Frank "Poncho" Sampedro (born Manuel Francisco Sampedro de Victoria, February 25, 1949) is an American retired guitarist and member of the rock band Crazy Horse, known mainly for his longtime collaboration with singer-songwriter Neil Young. Sampedro has played and recorded with Young in many other configurations aside from Crazy Horse and earned co-writing credits on several Young songs. Out of all Young's musical collaborators (aside from the late pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith), Sampedro has perhaps proven the most adept at working with the mercurial artist.[1]
Born to an émigré Spanish fishing family in a mining camp in Welch, West Virginia and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Sampedro started playing guitar at age 11. "I saw this kid from my neighborhood walking down the street holding a guitar. I said, 'Where'd you get that?' He said, 'I'm taking lessons...if you take lessons with me, we get a cheaper price...We only have to pay a buck sixty-five and they give you the guitars.' 'I'm in!' That's how it all started and it's never stopped since."[2] He played in local Detroit bands like DC and The Coachmen and The Chessmen ("We were bad, man. More like a gang than a band," recalled Sampedro)[3] until he left home with his sister at sixteen "following repeated brushes with the law."[4] They settled in Los Angeles, where he attended Hollywood High School and "soon became psychedelicized."[5]
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Sampedro operated a head shop in the San Fernando Valley and "wandered between California and Mexico, dabbling in a variety of endeavors of dubious legality that gave him great insight into the human condition."[6] Italian melodic rocker Douglas "Gator" Ducker, famous for a feud with Graham Nash, did time in a Mexican prison during this period, and stated that "Poncho saved my ass (back then) more times than I can count."[7] In lieu of joining a band, Sampedro frequently played along to Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Young and Crazy Horse's 1969 debut album, resolving to eventually join the group.
Career
Sampedro joined Neil Young and Crazy Horse in 1975 to record Zuma. He was introduced to the band by bassist/vocalist Billy Talbot in November 1974 during aborted sessions at Chess Studios in Chicago, exactly two years after the death of original Crazy Horse second guitarist Danny Whitten. Talbot and Sampedro had initially befriended each other at the house of actress June Fairchild in late 1973 or early 1974. Shortly thereafter, Talbot accompanied Sampedro to Ensenada, Baja California, where the latter was temporarily relocating due to a legal matter. As they "jammed on the beach with a couple of acoustic guitars," Talbot realized that "[Sampedro] was the guy we could use."[8]
With the addition of Sampedro on rhythm guitar, Crazy Horse developed a new, streamlined hard rock sound (as opposed to the interwoven, free-form approach of the Whitten era) that served as a seminal influence in the development of grunge and noise rock while also enabling Young to focus more on his lead playing. Although Sampedro lacked Whitten's instrumental proficiency at this juncture (leading Young to simplify his writing for the group and initially inspiring skepticism from drummer Ralph Molina), Young would later opine that "Poncho was a resource to be reckoned with. He made it possible to play with the Horse."[9]
Sampedro brought a rawer edge to Crazy Horse, and not just musically. "Rock 'n' roll—I thought that meant loot the village and rape the women," recalled Sampedro.[10] Much to the consternation of Young, Sampedro frequently used heroin in his early days with the band, leading Young to once jump out of their car in Europe when he realized that Sampedro was procuring the drug.[11] On a 1976 tour of Europe and Japan, Sampedro and Talbot took LSD before stepping onstage at the Budokan in Tokyo. "I'd hit the strings of my guitar—they were like eighty different colors—and they bounced off the floors and hit the ceiling," Sampedro later recalled.[12] According to Young, he and Sampedro did "a lot of illegal things" during this period.[13]
Despite occasional tumult stemming from Young's signature mutability, the Sampedro version of Crazy Horse would contribute to Young's next two albums and served as the backing band for his 1979 album/concert film Rust Never Sleeps. In November 1978, Crazy Horse also released Crazy Moon, their fourth non-Young album; six of the album's eleven songs were written or co-written by Sampedro. Throughout the 1980s, the band also contributed to Young's Re-ac-tor (1981), Trans (1982) and Life (1987).
