Side A: 
01 American Analog Set: The Fun of Watching Fireworks (1996)*
02 William Tyler: Time Indefinite (2025)
03 Eiko Ishibashi: Antigone (2025)
04 Henriksen / Seim / Jormin / Ounaskari: Arcanum  (2025)  
05 Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe: Luminal (2025)

Side B:
06 Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe: Lateral
07 Don Cherry:  Relativity Suite (1971)
08 Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari: Journey to Nabta Playa (2025)
09 Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas: Totality (2025) 
10 Shit and Shine: Mannheim Hbf

(first cut, but remember, the last cut is the deepest)**

** more contenders for airplay at the end of May:
– Bennie Maupin: The Jewel In The Lotus (1973)
– Ensemble Modern / Jan Bang: With These Hands (2025)
– Shit and Shine: Mannheim Hbf (2025, the band an old favourite of Ian McCartney)
– Andy Summers & Robert Fripp: The Complete Recordings
– Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Gift Songs
– Tangerine Dream: Phaedra (boxset 2025 edition) ***

*** „… wenn Du die 6-CD-Box meinst: Ich glaube, das meiste davon war schon in der Hades-Box enthalten, mit Ausnahme der Surround-Mixes. Phaedra ist ja damals parallel zu Autobahn erschienen und war auch annähernd so wichtig, einfach, weil sowas vorher noch keiner gemacht hatte. Ich kann mich noch gut an so einige wütende Kritiken von damals erinnern — das ist doch keine Rockmusik mehr, was sind denn das für Idioten, das hört sich an wie Matsch auf dem Grund des Ozeans, usw. Aber dann ging die LP plötzlich an die Spitze der englischen Charts, und sie hat schon ihre Spuren hinterlasen. Aber ich muss die jetzt nicht in etlichen anderen Abmischungen haben, mir genügt im Prinzip das Original. (…) (aus einer Mail von Jan Reetze)

Quite incredible, but true, the following story! In the spring of 1983, a man named Randall Wulff (aka Lewis) turned up at the Music Lab Studio in Los Angeles with a white Mercedes convertible, an attractive girlfriend, perfectly styled hair, and a (succinctly put) handful of ethereal synth-pop-folk songs. Wulff commissioned photographer Ed Colver, best known for documenting the West Coast punk scene, to shoot the stark monochrome album cover. By the time Colver realised that the cheque had bounced, Wulff had already disappeared. There were rumours that he had gone to Las Vegas or possibly Hawaii, but most likely he had returned to Alberta, Canada, where a quarter of a century later a vinyl collector named Jon Murphy found a copy of ‘L’Amour’ at a flea market. Private pressing.

What a strange round of songs! If you find sounds that are constantly moving close to their own dissolution exciting. ‘The closer you listen, the more unsettling – and yet enticing – it all sounds.’ Randall Wulff had painted his masterpiece when it came to disappearance and submersion. If David Lynch had heard this album back then, he would have transported one or two songs from it into the Twin Peaks soundtrack. And Angelo wouldn’t have complained. Neither would Julee Cruise. Light in the Attic made the album available years back. By now, „L‘Amour“has turned into a nearly buried treasure again.

And, what made me, in the first place, return to the unabashed romantic songs – „romantic“ with a twist – by Lewis, or Jan Bang‘s „Reading The Air“? A guy named Chris Duncan who‘ll be joining the artists of PUNKT 2025! Of course it was Jan Bang who discovered him. We changed a few mails in regards to that rare breed of uninhibited romanticism with a decent quantum of blue & noir. I highly recommended Jessica Pratt‘s opus, „Here In The Pitch“.

The new program – HERE – is full of highlights, amongst them the première of „After The Wildfire“, a new spoken word-project by Erik Honoré, Trygve Seim’s „Different Rivers“ (25 years after its ECM release, followed by an unforgettabele review of Konrad Heidkamp in „Die Zeit“), Jon Balke presenting „Skrifum“ live on stage – and Chris Duncan!

