This is a hot live version of “Down By The River” performed by Neil Young and Crazy Horse at the Boston Tea Party, Boston, MA
on March 1, 1970.

Fifteen minutes!!

Fourteen years later, on September 27, 1984 at the Quality Seal Amphitheatre at the World’s Fair, New Orleans, LA, before playing the song, Neil Young said:

I’d like to sing you a song about a guy who had a lot of trouble controlling himself. He let the dark side side come thru a little too bright.
One afternoon he took a little stroll down thru a field and thru a forest, ’til he could hear the water running along there. And he met his woman down there. And he told her she’d been cheatin’ on him one too many times. And he reached down in his pocket and he pulled a little revolver out. Said “honey I hate to do this but you pushed me too far”.

By the time he got back to town he knew he had to answer to somebody pretty quick. He went back to his house and he sat down on his front porch. About two hours later the sheriff’s car pulled up out front. It started sinkin’ in on him what he’d done. The sheriff walked up the sidewalk, he said “come with me son, I want to ask you a few questions”.

As he heard the jail door shut behind him he sat down on a little wooden bench. And he looked out of the door – thru those bars – at this kind of wimpy looking sheriff out there. He started getting mad again and he realized what he had done.

There wasn’t nothing he could do about it now though. He just sat down and put his head down and he started thinking to himself “I’m all by myself here, there’s nobody on my side…..”

Thanks to Thrasher’s Wheat for this quote!

[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.

Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.

–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-