Sometime after the Homegrown sessions—Billy Talbot put the time in the spring of 1975—Young and the band got together again. Talbot was renting a place in Echo Park, and in terms of wretched ambience, the residence was legendary. As Billy’s soon-to-be second wife, Laurie, recalls, “Poncho told me, ‘Oh, you’ll love where Billy lives—he has a little cottage in Echo Park.’ I pull up and there’s an empty field with one little shack.” “I don’t even think there was a driveway to it,” said roadie Guillermo Giachetti. “Just a dirt road, puppies everywhere, dogshit.” A woman raised goats down the hill, and not far away, the Hillside Strangler had dumped the nude corpse of one of his victims. “We used to play till four in the morning,” said Poncho. “No one would call the cops on us.” Young, who rarely stays with anybody, let it be known that he was coming to visit. Laurie Talbot was in charge of getting his accommodations ready. “One room they never opened—it was like Charlie Manson,” she said. “I had to paint the whole room and get the chickens out of the coop.” Neil pulled up in an old Buick armed with a new song, “Born to Run,” and there in a cramped room in Echo Park, the second incarnation of Neil Young and Crazy Horse really began. “It was great,” said Talbot. “We were soaring. Neil loved it, we all loved it—it was the first time we heard the Horse since Danny Whitten died.” Jimmy McDonough Shakey by Jimmy McDonough 2002

The album Zuma is the first album we made with Crazy Horse after Poncho joined the band. It’s one of my favorites. The cover is by Mazzeo and came out of a conversation we had on a day trip from the ranch to Zuma. We set up a Green Board control room in Briggs’s den. We played in the garage. One day Bob Dylan, who lived nearby, came along and sang a blues tune with us. On a break, Bob and I took a walk around the neighborhood, talking about the similarity in some of the paths we had each taken. It was the first time we had ever really talked. I liked him. Back at Briggs’s, we kept playing day after day and partying at night. We did the original “Powderfinger” and held it back. We did “Sedan Delivery” and held it back. My song “Born to Run” was recorded, left unfinished, and held back. “Ride My Llama” was completely finished and mixed and held back. We recorded a lot of tunes and held them back, but we released “Cortez,” “Don’t Cry No Tears,” “Stupid Girl,” and a bunch of other tracks on Zuma. It has a great feeling to it. Today I like listening to all of those tracks together in a compilation I call Dume that is in The Archives Volume 2. Those were some of the finest, most alive days of my life. I was getting past the lost relationship with Carrie, living the life with my best friends, making some good music, and starting to get a grip on something: an open future in my personal life and a new future with Crazy Horse after Danny. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012