01 Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke: Tall Tales  
02 William Tyler: Time Indefinite 
03 Eiko Isibashi: Antigone  
04 Bennie Maupin: The Jewel In The Lotus (1974)  
05 Amelia Barrett & Bryan Ferry: Loose Talk
06 Haruomi Hosono: Medicine Compilation (1997)
07 Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe: Luminal  
08 Don Cherry: The Relativity Suite (1971)
09 Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari: Journey to Nabta Playa  
10 Henriksen / Seim / Jormin / Ounaskari: Arcanum
11 Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas: Totality
12 Keith Jarrett: New Vienna

IN December 1975, Neil Young and Crazy Horse pitched up unannounced at a bunch of small bars and roadhouses along the California coast – rough and ready joints like Boots And Saddle in La Honda, the Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati and the Marshall Tavern in Marshall (population: 50). In contrast to Young’s previous stadium tour of 1974 as part of CSNY, this outing was very different. 

Christened the Northern California Coastal Bar Tour – or the Rolling Zuma Tour: a wry nod to the Dylan charabanc trekking round the opposite coast during the same period – it was designed as a low-key introduction to a new-look Crazy Horse and their first album together: Zuma. “I hope we’re not too loud,” Young goofed with the Cotati crowd before leading the Horse through a joyous rendition of “Don’t Cry No Tears”. After grappling with stardom, loss and guilt for the first half of the decade, it seemed that a reinvigorated Young had finally left the Ditch behind him. “Those were some of the finest, most alive days of my life,” he confirmed in his Waging Heavy Peace memoir.

But the Ditch wasn’t the only thing Young was escaping. A planned CSNY album, ‘Human Highway’, had ground to a halt, mired in tensions and disagreements; he had also recently split up with actress Carrie Snodgress. Young, then, threw himself into recording, enjoying a welcome reunion with producer David Briggs, a fresh start for Crazy Horse and a cocaine-heavy party vibe for all at Briggs’ Malibu rental. There were fun cameos – Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart both stopped by – but the real work took place in Briggs’ back bedroom. There, over a barrage of freshly written songs, Crazy Horse connected with new recruit Frank “Poncho” Sampedro, replacing rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten who had died in 1972. While Sampedro went on to become Young’s co-conspirator across multiple projects, Zuma offered ample evidence for how swiftly he fitted in, not least the guitar duels on “Danger Bird” and “Cortez The Killer” that helped define Crazy Horse 2.0.

But jams were only part of the story. When Zuma was released on November 10, 1975, it revealed a set of songs that was inspired, even by Young’s lofty standards during that decade – from chiming country-rock opener “Don’t Cry No Tears” to the folky “Pardon My Heart” and CSNY’s lambent closer “Through My Sails”. This new music was joyous and defiant, with Young coaxing howls of feedback from a returning Old Black, while James Mazzeo’s wild sleeve illustration further signalled a shift from the darkness and heavy symbolism of the Ditch-era jackets. Following the hijinks of the Northern California Bar Tour, Young and Crazy Horse headed out on their fabled tour of Japan and Europe, reconvening again after the Stills-Young debacle for a triumphant American run in late 1976.

In the 50 years since its release, Zuma’s reputation has continued to flourish. Coming in the middle of Young’s fecund mid-’70s – whose scope only finally became apparent with the release of Archives II in 2020 – the lean and catchy Zuma was both a coda to the Ditch and a preface for the rest of Young’s career, with its many confounding changes in style and sound.

“The party never ended,” Sampedro told Uncut in 2019. “It seemed like it was out of control, but it wasn’t. When we got in the groove and we had adrenaline and energy, we could really put out some great music. The hair would go up on the back of our necks and we’d kick out another three songs…”

Ich versuche Ruhe zu bewahren, denn die zeitliche Abfolge bringt, will man sie erzwingen, Kalenderblätter der Erinnerung leicht durcheinander. Ich war verliebt, verlobt, und die Frage der Hochzeit eine Frage von ein, zwei Sommern, aber dann kam alles anders. Wir planten unsere Verlobungsreise klassisch, Norditalien, Padua, Venedig, und noch eine Stadt in der Gegend, die mir gerade nicht in den Sinn kommt. Unterwegs, unter dunklem Schatten, gab es manch reine Freude, ein Schallplattenladen wie im Traum (in Padua, glaube ich), mit unzähligen Sun Ra-Alben. Und Momente ungebrochener Schönheit, etwa als wir Venedig erblickten, und ich nach einer Gondel Ausschau hielt. Oder der Strand an einem beliebten See, mit der seit meiner Kindheit geliebten Musik aus Wasser und Stimmen.

