“C’mon—I got somethin’ I want you to hear.” Paris leads me down through the bowels of the bar and into a grim parking lot out back. Ignoring the overflowing garbage bins, blaring radios and a lone stray cat, we get into an old beat-up car. Paris sticks a cassette into the deck and turns away. “I can’t listen,” he says, shaking his head. “Not today.”
I know what the tape is before the music starts. For months I’ve been after Paris to play me the last demos Whitten ever cut, and now, after months of meetings, Don has finally decided I’m worthy. It’s only four rough sketches, a small piece of the story, but I’m unprepared for the emotions the music draws out. “Oh Boy,” the last song on the tape—and the last Whitten would sing in this world—is the clincher. “I think about the times that I was happier than now / Oh boy,” he sings, worrying the “Oh boy” in a way few white men can. The words are so sad, the voice so weary, that you can reach only one conclusion: Danny Whitten knew he was checking out.
The year or so following After the Gold Rush was not easy for Danny Whitten. First came the Crazy Horse solo record recorded in the fall of 1970 that Jack Nitzsche produced with the help of Bruce Botnick. “Danny wasn’t playing for shit,” Jack recalls. “Every now and then he’d nod out and wouldn’t play. So I stopped everything and said, ‘Fuck it. We might as well not have a session today. ’Cause Danny’s stoned out of his mind nodding off.’ Danny said, ‘Hey, man—I took a Valium and drank a vodka and it really got to me.’ ‘You haven’t had any junk? You’re not strung out?’ He said, ‘No, man, I’m totally clean.’ Danny was real hurt and angry that I would ask and really made a fucking scene. He stormed out of the room. I thought, ‘Oh my God, maybe I did make a mistake.’ So I went into the men’s room and there he was with a fuckin’ needle in his arm. He said, ‘Hey—this is good shit. Want some?’”
Figuring misery loves company, Nitzsche actually got high with Danny, then went on to finish the one great Whitten-era Horse document—Crazy Horse. Besides “Gone Dead Train,” a rocker with lyrics Nitzsche and Russ Titleman cobbled together from scores of old blues songs expertly mumbled by Whitten, the album contains “I Don’t Want to Talk About It,” a haunting ballad coauthored by Nils Lofgren that would provide Whitten with a posthumous hit when Rod Stewart covered it in 1975.
Once the album was finished, Whitten continued to fall apart. During rehearsals for a tour to support the album, Ralph Molina fired Danny. “I remember being in a rehearsal studio in San Francisco and the shit hit the fan,” Molina said. “Danny said, ‘Okay, am I in the band or not?’ Jack and Billy said it was up to me. Without any hesitation, I said, ‘Danny, you’re out. We can’t even rehearse. You’re too fuckin’ gone.’ I couldn’t believe I said that. I think Billy and Jack were stunned, too. I remember Danny saying, ‘Oh, so now you’re Crazy Horse.’”
Back in Los Angeles, Whitten made several attempts at a methadone program and failed. He began to drink heavily and take pills, gaining weight and losing his surfer good looks in the process. There was an ill-fated trip to Maryland where he was to join Nils Lofgren’s band Grin, but “Danny was just gone,” said Lofgren. “He was just in too much pain to pull himself out of it.” Lofgren sent Whitten back home, where he begged Molina to let him back in Crazy Horse.
Marie Janisse, his old dance partner from the Peppermint West, sent him a weekly roll of dimes with a note attached, imploring him to call. Whitten wouldn’t see her. “He said, ‘I love you too much. I don’t want you to see me the way I am.’”
When he wasn’t blasted on alcohol and pills, Whitten went on heroin/cocaine speedball rampages, terrifying his friends with the massive amounts of drugs involved. “Danny had a tolerance that wouldn’t quit,” said Don Paris. “A tolerance of three or four human beings. It was unreal.” Whitten would hole up in his apartment, sitting in his bathtub mainlining for weeks on end. Whitten’s hero, he now told people, was fellow addict Bela Lugosi.
“Near the end Danny was a different guy,” said Three Dog Night’s Danny Hutton. “He just turned into a stone junkie. You didn’t trust him anymore.” Whitten lived with Hutton until Hutton threw him out, then snuck back in and stole a guitar. Although cheap and beat to hell, the instrument had great sentimental value for Hutton, who had used it to write his first hit. “Danny must’ve gotten five dollars for it. It’s like somebody stealin’ a picture of your mother.”
