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According to a post on the fansite Thrasher’s Wheat – and now confirmed by Rolling Stone, Neil Young is recording a new album with Crazy Horse. “It’s looking good,” a representative for Young says.   As per the fansite report, Neil shared the news over the weekend at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, at an event with Jonathan Demme to promote their new movie Journeys. The audience “erupted in applause” when he said that he was working with Crazy Horse again. Multiple fans subsequently posted on Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina’s Facebook wall to ask if it was true and his response was “Yes!”

Neil got on the Crazy Horse, so to speak, in 1968 after which they made beautiful music, (as it were) together on albums from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, to Rust Never Sleeps and Ragged Glory. Their last together was the 2003 album Greendale, mind you minus guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro.    

The band (with Poncho) toured with Neil back in ‘03 and ‘04,  but they haven’t played together since that tour ended making for the longest time Young has gone without performing with the group since their formation.   Mind you, the great Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina played with Young on his 2007 album Chrome Dreams II and the subsequent tour, only to be replaced by drummer Chad Cromwell in the summer of 2008.

The full line-up of Crazy Horse hasn’t backed Young on an album since Broken Arrow in 1996, though they did record an LP in 2000 called Toast that Neil opted to shelf. “It’s great rock & roll, very moody, kind of jazzy,” Young told Rolling Stone in 2008 adding, “It’s really dark. It’s got everything that the best Crazy Horse albums have had. It won’t be the most commercial Crazy Horse album ever out.”   It never came out.

In that same interview, we asked Neil if he had any desire to work with Crazy Horse again. “I’m not thinking about that right now,” he said. “We’ll just see what happens. Something might happen. You never know. Or something else we don’t even know about could happen, and that would be really good, rather than go back. But if the vibe’s right to go back and grab what’s back there and yank it into the future, that’s a big job.”

As per the recent report on Thrasher’s Wheat, Young said that he’s already recorded one album with Crazy Horse and another is in the works.  Maybe that means ‘Toast’ will finally pop?    Some say this spring could see that and/or the latest from Crazy Horse.

Then again, some of us are still waiting for the Buffalo Springfield tour that was talked about. 

Here’s hoping for lots of Neil in 2012.

Now, let’s go back.

Enjoy,

Jeff.