SIDE 1 

1 DON’T CRY NO TEARS

Zuma opens with joyous, chiming guitars, heralding a new lineup for his doughty lieutenants and his emergence from the darkness of the Ditch…

ALAN SPARHAWK: Pulling a few parts from a song called “I Wonder” that he’d written as a teenager, Neil Young and Crazy Horse kick off the record with this tight electric strummer. After losing Danny Whitten three years prior, this would be the world’s introduction to Frank Sampedro on guitar. The new lineup became the foundational combo that went on to decades of recordings and legendary live shows. The arrangement is very simple – drums, bass and two electric guitars, barrelling into the horizon – but it’s a pop gem, a stomping melodic ringer with vocal harmonies that attest to the fact that the rhythm section, Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot, originally started together performing as a doo-wop group. Three-part harmony is a secret and beautiful weapon. I’ve played this song in a Neil & Crazy Horse tribute band from where I live [Tired Eyes]. I love the opening Aadd9 to A riff in the intro, I love singing the vocal harmonies on the chorus hook and I love hearing Rich [Mattson] hit the big, dirty, country-tinged guitar solo. It’s not the first or last layered ‘(I’m hurt, but) I don’t want to hear about how I hurt you’ song from Neil, but this seems especially pointed, in the wake of the recent breakup of his relationship with Carrie Snodgress. There would be more pointed, expansive and iconic tracks later in the album, but this is perhaps the song that most adeptly strikes the balance between loose/fuzzy and focused/funky. It is the arrival of a band that would anchor an era and influence generations.

2 DANGER BIRD

Young unleashes “Old Black”, creating a guitar sound so potent it made Lou Reed cry every time he heard the song…

KURT VILE: I remember when I first heard “Danger Bird” in my early twenties. At the end there’s a part where the band sings along, then he jams. You think the song is over but then he does that Neil thing and comes back for another verse, he goes to that same change, but this time there are no vocals. He hits a descending chord then digs in one last time with that crazy lick that just pokes through the speakers. Me and my friend just looked at each other. It still hits me every time. He is lost in his guitar. Lou Reed was in love with that guitar tone and it feels like the first time Neil got that sound in the studio, maybe piggy-backing two amps together and getting that really distorted, crunchy reverb sound. It symbolises Zuma. I’m not sure he found it again until Rust Never Sleeps.

He often has bookends. In this case it’s the second track and the second-to-last. He’s not messing around – there’s a catchy song to start then he introduces the vibe with “Danger Bird”. It’s structured a bit like the first album with Crazy Horse or On The Beach, with these longer tracks that are more like mantras. “Danger Bird” is a looser version of that. I know that I could make out all the words if I wanted, but you can let it wash over you, just like that Danger Bird does in the sky. “Danger Bird” stands for Zuma. You address that first. It’s something new but with those elements that already existed and living a life we can only dream of.

3 PARDON MY HEART

Written immediately after his split from Carrie Snodgress, Neil previewed this vulnerable acoustic hymn at New York’s Bottom Line in May 1974: “It’s one of the saddest love songs I’ve ever heard.”

SARABETH TUCEK:I clearly remember the first time I listened to Zuma. I was in Oakland, recording my first demos with a friend in his home studio. I’d heard several of the songs, but never the whole thing in one sitting. I was nervous recording, so I made a rookie mistake and drank too much whiskey and fell off my stool while doing my vocals. My friend said I needed to relax, that I needed to listen to Zuma alone while laying on the floor. So I laid down, he dropped the needle, left the room and I left Planet Earth.