Whitten continued on his downward spiral, ripping off friends and burning bridges. For a while he lived with Rockets guitarist George Whitsell, who said, “Danny was pretty disillusioned and saddened by everything. He realized that he’d blown it with Neil, the Horse and the Rockets. He inferred it was the pressure of workin’ with Neil, which to me was a cop-out. ‘I’m a star, now I feel guilty, I broke up the Rockets’—this kind of shit. It didn’t wash with me.” Whitsell asked Danny to leave when he found him shooting up with a friend in the bathroom. “A week later, I got ripped off and found some of Danny’s cigarette butts in the driveway.”
Somehow Whitten managed to pull himself together enough to record that last four-song demo. Nothing happened with the songs, and Danny Whitten’s light continued to fade. He made another attempt to escape heroin, heading off to Mexico with his old friend Terry Sachen. On the way, they stopped in Encinitas at the home of Whitten’s vocal partner from Danny and the Memories, Ben Rocco, who watched as Whitten downed an entire bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold. “Danny was trying to kick heroin, so he was drinking tons of tequila,” said Sachen. The trip was a disaster. “When we came across the border they asked if we had anything to declare, so Danny threw up on the guy.”
It was in this state that Danny Whitten arrived at Broken Arrow ranch for Time Fades Away rehearsals sometime in the fall of 1972. Someone had convinced Young that Whitten was off drugs, and Neil put him on a $500-a-week retainer. Some say Young’s good intentions only made it easier for him to continue the abuse. The real mystery is how anyone could’ve thought Danny was in good enough shape for any kind of tour.
Nitzsche was there when Whitten showed up. “I could tell he was using. I waited until Neil was gone. I said, ‘Jesus Christ, man, you’re fucked up.’” Once again, Whitten claimed it was only the vodka and Valium talking. Carrie Snodgress remembers Nitzsche showing up at the house that night to deliver the bad news about Danny’s condition. “Jack just put on this curse that it wasn’t gonna be any good, that you don’t change a dope addict. He kept telling Neil, ‘You’re blind, you’re blind, man, he’s fucked up.’”
Arrangements were made for Whitten to stay at the white house with the rest of the musicians, but Danny requested his own place, ending up in an old Airstream trailer just outside the studio. “To Neil, that was already a little sign of trouble,” said Snodgress.
Rehearsals went miserably, with Whitten in terrible shape. “It was just amazing,” said Kenny Buttrey. “The guy was asleep standing upright. He’d be playing guitar right in rhythm—but after the song was over. I’d have to say, ‘Danny, it’s over now. We’re finished.’ I really didn’t know who Danny Whitten was. I just thought, ‘This guy can’t play a note, man. What’s he doin’ in our band?’”
Nitzsche concurred. “Danny couldn’t play anything. He just stood there. Neil would say, ‘Danny, ya gotta play. Ya gotta learn these songs.’ And Danny would go, ‘Hey Jack, play “Be My Baby.”’ The vibe was, like, silence.”
Nitzsche also remembered a communal dinner where Whitten, who had been drinking, launched into the story of the sadistic naval officer who had made him stand guard in subzero temperatures and how the resulting frostbite had caused his arthritis. “Danny said, ‘Did any of you guys ever feel like killing somebody?’ And the room was totally silent. All these hippie girls in calico dresses cooking ‘healthy stew.’ They all went silent, Neil included. I just laughed.”
Whitten spent more and more time alone in his trailer. “I brought over a bunch of sandwiches and Danny wouldn’t eat,” said Carrie Snodgress. “He’d laugh about how
hard it was to teach an old dog new tricks. He said, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it. I just don’t belong here.’ And he cried.”
Young refused to give up on Whitten. Between rehearsals, he’d go over to the trailer and try to teach him the songs one-on-one. “Neil was totally convinced that Danny was gonna be great again,” said Snodgress. “Because up until the last minute, when they let him go, Neil was sayin’, ‘Maybe today, maybe today.’”
