Crazy Horse is the debut album by Crazy Horse, released in 1971 by Reprise Records. It is the only album by the band to feature Danny Whitten recorded without Neil Young, and it peaked at #84 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Background Members of this band had already released an album in 1968 as The Rockets and had appeared on record twice with Neil Young as Crazy Horse. The core trio from the Rockets, Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina, provided instrumental backing for Young's 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and performed on some songs from Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush. Producer/keyboardist Jack Nitzsche, who had been a member of Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew and played on records by The Rolling Stones, had worked with Young on his debut solo album and on tracks for Buffalo Springfield. He was drafted into Crazy Horse to back up Young on their short tour in early 1970. During sessions for Gold Rush, they met teenage multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren, who joined the band in time for this album. The band got a contract with Reprise Records after the exposure garnered from their association with Young. This was Whitten's last recording before his dismissal from the group and subsequent death from an alcohol/diazepam overdose in 1972. Due to Whitten’s increasingly erratic performances (stemming from a heroin addiction and longstanding rheumatoid arthritis), guitarist Ry Cooder was retained as a session musician on three tracks. Cooder had worked previously with Nitzsche on sessions for the Stones and Young's debut solo album. The album contains compositions from four principal writers. Whitten's ballad "I Don't Want to Talk About It" would be covered by a variety of artists, including Rita Coolidge; Everything but the Girl on their 1988 album Idlewild; and Rod Stewart, who had a chart-topping hit with the song in the United Kingdom, taken from his 1975 album Atlantic Crossing. Young's "Dance Dance Dance" was covered by The New Seekers in 1972, and Randy Newman had already performed Nitzsche's "Gone Dead Train" on the soundtrack for the 1970 film Performance by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg. The song was also covered by the Scottish hard rock band Nazareth on their 1977 album Expect No Mercy; the group had previously covered "Beggars Day" on their 1975 album Hair of the Dog. A live version of "Downtown" by Whitten and Young would appear