“Pardon My Heart” is really good at expressing that time in a relationship when you kind of know it’s over, but you reflect back to better times and it’s just this painful back and forth. The lines that kill me are: “It’s a sad communication/With little reason to believe/When one isn’t giving/And one pretends to receive”. It captures that inner tussle and wondering if you both are just going through the motions. I read Neil Young has only played it live twice. From the title, I feel that maybe he’s embarrassed about expressing these feelings. Like, ‘Excuse me for doing this, but I have to tell you.’ It’s a simple love song that describes something very complex. It’s the poetry you make from a deep conversation with yourself. It’s the getting ready to say goodbye. It’s true and beautiful and I’m grateful for its words. Good songs help.

4 LOOKIN’ FOR A LOVE

After the Zuma Beach sessions, Young and the Horse decamped to his Broken Arrow ranch. This late addition to the album was recorded after Young underwent throat surgery and finds him cautiously optimistic, reflected in its sunnier country-rock outlook.

EVAN DANDO: The Stones had that three-album run of Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers, and I think Neil Young was kind of like that with On The Beach, Tonight’s The Night and Zuma. For me,it’s a really similar phase of time in his career. “Lookin’ For A Love” is just beautiful. He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. He’s not worried about being goofy and fucked up and weird. That’s what’s awesome about him. He doesn’t give a shit, man. “Lookin’ For A Love” is like a hymn, it’s all the notes you want to hear. The part where he goes [sings]: “Where the sun hits the water/And the mountains meet the sand/There’s a beach that I walk along sometimes/And maybe there I’ll meet her/And we’ll start to say hello/And never stop to think of any other time”. It’s like a really wonderful melody in its normalness. And there’s something about those electric guitar arpeggios, they’re so even and perfect to time.

“For me, Crazy Horse are like the definitive garage band”

EVAN DANDO

My favourite part is the fadeout, where he’s like [sings]: “When she starts to see the darker side of me”. It’s all just falsetto at the end. It’s a perfect recording – beautiful, fragile and really shattering. For me, Crazy Horse are like the definitive garage band. More than anything, I would just love to be in that band. They’re doing something so simple, but it’s also fucking transcendent and archetypal. I’m so envious. No-one records like Neil Young.

5 BARSTOOL BLUES

A woozy yarn written after a day of drinking – “I woke up and I went, ‘Fuck!’ I couldn’t remember writing it…”

MJ LENDERMAN: I read [Jimmy McDonough’s biography] Shakey and loved the story about Zuma and “Barstool Blues”. There was a lot of cocaine and alcohol involved. They recorded in this house in Malibu in a very small room and I don’t know how they managed to get the record to sound so good, being so loud in such a tight space. “Barstool Blues” is a pretty simple, straightforward song, but the thing I really like about it is, it’s a bit nerdy. A normal blues would be played on three chords, the 1 chord, the 4 chord and the 5 chord. This song goes 5, 4, 1 on the verses, but where the 4 is supposed to be they substitute a minor 2, which I feel pulls on the heart a lot more. It’s that additional emotion in the music that always got me.

I always picture this one as a bar scene. Maybe he’s there in Malibu around all these famous women and he pictures an ageing superstar sitting in the bar reading the tabloids and celebrity magazines and thinking about the people in the pages. It seemed like a weird time for Neil, post-Carrie. He was in Malibu with piles of coke, lots of women in bikinis coming off the beach. He’d been through the CSNY tour and seemed to have this real distaste for Hollywood and celebrity. This era is my Neil sweet spot, the stretch from On The Beach and into American Stars ’n Bars plus Homegrown, which never came out at the time and is awesome.”

SIDE 2 

1 STUPID GIRL

Unflinchingly raw and arguably the cruellest song in Young’s canon (“ You’re just a stupid girl/You really got a lot to learn ”), cut with Crazy Horse at 4am. “We were all messed up,” he confided later.

CHRIS FORSYTH: I’ll start by noting that I’m of the belief that Neil Young is an artist who has limited ability, or inclination, to evaluate his own material – he just channels it, puts it out, and moves on. The upshot of this dynamic is that Neil’s work, for better or worse, can be unfiltered to the point of being erratic. “Stupid Girl” certainly seems to be a case in point. Unlike the Stones’ song of the same name, there’s no campy wink in the delivery, just pure venom.