But Whitten got no better and Young, facing the biggest tour of his career, had to make a decision. Danny was fired. He was given $50 and a ticket back to L.A. Snodgress had a bad feeling as she watched him being driven off the ranch. “I said to Neil, ‘I’m scared, I’m scared. This doesn’t feel right.’ But Neil had too much to do. Too much to think about. It was just so sad. So sad.”
On the flight back to Los Angeles, Whitten reportedly became inebriated and had to be restrained. Later that same day—November 18, 1972—he wound up at a friend’s house at 143 North Manhattan Place. That evening, Whitten called up Nitzsche. “Danny asked, ‘Would you be there for me? No matter what?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ and he said, ‘That’s all I wanna know,’ and hung up.” At some point, Whitten went into the bathroom and never came out. A female companion found him dead on the floor. An autopsy revealed that he had died of “acute diazepam and ethanol intoxication”—an overdose of alcohol and Valium.
“I always thought that was kind of ironic, ’cause Danny more or less taught me about drugs, and he’d always tell me not to take depressants when you’re drinkin’,” recalled childhood friend Larry Lear. “He was real explicit with that.” Some say Danny’s death was just one of those unfortunate accidents, while others, like Jack Nitzsche, believe it was suicide: “The third day Danny was up at the ranch, he said, ‘I got a feeling Neil’s gonna fire me. Man, if that happens, it’s all over for me. That’s just the end of the line.’ The poor fucker.”
“That night between twelve and one o’clock we got the phone call,” said Snodgress. “It was the Los Angeles police department. They had found a white male, no identification, just a note with Neil’s phone number. Neil was a mess. That was very hard for him. It’s somethin’ Neil will carry with him to the grave.”
Brenda Whitten knew nothing of her brother’s death until a telegram came from the Westwood Village mortuary, asking her to pick up the body. Out to Los Angeles she went. Brenda was given Danny’s worldly possessions, all of which fit into a cardboard box. There was a clipboard, a couple of shirts, a few pairs of pants and a gold record. “I brought it home wrapped in newspaper. I stopped at the gate and the electronic thing went off and I created a scene. It was a real trip comin’ home. I cried all the way back.”
News of Danny’s death circulated discreetly among the denizens of Broken Arrow ranch. “We never talked about it,” said Kenny Buttrey. “It was like somethin’ that didn’t happen.”
“It was horrible,” recalled Jeannie Field, working in the editing room on Journey Through the Past at the time. “It was so serious. I don’t think anybody did anything about it. I think that’s the toughest part. I think if we’d had a memorial for him at the ranch—y’know, lit a fire or a candle—it probably would’ve been a lot better. Nobody was to think about it. It was as if it hadn’t happened. Business as usual. It’s very interesting that, for all the hippie values, there were some very unhippie things goin’ down.”
The death of Danny Whitten would cast a long shadow. “I loved Danny,” Young told Cameron Crowe in 1975. “I felt responsible.” Mazzeo was one of the few people to discuss the subject with Young at the time. “Neil told me, ‘Hey, every musician has one guy on the planet that he can play with better than anyone else. You only get one guy. My guy was Danny Whitten.’”
—What effect did Danny’s passing have on you?
A big effect. I felt responsible. But really there was nothin’ I could do—
I mean, he was responsible. But I thought I was for a long time.
—Ralph has told me over and over, “We should’ve been able to do more for Danny.”
Uh-huh. That’s right.
—You’d handle it differently today?
I think I would. I was very young at that time. I had very little experience—not that I have a lot of experience now. That was a tough period. It was a learning process.
Danny just wasn’t happy. It just all came down on him. He was engulfed by this drug. That was too bad. Because Danny had a lot to give, boy. He was really good.
See, I had the whole Harvest band together, and I wanted to get Danny into it. Y’know, it may be that playing with those guys is what got him so fucked up—that’s a different thing from playing with the Horse. Maybe if he’d been playing with Billy and Ralph, he would’ve been less threatened and the music might’ve brought him out of it. But he was gone. Not in good shape at all.
Last time I saw him, he was really wasted. Couldn’t keep it together to remember what he was doin’ in the sessions. I had to tell him he wasn’t in the band. That was a drag. Then he went home and OD’d. That was devastating.