As Young moved on to other projects and other bands in the late eighties, Sampedro remained in his employ even as Talbot and Molina released a non-Young Crazy Horse album without Sampedro in 1989. His importance to Young's work at the time was such that Young's co-producer Niko Bolas stated, "You can't do a Neil Young album without Poncho...there's no one thing he does, but if he wasn't there it'd come apart."[14]
As a member of The Bluenotes (a horn-driven blues rock ensemble later rechristened Ten Men Workin'), Sampedro played on Young's This Note's for You (1988) and contributed keyboards and guitar to the band's ensuing support tour; a selection of live recordings from the Bluenotes era were finally released as Bluenote Café in 2015. Although he was not included in The Restless (a short-lived hard rock power trio that evolved from Ten Men Workin'), Sampedro contributed heavily to Young's 1989 album, Freedom. Sampedro also received a belated co-writing credit on the Young anthem "Rockin' in the Free World." He explained in a 2013 Rolling Stone interview that in 1989 Young and Crazy Horse were scheduled to perform in Russia but the performances were canceled. Sampedro told Young, "I guess we'll have to keep on rockin' in the free world," to which Young replied, "Wow, that's a cool line. That's a really good phrase. I wanna use it."[15]
On the September 30, 1989 broadcast of Saturday Night Live, Sampedro led an ad hoc ensemble (including drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Charley Drayton) that backed Young for "No More" and "Rockin' in the Free World", regarded by critics as one of the greatest live rock television performances of all time. (The band, said one writer, looked like "a bunch of car thieves.")[16] Sampedro also accompanied Young on mandolin and piano on the subsequent solo tour.
In 1990, Crazy Horse (once again including Sampedro) returned for Young's 1990 album Ragged Glory and two live albums recorded on the following tour, Weld and Arc. Young then used Crazy Horse for Sleeps with Angels (1994) and Broken Arrow (1996).
Sampedro's proficiency in emergent computer technology (honed during Young's experiments with the medium in the early 1980s) allowed him to cultivate another career. He worked as an engineer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 to 2010 under bandleader Kevin Eubanks, running the ensemble's MIDI board as well as serving as an assistant/project manager to Eubanks.
In 1997, Crazy Horse was featured on Young's live Year of the Horse album. Sampedro's appearance in Jim Jarmusch's accompanying documentary led San Francisco Examiner critic Craig Marine to state "the funniest parts of the movie are when guitarist Frank 'Poncho' Sampedro repeatedly berates the director. Sampedro accuses Jarmusch of trying to make 'an artsy-fartsy film' to try to look cool and 'impress his New York friends'."[17]
Neil Young & Crazy Horse in 2012.
Sampedro sat out the Neil Young and Crazy Horse-recorded Greendale in 2003 but returned for the tour. Trick Horse, a collection of previously unreleased non-Young Crazy Horse recordings pseudonymously produced by Sampedro as "Poncho Villa", was released on iTunes in 2009.[18] Following an extended hiatus, Sampedro and his bandmates rejoined Young for an eccentric album of covers (Americana) and an album of original material (Psychedelic Pill) before touring intermittently for two years.
In 2021, for the release of Way Down in the Rust Bucket, Sampedro was given joint credit on writing "Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze" (originally on Re-ac-tor) and "Fuckin' Up" (on Ragged Glory), two songs previously only credited to Young.
Retirement from touring and recording
Sampedro now lives in Hawaii. In 2014, he told Rolling Stone that he now concentrates on "gardening and working with different farmers here. I love going swimming here and snorkeling and kayaking and checking out the whales and the dolphins. In one way I've retired from a certain world, but I haven't stopped working a day."[19] In 2021 he revealed that he retired because of arthritis in both wrists. "It became painful for me to be on the road. When we were on that last tour [in 2014], I was rolling down the road with both of my hands in ice buckets and one foot in an ice bucket, every night.".[20]
Neil Percival Young is a Canadian and American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining the folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield. Since the beginning of his solo career, often with backing by the band Crazy Horse, he has released critically acclaimed albums such as Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), After the Gold Rush (1970), Harvest (1972), On the Beach (1974), and Rust Never Sleeps (1979). He was also a part-time member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with whom he recorded the chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu.
Freedom is the 19th studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young, released on October 2, 1989. Freedom relaunched Young's career after a largely unsuccessful decade. After many arguments and a lawsuit, Young left Geffen Records in 1988 and returned to his original label, Reprise, with This Note's for You. Freedom brought about a new, critical and commercially successful album. It was released as an LP record, cassette tape, and CD.
Crazy Horse is an American rock band best known for their association with the musician Neil Young. Since 1969, fifteen studio albums and eight live albums have been billed as being by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. They have also released six studio albums of their own between 1971 and 2009.