Whereas Jagger often seemed to ratchet up his misogyny as a calculated, trolling provocation, Neil’s scorn for his subject feels palpably, bitterly, crudely sincere. He really means it. The lyrics on the page are mean-spirited enough; however, I think it’s actually the vocal take itself that pins the discomfort needle in the red. But then again, much of Neil’s work, especially the Ditch-era stuff, is a musical manifestation of the darkness, decadence, and discomfort of the times, and “Stupid Girl” is not here to make anyone feel good. Neil doesn’t even sound like he’s enjoying it, exactly.

Considering Neil Young’s status as a rich, indulged player in the fast and loose ’70s, it’s easy to read “Stupid Girl” as an asshole rock star’s callous dismissal of a woman on the losing end of the grossly imbalanced backstage sexual power dynamic. It’s not pretty. But if you listen to Neil Young precisely for his lack of filter, this is as raw as it gets. And he’s not pretending otherwise.

2 DRIVE BACK

Young and Poncho Sampedro lock in to clamorous effect, complete with splenetic lyric: “ Drive back to your old town/I wanna wake up with no-one around ”.

STEVE WYNN, THE DREAM SYNDICATE: I was 15 years old when Zuma came out. I’d been listening daily to Tonight’s The Night, which had come out six months earlier and turned my head around, changing my entire idea of what kind of singing, playing, chemistry and sounds were possible on a record – my first brush with the notion that things didn’t always have to be technically good, ideally realised, well crafted, to be effective. This album almost felt like a disappointment in how easy it went down. But sometimes easy is good. And… that tone.

Zuma is the record where Neil Young and Crazy Horse found their sound, their essence, their tone. Sure, Neil had flirted with the crunch and ooze that two guitars could conjure up previously on songs like “Cinnamon Girl” and “Southern Man”, but it was Zuma where he brought Frank Sampedro on board and they found that sound. You know it when you hear it. It’s the Crazy Horse sound – the one he pretty much stuck with year after year right to the point where I saw them play what will likely be one of their last shows last summer in Forest Hills.

“They found that sound. You know it when you hear it… that primordial ooze”

STEVE WYNN

You could take “Drive Back” and put it pretty much on any Crazy Horse album that followed and it would fit right in. This is the song, more than any other on the album, that digs deep, hunkers down and gets that primordial ooze that bands have tried to get ever since. But nobody can do it like they could.

3 CORTEZ THE KILLER

Astonishingly, the first song Young and the Horse recorded for Zuma – on May 22, 1975 – this sweeping, phantasmagorical epic was later banned (according to Young) by General Franco. A missing verse – lost during a powercut at Briggs’ rental – was unexpectedly reinstated by Young on the Horse’s truncated 2024 tour…

BLAKE MILLS: “Cortez…” starts with this elongated instrumental stretch and a chord progression that keeps cycling without ever resolving. What that creates for me is this sense of a song that never comes home. The vocal melody does the same live orig “Th an a unr Yo a so doo Jan to r mo Ho aft fro its thing, it never quite arrives or peaks in the way you might expect. So this is a piece of music that never comes home and it’s a story of people being robbed of their home, or at least this idealised version of what home was like before somebody came and fucked it all up. As a song, it is such a good document of that thing they do as Crazy Horse. Their strengths do not rely on flawless execution. It’s more like Charlie Chaplin cat-walking across a roof and miraculously not falling off.

Neil was part of an extremely political generation of musicians who were writing these songs protesting the world they were seeing. They were young and pissed off. “Cortez…” feels like part of that tradition of commenting about injustice as a source of inspiration. The other interesting thing he does is the final verse, where he suddenly breaks the history lesson and personalises it in a way that leave a question – what time period is he singing from? He suddenly weaves the narrator in, in a way that makes the whole thing feel less academic and historical. You get no real sense of the character who sings the song until that very last verse, when he swoops in like David Attenborough.