The day after Whitten’s death, Young wrote “Don’t Be Denied,” in which he recounted the story of his life: getting beaten up in school, his father leaving, the promise of music and the moment that dreams can fail. Young had come this far and there was no turning back. “Don’t be denied, don’t be denied,” he would scream out over and over on the next tour. Who was he trying to convince—himself?
“Don’t Be Denied” has a lot to do with Danny, I think…. Any big event will inspire a song, and that indeed was a very large event. I think that’s the first major life-and-death event that really affected me in what I was trying to do. Like when one of your parents dies, or a friend dies, you kinda reassess yourself as to what you’re doing—because you realize life is so impermanent. So you wanna do the best you can while you’re here, to say whatever the fuck it is you wanna say. Express yourself.
What did I learn? Well, I learned that I missed Danny. As a person. It was such a loss. You can’t count on things. You just can’t take things for granted. Anything could go at any time.
That’s why things have lasted so long—because there’s always been something in the way to stop things from happening the way they could have, the optimum…. Some people get it, and they get it so quick. The Beatles, the Stones, Led Zepplin, the Who—for years they had all their original guys, so they could go out and do it.
It never happened right with Buffalo Springfield. Bruce Palmer—lost him right away. With Crazy Horse, when the big success came, the band was gone—we lost Danny. Things like that happened a lot—for a long time. When it doesn’t happen right away, it means you don’t go too far too fast. So you keep trying. You don’t give up. That’s the positive side of it.
Young’s troubles did not end with Danny Whitten’s death. As rehearsals continued, the subject of money came up among the players. Kenny Buttrey—very much in demand as a Nashville session man—informed Elliot Roberts that he needed $100,000 to tour. Jack Nitzsche found out and relayed the news to Tim Drummond, who talked Jack into telling Neil that the rest of the band wanted the same.
“Of course, I did it with the worst timing—in the middle of rehearsal and a six-pack of beer,” Nitzsche said glumly. “I was drunk as a skunk. Neil said, ‘We’ll talk about that later.’ Instead of having manners, I made him name it. Oh God, Neil got so pissed off. ‘Okay, you got a hundred thousand each—are ya happy now? Is that gonna make you play better?’ I don’t think things ever recovered after that.”
My least favorite record is Time Fades Away. I think it’s the worst record I ever made—but as a documentary of what was happening to me, it was a great record. I was onstage and I was playing all these songs that nobody had heard before, recording them, and I didn’t have the right band. It was just an uncomfortable tour. It was supposed to be this big deal—I just had Harvest out, and they booked me into ninety cities. I felt like a product, and I had this band of a
ll-star musicians that couldn’t even look at each other. It was a total joke.
—Interview with Dave Ferrin, 1987
“I’m singin’ this borrowed tune / I took from the Rolling Stones / Alone in this empty room / Too wasted to write my own.” Written in a Wisconsin hotel around the start of the Time Fades Away tour and performed solo on piano and harmonica, the barren “Borrowed Tune” set the vibe for things to come.
The first show was at Milwaukee Auditorium on January 5, 1973, a gray winter day. A terrified Linda Ronstadt was the opening act for the grueling three-month tour. Adding to her discomfort was a drunken, taunting Jack Nitzsche, who, suffering from his own stage fright, would make things interesting for everyone. “I was an asshole,” he said, crediting Neil for putting up with him. “Anyone else would’ve had me thrown off, beaten up or killed.” *
The band traveled in an old Electra prop jet. Ben Keith’s wife, Linda, a redheaded former stewardess, roamed the aisles waiting on the band. “You could do anything on that plane you wanted. Anything,” said assistant engineer Denny Purcell. “There was some really incredible dope people were smokin’, the air you could hardly see through, and the door to the pilot was open. I got to thinking, ‘Man, if those guys are as stoned as I am, I’m scared.’”
Much of the smoke emanated from Big Red, a homemade hookah built from an aquarium pump. “We called it, ‘Gettin’ the wagons in a circle,’” said Drummond. “It was like puttin’ your mouth over the exhaust pipe of a car.” Between the pot, pills, booze and coke, the band was blotto much of the time. “Halfway through the tour, after a crazy number of nights, I remember Ben coming in and saying, ‘What key is “Don’t Be Denied”?’” said Mazer. “This was a song he’d been playing for three months.”
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