Ushering in the 'Year of the Horse'

Photo courtesy of October Films Arizona Daily Wildcat Jim Jarmusch (left) and Neil Young (right), director and featured artist in "Year of the Horse."

In 1976, Neil Young and Crazy Horse are in a green room off some stage and you can hear the crowd outside.

There is a camera in the room and they're talking and bassist Billy Talbott is mugging. They're talking about whether to do an encore and, if so, what to play, and drummer Ralph Molina says he's tired.

A consensus is reached and they're going back out there to play "Home Grown."

And 20 years later they're on stage, followed by the Super 8 camera of Jim Jarmusch.

It's 1996, the "Year of The Horse"

That's what David Briggs, Crazy Horse's longtime producer told Neil Young right before he died and that's one of the little facts you learn in the film, which opened at The Loft Cinema on Halloween.

"Horse" is part concert flick and part documentary. It's a fan's film and it's not. It's a definitive celluloid record of a rock band and a story full of holes.

See, Neil Young and Crazy Horse have been together some 30 years. How do you capture that in two hours?

That's what guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro keeps saying throughout the film. How does anyone think that they could quantify 30 years of quiet moments.

You can't.

Which brings us to the Super 8 camera.

A concert film with such a camera is an exercise in impressionism. In the low light of the stage, the camera can only grab so much. Throughout the band's performances the focus on the players fades in and out. You can't hold on to everything.

That is, essentially, the way film operates. It's an impression of the band. Like Serrat, director Jarmusch brings the viewer into the world of the band - to the hotel room, back stage, shows a moment with the crews - but as the viewer gets closer, the picture flattens, you cannot get inside.

What you're left with is pieces, moments. Scoffing at the flowers Paul and Linda McCartney sent the band for hanging out with them; a 1986 post-concert argument.

"Why did we rehearse for fucking five hours?" Neil screams at Talbott.

The story of how Crazy Horse became Neil's band, how he sort of stole the members from an L.A. band called The Rockets. How Sampedro joined the band after the drug death of Danny Whitten.

You get a sense of the character of the men.

Molina holds on dearly to the idea that Neil didn't make Crazy Horse, that there is a symbiosis. It's an idea that Neil is in agreement with, but on film, Molina seems so much less self-assured.

Everybody's tour jacket says Neil Young and Crazy Horse on it. Except Neil's. His just says Crazy Horse. He says it's because he's just part of the band. The obvious irony being he's got a different jacket than everyone else.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse released a live album this summer called Year of the Horse. It is not a soundtrack to this film.

While film songs like Broken Arrow's "Big Time" and Rust Never Sleeps ' "Sedan Delivery" appear on the album, the great songs from the film (a tremendous "Tonight's the Night" and "Like a Hurricane") are absent.

These two particular songs give everything one wants out of them. "Tonight" is loud and tortured, still fresh 20 years after its main character, roadie Bruce Berry, died "out on the mainline."

"Like a Hurricane" is the coup de grace, crystallizing the impression of the band. Two live versions of the song, one from 1976 and one from 1996 are seamlessly spliced and you can see what all those years of rock 'n' roll can do. Neil put on weight, got wrinkled. But he still plays that guitar and he still breaks the strings.