Watch Neil Young and Crazy Horse perform ‘Down by the River’ in 1976
When Crazy Horse hit the road in 1976 in support of Zuma, Neil Young arranged for a film crew to come down to London’s Hammersmith Odean and Tokyo’s Budokan Hall to film them in action. The audio recordings captured that day became Odeon Budokan from Neil Young Archives Volume II: 1972–1976, while the video footage fell into the hands of bootleggers.
This video of Neil Young and Crazy Horse performing ‘Down by The River’ at the London gig was salvaged from one such bootleg recording, meaning the video quality leaves something to be desired. But it’s the best we’ve got until Young manages to track down and release the original copy.
Zuma marked the beginning of one of Crazy Horse’s most prolific periods. The album was recorded in the basement of producer David Brigg’s rented house in Malibu. A lot had changed since the band’s first album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The LP was their only release with original guitarist Danny Whitten, who died of a drug overdose in 1972. He was replaced by Frank Sampedro, who stayed with the group until his retirement in 2018. Sampedro wasn’t known for his technical proficiency. Indeed, at that time, Neil Young was forced to simplify his songs so that Sampedro would be able to play them.
The 1976 Zuma tour began with a series of secret shows around the San Francisco Bay Area. From December 1975, Young and the band toured Japan before heading off to Europe between March and April. They would have carried on into the summer months, too, but Young had by that time re-kindled his collaboration with Stephen Stills and was thus obligated to make up for a series of previously cancelled tour dates with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
‘Down By The River’ was the first song Crazy Horse recorded with Young – and was created during one of the band’s long jam sessions. “We were playing the song and it opened up into this long jam,” bassist Billy Talbot told Uncut in 2021. “The three of us were used to doing that and Neil just stayed there with us.” Neil and Crazy Horse wanted to record ‘Cinnamon Girl’ and ‘Down By The River’ in one fell swoop on the same day. The first track came easily, but the second proved a harder nut to crack.
“We wondered how to play it, tried it a few times, but it wasn’t working,” Talbot recalled. “We went home, and Ralph and I talked about it, and we thought it should be played more in half-time instead of double time. That decision went into shaping the song. That stretched it and gave it space to breathe.”
Watch Neil Young and Crazy Horse deliver a blistering performance of ‘Down By The River’ below.