Comes a Time is the ninth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, released by Reprise Records in October 1978. The album is largely performed in a quiet folk and country style. It features backing harmonies sung by Nicolette Larson and additional accompaniment by musicians that had accompanied Young on his commercial pinnacle, Harvest. Like Harvest, the lyrics to many of its songs are inspired by relationships. In his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, Young describes Comes a Time as one of his best albums ever.
Weld is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album. It was initially released as a limited edition three-disc set entitled Arc-Weld, with the Arc portion being a single disc consisting in its entirety of a sound collage of guitar noise and feedback. Arc has since been released separately.
Rust Never Sleeps is the tenth album by Canadian American singer-songwriter Neil Young and his third with American band Crazy Horse. It was released on June 22, 1979, by Reprise Records and features both studio and live tracks. Most of the album was recorded live, then overdubbed in the studio, while others originated in the studio. Young used the phrase "rust never sleeps" as a concept for his tour with Crazy Horse to avoid artistic complacency and try more progressive, theatrical approaches to performing live.
Sleeps with Angels is the 22nd studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on August 16, 1994, on Reprise as a double LP and as a single CD. The album is Young's seventh with Crazy Horse. Co-produced by David Briggs, the album is Young's last with his long-time producer, who died the following year. The title track was written and recorded as a tribute to Kurt Cobain in wake of his suicide. Although the rest of the album was recorded before that event, the album takes on a somber, subdued tone throughout. Musician and author Ken Viola described the album as one of Young's "top five records. It examines the nature of dreams — both the light and dark side — and how they fuel reality in the nineties. Dreams are the only thing that we've got left to hang on to."
Live Rust is a live album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, recorded during their fall 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour.
Left for Dead is a 1989 album released by the group Crazy Horse.
Re·ac·tor is the twelfth studio album by Canadian folk rock musician Neil Young, and his fourth with American rock band Crazy Horse, released on November 2, 1981. It was his last album released through Reprise Records before he moved to Geffen for his next five albums.
Trans is the thirteenth studio album by Canadian musician and singer-songwriter Neil Young, released on January 10, 1983. Recorded and released during his Geffen era in the 1980s, its electronic sound baffled many fans upon its initial release—a Sennheiser vocoder VSM201 features prominently in six of the nine tracks.
Zuma, the seventh studio album by Canadian/American musician Neil Young, was released on Reprise Records in November 1975. Co-credited to Crazy Horse, it includes "Cortez the Killer", one of Young's best-known songs.
Broken Arrow is the 24th studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young, and his 8th with Crazy Horse, released in 1996.
This Note's for You is the 18th studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released April 11, 1988 on Reprise. The album marked Young's return to the recently reactivated Reprise Records after a rocky tenure with Geffen Records.
"Danger Bird" is a song written by Neil Young. It was first released on his 1975 album with Crazy Horse, Zuma. A live version was also released on the 1997 album Year of the Horse.
Chrome Dreams is the 46th studio album by Neil Young. It was first compiled as an acetate for consideration as an album for release in 1977. A copy of the acetate widely circulated as a bootleg in the decades prior to its release. The album was officially released on August 11, 2023, to universal acclaim from critics.
Psychedelic Pill is the 34th studio album by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released on October 30, 2012. It is the second collaboration between Young and Crazy Horse released in 2012 and their first original work together since the Greendale album and tour in 2003 and 2004. The album was streamed on Young's website on October 24, 2012, and leaked onto the Internet the same day.
Rick "Rick the Bass Player" Rosas was an American musician, and one of the most sought after studio session musicians in Los Angeles. Though largely known for his long collaboration with Neil Young, throughout his career he also played with Joe Walsh, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Rivers, Ron Wood, Etta James, and the short-lived reunion of the Buffalo Springfield, among others. He performed as a bass player with The Flash in Jonathan Demme's 2015 film Ricki and The Flash. The band was composed of guitarist Rick Springfield, drummer Joe Vitale, and keyboardist Bernie Worrell, backing up Meryl Streep, as "Ricki", on vocals and guitar.
Way Down in the Rust Bucket is a live album and concert film from Canadian-American rock musician Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse, released on February 26, 2021. It is Volume 11.5 in the Performance Series of Neil Young Archives.
Odeon Budokan is a live album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young, released on September 1, 2023, on American record label Reprise Records.
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