During the Spring of 1996, Neil Young and Crazy Horse were recording a new album at his ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains. To prepare for the forthcoming tour, they embarked on what has become known as ‘The Northern California Bar Tour of 1996’. If you want to learn how to sound like Neil Young, you need to study these three photos taken at one of the shows. They provide a glimpse of what Neil calls ‘the whizzer' (PDF interview about his equipment). It's a device that physically turns his amp's knobs via switches on his pedalboard. Of course, you also need to be playing an exact replica of Old Black through vintage amps that are ready to explode. If this all sounds too complicated, you can shell out money for the Crazy Horse pedal by Durham Electronics, which was designed to be 'Neil Young in a box’. Yeah, because that's totally possible.
posted by AdamFlybot on May 1, 2008 - 31 comments