4 THROUGH MY SAILS

Recorded with Crosby, Stills and Nash at Young’s Broken Arrow ranch prior to their 1974 tour, Zuma ’s closer finds sustenance in warm, pristine harmonies, sparse acoustic backing and the leisurely echo of congas. “ It feels like I’m gone… ”

STEVE GUNN: “There are so many different layers to Zuma. It seems like a departure, the end of a relationship and his whole CSNY life. “Through My Sails” is such an emotional and vulnerable song and I think there’s a pattern of his where he’d find something very appropriate that might not be from that session and use it to end the record. He does the same on American Stars ’n Bars with “Will To Love”. I think he is more careful about the sequencing than you might think. There’s a lot of subtlety there.

This was originally a CSNY tune and probably one they rejected as it’s so Neil. You can hear their harmonies, but it has Neil’s very dreamlike quality. There was always tension with that group and Neil was always the outsider, so I think he put this song here to close that chapter because the machine of that supergroup was taking him in a direction he didn’t want to go.

I came to Neil through grunge and as I learnt more about his life and the way he approached music and celebrity, I found it so interesting. The albums around this time are so rich, with this meditative atmosphere. There is something particularly fractured and delicate about this. I know I picked the one with hardly any guitar and a lot of the other heavier songs are amazing, but I feel this is the perfect way to end a record. It’s mysterious, loose and it feels very poignant.

UNCUT: What was Neil’s mood going into Zuma following the break-up with Carrie and the CSNY ‘Doom’ tour?

BILLY TALBOT: My main memory of Zuma is being in Malibu in some bar having a beer with Neil and talking about how he was happy that we were going to do some recording. He was happy about that, and that’s all he was thinking about. I don’t think he was thinking much about Crosby, Stills & Nash at that point. He was past that. Neil is always moving forward. As for Carrie, it wasn’t spoken. It was like any other gang. You don’t speak about things when you are trying to get past them – you try to have a good time, but you don’t moan and groan because that’s not how to get past things. If you do any moaning and groaning, you do it by yourself. 

What was it about Poncho that made you think he’d work for Crazy Horse?

He had a simple new attitude towards music. He wasn’t somebody who had been playing music with everybody always telling him how great he was or anything like that. He always loved the music, he loved playing and he loved making music. He wasn’t trying to be a star in any way. He wasn’t not trying to be a star, he just wasn’t thinking in that way and that’s what I liked. So I asked him to come and join us somehow. He came to my house, we played together a bit, then I invited Ralph and Neil down and we all played and it was fun. That’s all we could ask for, as Danny had passed.

Was there a point where you realised this was the new Crazy Horse?

We didn’t talk about this being Crazy Horse, it all just happened. Neil went to Chicago and invited all three of us to join him – me and Ralph and Poncho. I said we should bring him as it would work, and we did and it did – it worked. When the record [Zuma] was released eventually, we called it Neil Young And Crazy Horse, but we weren’t thinking about that at the moment. We were just trying to get back on track. Danny passing was a real blow. That was what we’d been doing for years. Ralph and Danny and I had been traipsing around as a vocal group, then decided to start playing instruments. Then we got together with Neil and just as we were really getting into it, Danny passed. It was a disruption to this whole force that had been moving forward, so we had to regroup and find our way. We did, fortunately. I guess it was in the cards. It just gelled – but like anything that comes together, it was one of those things. 

How did Poncho change the sound of Crazy Horse?

Poncho is another person, so it’s bound to be different. That’s how it is in life. Each one of us is unique. Especially in a group when you have three or four guys. Danny was one person, he was himself and he’d been great with us, and now he was gone and Poncho came into the picture and he was also himself. If there was any change to the Horse that was it, the new element. 

Tell me about the vibe at Briggs’ beach house – it sounds quite wild?

It might sound wild and at times it might have been a little wild, but we were more interested in the music because Neil was taking us in that direction. He really wanted to do what he wanted to do – and he wanted us to do it with him. He didn’t lose sight of that picture and what he wanted to create. He kept the partying to a minimum, so I don’t know where these stories all came from. 

Who else was around the house during the sessions?

James “Sandy” Mazzeo was there, he did the cover. He was in the house with me and Ralph and Poncho and two or three others. We were staying on the beach in Malibu, you can’t complain about that. The weather wasn’t the best, it was foggy in the morning, but I was a young man away from my family and all these things taken together are kind of like a formula for adventure and it all shows up in the music. 

