Co-opting members of a small-time Laurel Canyon bar band called The Rockets and dubbing them Crazy Horse — no one remembers why — Neil seemed to have found his spiritual brothers in guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the album they made together, and it is a record that oozes from its every groove a feeling of freedom and ancestral camaraderie. Talbot and Molina may have been rank amateurs, but together with Neil and Whitten, the band would define what jazz critic Gerit Graham once called ‘skillful simplicity,’ a machine greater than the sum of its parts creating singular music by way of alchemy. The members of Crazy Horse, however, would have to share the spotlight with Old Black, Neil’s beloved 1953 Les Paul, also making its debut on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Old Black, played through a Fender Deluxe tube amplifier at top volume, would hereafter become, like Crazy Horse, a most crucial weapon in the Neil Young arsenal. The serendipitous combination of Crazy Horse and Old Black would help to embolden Neil and allow him to musically communicate in ways in which he’d only dabbled before. During his tenure in Buffalo Springfield, he and Stephen Stills would frequently use the song “Bluebird” as a vehicle to engage in improvised, protracted guitar duels, but even these jams never approached the effusive lyricism found on masterpieces “Down By The River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” featured here. Elsewhere, the title track and “Cinnamon Girl” benefit from Whitten’s R&B and doo-wop background, which would lend Neil’s songs a funkiness they’d previously lacked; this influence would haunt Neil’s music for the rest of his career.