INTERVIEW: Frank “Poncho” Sampedro - Neil Young, Crazy Horse Guitarist | Rolling Stone
Köln, Germany - July 12, 2013
Photo by Roel van Dijk's
(Click photo to enlarge)
A major interview with Crazy Horse's Frank “Poncho” Sampedro | Rolling Stone by Andy Greene. (Thanks HG, Alan, Francisco & all!)
Crazy Horse's Frank "Poncho" Sampedro
Cleveland, OH, Oct. 8
Photo by thrasher
Rolling Stone/Andy Greene: What’s interesting is that you make Ragged Glory in early 1990. This is before Pearl Jam even exists and before most people have heard of Nirvana. It’s still the era of Mötley Crüe and Poison. With Ragged Glory, you really made a grunge record before that was even a thing.
Frank “Poncho” Sampedro: Yeah, man. We did. You know what?
Let me go on record as saying that I think this 'Way Down in the Rust Bucket" is the best Crazy Horse record we ever recorded. I love it!
Ilove this record. Neil plays great, unbelievably great. He’s just electrified. “Country Home” sounds like a country tune I never heard in my life. He just takes it to all kinds of different levels. He nails “Cortez.” He nails “Danger Bird” and “Over and Over.” He’s just playing so good and the band played really good.
I hate when people say, “These were warm-up shows for the tour.” We did two shows. Do they really think they were warming us up for a giant tour? That’s more for us. It’s giving back to the community. We played in Santa Cruz. It’s really close to Neil’s place. That’s so most people could come to see us. Just standing in the parking lot, I wound up talking to about 100 people I know.
We’d go onstage and we played “T-Bone.” We’d played that song at a birthday party for one of Pegi’s friend and then we played it there. We never played it too many other places. It was just fun. We played “Homegrown,” and at the end, people were throwing weed on the stage since it’s a big weed-growing community. [Laughs] We were having fun.
It was all about the beginning of a new era. We were becoming alive. I just don’t see it as a warm-up. It doesn’t hit me like that. We played “Cortez” and it sounds so beautiful. When I hear Neil play it with other people, it just doesn’t sound the same to me, ever.
RS: Tell me a little more about why this Catalyst show happened.
Poncho: Well, Briggs, our leader, said it was time for us to go out and play. We had to go play in front of people before we do a tour. That was why we did it. It was just to be out there and be aware that there’s going to be a crowd. At the same time, it was a setup because it was all our friends and it’s a home crowd. It felt really good.We did “Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze.” Briggs used to give us crap about that song. “You guys never put your heart into it. You have to dig deeper. You sound like you’re noodling.” [Laughs] He wanted it to be “Moe the Sleaze” and really dig into it. It came off more like a pleasure cruise. He thought maybe the audience would give us an edge.
RS: You played the Catalyst a lot over the years. What’s special about that room?
Poncho: Where Neil lived at the ranch, there was one other place to play and it was a bar, the Mountain House. We played there [on November 12th, 1990], but you could only get like 50 people in there. We just played on the dining-room floor. There was no stage. There was no room for a PA. You might want to call it our home venue. Later on, after Princeton Landing [where Crazy Horse had a long residency in 1996], Neil didn’t want to play bars anymore and the Warfield [in San Francisco] became our home venue. But playing at the Catalyst felt like playing at home. It felt like we were still at the ranch.
RS: Do you remember them filming it?
Poncho: No. Not at all. When they told me they had a six-camera video shoot, I was like, “Really?” I had no idea.RS: That’s great. It means you were playing to the audience and not thinking about the cameras.
Poncho: We always played to the audience. I’m watching the video now and Billy is having so much fun. I think I’m watching him more than anybody else.
Full interview with Crazy Horse's Frank “Poncho” Sampedro | Rolling Stone by Andy Greene.
Australia 2013
Photo by Gary "Old Man Emu" Carter
(Click photo to enlarge)
Also, see:
- NYA FIRST LISTEN/WATCH: ‘Way Down In The Rust Bucket’ - Neil Young w/ Crazy Horse
- "Homegrown": ‘Way Down in the Rust Bucket’ - Neil Young w/ Crazy Horse
- "Smell the Horse": Ragged Glory Extended + Comment of the Moment: NYA FIRST LISTEN/WATCH: ‘Way Down In The Rust Bucket’ - Neil Young w/ Crazy Horse
- REVIEW: ‘Way Down in the Rust Bucket’ - Neil Young w/ Crazy Horse | Old Grey Cat
- Comment of the Moment #2: NYA FIRST LISTEN/WATCH: ‘Way Down In The Rust Bucket’ - Neil Young w/ Crazy Horse
- EXCLUSIVE: Crazy Horse Drummer Ralph Molina Interview
- Year of the Horse Film Review and Interviews on the making with Crazy Horse, Neil and Director Jim Jarmusch
- Year of the Horse - Interview in France's Les Inrockuptibles, July 1997
- Year of the Horse - Film Review
- Crazy Horse Biography - Reprise Records, 1997
- Frank Sampedro Interview - Torhout Festival, 1996
- Poncho Interview - Halifax Daily News, 11/1/96
- Interview: Crazy Horse and Neil Young Maintain Special Relationship, by Barry Gutman, Music Wire, ~9/96
- Billy Talbot Interview - Rip it Up, ~8/96
- Crazy Horse Album Reviews- by Robert Christgau
- Years of the Horse

Induct Neil Young w/ Crazy Horse
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Labels: @NeilYoungNYA, #CrazyHorse4HOF, #DontSpookTheHorse, #InductTheHorse, #MayTheHorseBeWithYou, #MoreBarn, album, concert, crazy horse, neil young
Way Down In The Rust Bucket:
Impressions of the Inextinguishable Scotsman
I'll start by saying just this:
You know you have a special Neil Young album in your hands when even T-Bone sounds like some sort of masterpiece.