How did you get such a good sound from the small room you recorded in?

When we record with Neil, we don’t think about leakage that much. What we wanted to do on Zuma was play together in the same room and whoever was engineering had to find a way to record that. We played together as a band and it’s better for any band to play in the same room than separately. 

“It just gelled”: Frank Sampedro (right) with Young and Billy Talbot in Copenhagen, March 16, 1976

Visitors: Bob Dylan; (below) Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland

Why a house?

When you go into a studio, you are there for one reason – to record. That immediately puts a mood on it. When you are in a house, you aren’t thinking the same. You set up and you play and that’s the best thing for a musician to be thinking. Not that you’re about to record, but that you’re about to play. That was good for Crazy Horse. Neil could go into the studio with CSNY and big-time producers with reputations, he could handle that – but it affected Crazy Horse in a detrimental way. Music is music, and once it’s released you can listen to it and it doesn’t matter if it was recorded in a house or a studio. But in the house, we could be ourselves. 

“It’s better for any band to play in the same room” 

BILLY TALBOT

How about the individual songs?

I really remember “Cortez…” because we were doing it and the power went out. We kept playing because we didn’t realise the power was out – it was working in our room, it was in the other room where they were recording. The power came back on and we were still playing. It went off about halfway through the song and came back for the last two-thirds. We then stuck it all together but there was always this missing verse. Then when we did the last tour, Neil reintroduced it. That was the first time I’d heard it since Malibu. I don’t know how he found it, but somehow he did. We played it live and it’s back in the song. 

Was Neil working out some of his issues with the break-up on songs like “Stupid Girl” and “Barstool Blues”?

“Barstool Blues” maybe, but not “Stupid Girl”. I think “Stupid Girl” was just an interesting idea for a song and he was having fun with that one. “Barstool Blues” was definitely a reflection of that time, being in a bar alone or maybe with your mates and basically thinking about not being with your woman any more. That’s a state that a person finds themself in in certain circumstances.

GIJSBERT HANEKROOT/REDFERNS; VINCE MAGGIORA/SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE VIA GETTY IMAGES; HELMUT REISS/UNITED ARCHIVES VIA GETTY IMAGES 

Do you remember Bob Dylan popping in?

I remember Bob popping in and then popping out. He jammed on a song or two and I did my best without knowing what the song was or anything about it. With Neil we would discuss the changes. We might play simply, but we’d know the changes and that’s important. Bob didn’t tell us the changes, so I am sure it was a unique experience for him as well as for us. 

How about Rod Stewart?

He was interested in seeing if Neil had a song he could do. So Neil played one of our tracks to him and because he wasn’t interested in Rod Stewart doing a cover of his, he played something from the record he liked but knew Rod Stewart would never do – it might have been “Drive Back”. It was a little odd, but he had a very beautiful woman with him [Britt Ekland] and that’s the main thing I remember. He then had a big hit with “I Don’t Want To Talk About It”, Danny’s song. He might have got it at that session. 

At what point did you realise you were making a record?

Whenever we recorded, we thought of it as a record that would be released, but we didn’t really think about that – it’s about what we are doing in the moment. That sort of stuff doesn’t get to me – what is going to happen to it afterwards. I am trying to concentrate on what the hell is going on, so I can put myself into whatever I am playing on the bass. 

What was the Northern California Coastal Bar Tour like?

We went to these places that were dark outside then lit up inside. People were surprised to see us. When we played it was fun, because it kept the music alive. It wasn’t like this thing you’re supposed to do because you’re up on a stage with thousands of people waiting to hear you. It was nothing like that. We played these spaces where it was a surprise we were there, so the whole feel of the performance was in a different place for everybody. I don’t think we made money playing those bars, but we had fun. 

Do you think of Zuma as a key album for the Horse?

Back in those days, it was just what we were doing. When you look back, that’s one thing, but when you are in the midst of things, you’re just trying to make sense of the moment and what’s happening. Poncho came in and it started working and that was good, that’s all we knew. We weren’t thinking beyond that. When I look back, I feel it is a really good record. What we have done every time, on Zuma or anything else, is a coming together of the band and each one is about its own time and the music that represents that time. 

