Saturday, June 4

June 4, 2016 - Neil Young - Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown (1975)


Written and sung by the late great Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, this is a song about scoring heroin. It was recorded in live in 1970 and appears on the 1975 Neil Young album Tonight's the Night, which is itself a collection of songs of raw grief that came about after the tragic overdoses of Danny and roadie Bruce Berry.

I love the ramshackle catchy power of this tune. The dual guitars that leap out from the get go and the little riffs at the end of each line. It is a joyful but desperate appeal to go downtown in order to score...'let's go let's go'...come on, man, we gotta get it done. Really sad, the illness of a junkie, just living for the next high.

It's going to be 100 degrees F in Portland today. I don't want to go downtown. I want to stay in my cool basement. Glad I don't have to work today!






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