Need I say more?
If the answer is "yes", then here's some context:
Long-time readers here know I think Weld, the record of 1991's Ragged Glory tour, is Neil's best electric live album.
It's also seriously intense. The musicianship, already pretty damn fierce on Ragged Glory, has by this point dropped all pretense of mellowness. The guitar solos have become ruthless enough to slice through steel.
And the best synopsis I can give of Way Down In The Rust Bucket is this: it's the sound of Ragged Glory transforming into Weld. With a looser setlist than the latter, and without the explosions of noise, the guitar strangulations, or the frenzied eruptions of feedback.
The sound at the warm-up Catalyst gig hasn't yet mutated into the (regimented, Gulf War inspired) brutality of the following 50+ shows. But it has started to. You can hear it developing, intensifying - sometimes mid-song.
Many tracks agreeably gallop (or chug) along, in no great hurry to get anywhere. And then Neil's lead guitar suddenly escalates and has you by the throat. There's a slightly Jekyll and Hyde feel to it.
You get the sense, even without the onslaught of the Gulf War, that the Ragged Glory tour was always destined to be a mighty affair.
(And you can also hear the seeds being sown that would grow into the Old Princeton Landing series, 5 years or so later.)
It's an epic 2 hour+ album packed with songs fresh from Ragged Glory. Along the way we get an abundance of Crazy Horse classics (Cinnamon Girl, Like A Hurricane, Cortez The Killer...) and a generous scattering of mind-blowing ultra-rarities (Danger Bird, Surfer Joe, and yes, T-BONE) that Neil would banish from the setlist straight after the warm-up gigs.
The more "cheap and cheerful" material here (Farmer John and T-Bone again, as examples) is mostly included as an entirely-justified excuse for Neil to go berserk on his Gold Top guitar for extended periods. Behind the *appearance* of the relaxed vibe of this period is a musician more focused than ever.
The Catalyst gig is looser than the '91 tour; but it's not *that* loose. Neil and the band road-tested most of the songs the previous night, with several of the others also appearing well-"rehearsed".
The same cannot be claimed about Sedan Delivery: thrillingly, the band are clearly re-learning how to play it, on-stage, after a full 12-year absence from the setlist.
The song staggers around uncertainly, more than once threatening to careen overboard (a bit like me as I write this column). Then, against all odds, it gets second wind and concludes with an explosion - Neil lurching into a warped guitar solo that will strip the paint from your walls.
This nightmarish sound is the twisted result of him using (abusing?) an old Alesis reverb simulator; one of the effects units within the big red box that you'll see at his feet at all his electric gigs.
(If you found that last sentence boring to read, that's because you're not a lead-guitar fanatic. Bottom line: this is an album not remotely suited to anybody unwilling to become a lead-guitar fanatic.)
Like many of you, I'm sure, I think the decision to fade out the audience noise between songs is an odd one. It kind of leaves the record halfway between an immersive concert experience and a series of isolated tracks.
An analogy: a fish can survive in a pond or in an aquarium, but not half-way between the two.
And yes, I like Rust Never Sleeps - a hybrid exception that proves the rule. But I think producer David Briggs would have preferred to seamlessly crossfade the audience chatter on Rust Bucket, instead of leaving gaps between the tracks. Would that have made Rust Bucket an even more thrilling experience? I err towards "yes". You decide.
Overall, the sound mix is fantastic. It has warmth and energy and (literally dozens of) guitar solos as piercing as razor blades. Billy Talbot's bass on this album is the warm and inviting kind: impactful, but not the room-shaking earthquake you'll enjoy on "studio Greendale", if you crank up your subwoofer.
The one real disapointment is an unavoidable one. Cowgirl In The Sand has been excluded because of technical reasons. This is one of the elite Poncho-era versions of the song, and its absence is an annoyance.
Still, it's out there on bootleg in decent quality, and also on the DVD version of the new album.
(Are there any rascals out there who were sneaky enough to find a way to download the video stream of Cowgirl, last year? That means you have the stereo soundtrack of it from the multi-track, too. Just patch it into the album playlist and smile broadly, by all means.)
The question on all our lips:
How on earth has a classic gig like Way Down In The Rust Bucket remained unnoticed in the vault for 30 years? What in heaven's name has the Archives team been doing for 3 decades?!
It's odd. It's weird. it's perplexing.
But, in 2021, what a treat for us all.
Thanks NY and NYA. It's an album that I think people are going to enjoy listening to for many years to come.
...And thanks for reading, everybody.
Scotsman.