INTERVIEW: PETER WATTS

Oh mit einem Zittern
Weiche lustige Sache

Euphonisch
Flüstert auf dem Boden

Platonisch
Versteckt in einer Schublade

Cool wie ein Flimmern
Blauer Wuschel
Gleitet durch diese Finger

Verbirg es
Lauf ein wenig ängstlich

Aber fühle es
Öffne dich stattdessen

Wessen Zittern
Verstrickt in der Morgendämmerung
Dieses schöne Durcheinander
Kaum noch zu halten
Vergessene Tage
Fallen weg
Von uns
Von uns

Ladet es ein
Niemals sicher zu sein

Erregt es
Es schreit nach mehr

Oh kleiner Sonnenstrahl
Gefangen in einer Wolke

Wir zittern
Verstrickt in der Dämmerung
Dieses schöne Durcheinander
Kaum aufgehängt
Vergessene Tage
Wegbrechen
Von uns
Von uns

Lass uns hier verweilen
Moosig in der Dämmerung
Diese unordentliche Liebe
Kaum festhalten
Oh schöne Tage
Weglaufen
Mit uns
Mit uns

Meine schönen Tage
Wollt ihr nicht bleiben

Easy does it, könnte eine Besprechung von „Luminal“ lauten: wenig ruft die wilden Welten von Here Come The Warm Jets oder Nerve Net in Erinnerung, oder den Power Pop der Zusammenarbeit von Eno und Hyde. Ist das nicht alles ein wenig smooth umd sentimental? Was assoziieren wir frei? Verrückte Kissenschlachten früher und später Liebe, Glückstaumel der „salad days“, ach ach ach! Ist es nicht viel leichter, das eigene Dunkel zu erkunden, mit „dark songs“ und einem „dark album“, das Spätwerke alter Meister oftmals offerieren?! Warum nur verzaubert mich dieses Songalbum mit Beaties mildrauchigem Timbre und Brians Quantum Samt so sehr?

Ein Punkt jedenfalls sind die lyrics von Beatie, die nichts ausformulieren, und, wie Impressionisten, der Flüchtigkeit der Linien und Bilder ihren seltsamen Tiefgang anvertrauen. Auch mit Reimformen wird sehr luftig gearbeitet, was die deutsche Übersetzung unterschlägt, z. B. ganz am Anfang der Hauch von Reim von „floor“ und „drawer“: Oh with a quiver / Soft funny thing  / Euphonic / Whispers on the floor / Platonic Hiding in a drawer…“ Genauestens tariert sind die Kürze der Zeilen und die Länge der Strophen: bei de drei „Siebenzeilern“ ein Hauch von Crescendo und Brians „Chor“. Zudem seine „synths“ – vintage Eno and inventive!

Es gibt zudem auf „Luminal“ keinen einzigen Wechselgesang a la „Nancy und Lee“, und das verblüfft, denn stimmlich die Zwei „a match made in heaven“. Das ist die Kunst: Understatement liefern, ohne Intensität zu opfern! Und dann diese beiden herrlichen dreisilbribigen Eigenschaftswörter „Euphonic“ und „Platonic“! Da komme ich gleich auf launige Tangenten!

Lese ich allein Beaties Texte, kommt mir sogleich die alte Lust an Lyrikinterpretationen in den Sinn, in jenem schönsten aller germanistischen Proseminare über „Konkrete Lyrik“ (Münster, 1973/74), und im legendären Englischunterricht von Dr. Egon Werlich. Hier, auf „My Lovely Days“, entfalten sich bewegte Liebestaumel mit äkustischem Gitarrengezupfel und dem simpelsten aller Melodiegaranten namens Omnichord. Kein Wunder, dass „My Lovely Days“ demnächst die zweite Singleauskoplung wird!

Aber, und das ist das grosse verblüffende Aber: stets ist ja das Träumen als Träumen präsent, als fluider Seinszustand – und im Laufe der Lieder von Luminal findet alles Dunkle seine Risse. Beiläufig, der Logik von Traumbildern, Traumsequenzen folgend. Nichts bleibt unverwundet.