Year of the Horse
Neil Young and Crazy Horse have been the focus of other documentary/concert films, but nothing quite compares to the loose, funky and copasetic vibe of Year of the Horse.
This offbeat rockumentary, directed by Jim Jarmusch, features all the standard elements — archival footage, concert performances, talking-head interviews — but manages to mesh them into a celebration of the mysterious alchemy of Crazy Horse.
Known as the maker of the sly, deadpan comedies Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down By Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989) and Night on Earth (1992), Jarmusch takes a completely different approach with the freewheeling and raucous Year of the Horse.
Neil Young did the haunting music for Jarmusch's existential western, Dead Man (1995), and they went on to collaborate on videos, including "Big Time" from the Broken Arrow album, which Jarmusch shot using a compact and portable Super 8 camera (the pre-video standard equipment for home movies). The grainy but intimate quality of Super 8 is carried over into Year of the Horse, and its "raw beauty" meshes perfectly with Crazy Horse's live performances.
Year of the Horse doesn't try to explain Crazy Horse's history per se, but instead tries to pin down the particular quality that makes this band of dedicated, accomplished musicians more than the sum of its parts.
Crazy Horse is a close-knit, fiercely loyal group, not just of musicians but crew members as well, many of whom have worked together for twenty years or more. Guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, who joined Crazy Horse in 1974, is still half-jokingly referred to as "the new guy."
Sampedro, bassist Billy Talbot, drummer Ralph Molina, and the band's voice and guiding light Neil Young (who in a wry understatement introduces himself as "Neil Perceval Young, guitar player for this band called Crazy Horse") are all interviewed while on their 1996 world tour.
Jarmusch, along with fellow cameraman and Horse's producer, L.A. Johnson (a longtime Young associate and veteran of Woodstock and The Last Waltz), shot concert footage of new and old songs including "Barstool Blues," "Tonight's the Night" and "Like a Hurricane." Cleverly interspersed with the new footage are archival scenes of Crazy Horse in 1976 and 1986 from Bernard Shakey (Rust Never Sleeps, Muddy Track) which reveal a great deal about the band's evolution. As well they should, considering that Shakey is the filmmaking alias of the aforementioned Neil Perceval Young.
In 1976 the members of Crazy Horse seem impossibly young and goofy, even setting a hotel room bouquet of fake flowers on fire. From 1986, Jarmusch includes some tense scenes of squabbling, the veteran road warriors seeming tense and frustrated. But by 1996, a weird sort of transcendence has taken place.
The band is intensely focused yet good-humored and respectful of each other, as if nothing matters as much as playing together and touching that raw nerve at the core of Crazy Horse's sound. Jim Jarmusch captures that spirit in Year of the Horse, a film that might not convert the uninitiated, but goes a long way to explain the devotion of Crazy Horse fans.
© 1997, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.