arrow, and had rented a place in Malibu that soon became a hangout for friends, musicians, and other assorted cronies.

Foreign LP pressing of Neil Young’s Zuma.

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection

Among the wildest and craziest of the bunch was Frank “Poncho” Sampedro, a hard-drinking and drugging, skirt-chasing rogue who, even at a mere five feet eight inches tall, still cast a larger-than-life figure to any and all who came to know him.

A guitarist who at least partially taught himself to play by spending hours learning every note of Neil Young and Danny Whitten’s parts on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Sampedro was in many ways the ideal choice to fill Whitten’s spot in Crazy Horse. What Sampedro may have lacked in musical chops was more than compensated for by his balls—which were big enough to stand up to Neil Young (earning him instant respect from the mercurial rock star).

Sampedro also possessed the magnetic, firecracker type of personality that endeared him first to Billy Talbot and eventually to Ralph Molina (who was skeptical at first about Sampedro joining the Horse).

Looking for the New World in That Palace in the Sun

Sampedro’s entry into the Horse came by way of a trip to Mexico he made with Talbot, where the two of them ending up jamming together on a beach. By the time Young summoned Crazy Horse for a recording session in Chicago, Talbot brought along Sampedro and more or less initiated him as the newest member of the group.

When the Chicago sessions didn’t turn out as well as expected, Sampedro shocked the other members of Crazy Horse by going directly to Young himself and offering to leave the band (after blaming himself for the botched recordings). Young responded by saying that he thought the new guitarist had a future both with the Horse and indeed with Young himself. Sampedro has been closely associated not only with Crazy Horse, but with many of Young’s other projects and bands ever since.

Frank “Poncho” Sampedro made his official debut as the new guy in Crazy Horse on Zuma, the 1975 album that also marked Neil Young’s return to a harder rock sound more in the vein of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

Much like that album’s “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” Zuma’s two centerpieces are also vehicles that serve as a launchpad for the extended Neil Young guitar solos many fans thought he had abandoned altogether somewhere in between After the Gold Rush and Harvest. For these long-suffering fans, “Danger Bird” and especially “Cortez the Killer” represented a stunning return to ear-shredding, feedback-laden form.

The latter is also one of the many songs Young was writing at the time displaying an increasing lyrical fascination with Indian cultures (another of Neil’s notable Indian songs, “Pocahontas,” was recorded around the same time for the aborted Chrome Dreams album, but later finally surfaced on Rust Never Sleeps).

Picture sleeve single release of “Stupid Girl” backed with “Drive Back” from Zuma. “Stupid Girl” is a Neil Young original and should not be confused with the Rolling Stones song of the same name.

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection

However, not everyone was entirely pleased with Young’s lyrical romanticizing of the Aztec culture on “Cortez.”

In Spain, where Hernando Cortez is revered as the hero who conquered the Aztec Empire of Mexico for the Spaniards, the seventies regime of General Franco (yes, the same Franco Chevy Chase used to make fun of on Saturday Night Live) ordered the song banned. Certain historians of Aztec culture have also taken issue with Young’s romantic depiction of the ancient Aztecs in lyrics like “hate was just a legend, and war was never known” as being wildly inaccurate.

“Cortez the Killer” nonetheless has taken a much-deserved place as one of Neil Young’s signature rock songs, and it remains a perennial concert favorite to this day.

Zuma’s other guitar showcase of note, “Danger Bird,” hasn’t had quite the same legs as “Cortez,” but is nonetheless an equally stunning, if somewhat more underrated contender for a Neil Young and Old Black hall of fame.

Some of the lyrics could also be interpreted as a metaphor for his split with Carrie Snodgress. In the song, the danger bird makes curious references to how “you’ve been with another man” (one of the final straws that broke the back of Neil Young’s relationship with Snodgress was when he found the actress cavorting naked on a sailboat with an unsavory mutual acquaintance with the odd nickname of “Captain Crunch”). Another key line in “Danger Bird” somewhat cryptically says, “I lied to keep it kind when I left you behind.”

Elsewhere on the album, Young’s lyrics making reference to women in general (and possibly Snodgress in particular) are far less subtle.

On the song “Barstool Blues,” he sings, “He trusted in a woman and on her he made his bets/Once there was a friend of mine who died a thousand deaths.” “Pardon My Heart” contains lines that likewise may be telling, such as, “It’s a sad communication with little reason to believe/When one isn’t giving and one pretends to receive.”

And, of course, any song with a title like “Stupid Girl” (no relation to the Rolling Stones song) really requires no further explanation.

With Trunks of Memories Still to Come

With Young back playing with the Horse again, you’d think the natural next order of business would be a barnstorming tour of America. But since this is Neil Young we are talking about here, there simply wasn’t going to be anything natural at all about his next move.

After playing a handful of warm-up dates at small venues in California, Young took the Horse across the pond for triumphant arena tours of Japan and Europe. But rather than bring his favorite, and newly revitalized band back home to play American arenas, he made an abrupt about-face and left his Crazy Horse bandmates in the lurch once again. This time around, the Horse were left behind in order for Young to reunite with Stephen Stills for what became the ill-fated Stills-Young Band album and tour.

Picture sleeve for “Lookin’ for a Love” features the Zuma artwork.

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection

The sessions for the Stills-Young Band album Long May You Run in Miami should have been a wake-up call to Young, when Stills would often arrive at odd late-night hours and apparently on his own schedule. This ran completely opposite of Young’s punctual work ethic, where the artist would arrive on time or early for the sessions. After Young complained to Atlantic Records head honcho Ahmet Ertegun about this, Stills was given a “talking to” about it, and perhaps not coincidentally his next album would end up being released on another label.

At one point, David Crosby and Graham Nash were also called in to add backing vocals to the record, sparking rumors of a possible full-on CSN&Y reunion album. But in the end (and depending on who you talk to), either Stills or Young wiped the backing vocals clean from the masters—which left both Crosby and especially Nash absolutely livid. The normally classy Englishman would in fact take his anger very public, airing the dirty laundry in interviews with rock publications like Rolling Stone.

With or without the other half of CSN&Y, the resulting album was largely a dud anyway, sparking only one minor hit, the Young-written title track, a loving ode to his lamented hearse Mort.

But if the album was a disappointment, the tour itself was a disaster.

With Stills being in a particularly surly mood most of the time, and often berating the road crew with little cause, Young finally decided he’d seen enough. After playing only a handful of dates, he abruptly bolted the tour, leaving Stills holding the bag on the remaining shows and leaving his longtime friend with the now famous “Eat A Peach” note.

The note read “Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat A Peach, Neil.” Whether or not one of rock’s most famous breakup notes was inspired by the Allman Brothers album of the same name (or vice versa) is anyone’s guess.