In the final days of 2025, the Neil Young Archives team gave fans a priceless gift: the recording of the February 25, 1970 concert in Cincinnati. This is the very first known recording of a Neil Young concert with Crazy Horse, marking the beginning of a legendary alchemy as the musician took a break from the excitement of CSNY.
The Neil Young Archives team has quietly posted a recording of Neil Young and Crazy Horse's concert at the Music Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 25, 1970, as a gift. “winter solstice” to the fan community. The tape has been circulating for years as a popular (pirate) bootleg from the mixing console, but it has never sounded so pure.
It's a remarkable 16-song set that includes the premiere of “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”coupled in medley with “The Old Laughing Lady”the first performance of “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown”and Young's first known live performance of “It Might Have Been” by Joe London, which he would eventually record for Oceanside/Countryside.
An unprecedented historical archive
More importantly, this is the very first time one of his concerts with Crazy Horse has been captured on tape. They played clubs across North America in 1969 to promote Everybody Knows This Is Nowherebut that was before Young joined Crosby, Stills, and Nash and became a household name. Nearly every venue in 1969 billed him as a former member of Buffalo Springfield, and the folks at the Warehouse in Providence, Rhode Island, even announced him as “Mell Young of the Buffalo Springfield”.
These evenings were supposedly incredible, forging the unbreakable bond with Crazy Horse that endures to this day, but not a second had been recorded, even on a sizzling bootleg. Young's life changed forever that summer when Crosby, Stills, and Nash became Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Suddenly he was playing to packed houses at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and the Fillmore in New York, a far cry from the intimate atmosphere of La Cave in Cleveland.
CSNY continued to tour extensively in 1970, but they took a brief hiatus early in the year, which allowed Young to return with Crazy Horse and play much larger venues than on their previous tour. The tour kicked off in Cincinnati, and this time the recording was running directly from the console.
Danny Whitten's performance
The concert is worth listening to in its entirety, but “Down by the River” is particularly wild and lasts almost 20 minutes. “Cinnamon Girl” is another must-have as original Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten features heavily in the vocal and guitar mix. Young has played this song with countless other guitarists over the decades, but no one does it like Whitten.
In his 2012 memoir, Waging Heavy PeaceYoung expresses regret for turning down the volume of Whitten's part on the original recording of “Cinnamon Girl” :
The Cincinnati concert ends with “Cinnamon Girl”but the crowd refuses to leave and aggressively demands an encore. “All I can tell you”said an unidentified voice on stage. “This is crazy…Look, wait a minute, please. All I can tell you is that if we do more, we risk not being able to do it again because contracts are contracts. The contract was until 11 p.m. and the guy was very lenient in letting us play until now. » (According to a local newspaper summary, the concert lasted 90 minutes longer than expected).
A mixed critical reception at the time
Audiences were clearly happy, but reviews were strangely negative. “Refusing to play many of the crowd's shouted requests, (Young) let his egocentric personality shine through by keeping the audience waiting while he stammered out rough words and chords.”wrote Beth Hedger in the University of Kentucky student newspaper, under the headline “Young Disappoints Fans.” “After Wednesday's dismal concert, who will want them? »
The following month, Neil Young and Crazy Horse played a series of legendary concerts at the Fillmore East. The tape was officially released in 2006, but it is a compilation of four different concerts, minus the acoustic set and “Cinnamon Girl”. To get a much better idea of what a full Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert sounded like in the Danny Whitten era, listen to the Cincinnati tape. It deserves an official release.
