Tag: Crazy Horses

Please don’t disown me after this…but a Led Zeppelin and Osmond’s story is too hard to pass up. I have played this song to people without telling them who did it…none of them guessed it. 

My sister would aggravate me when I was 4 or 5 by playing their records repeatedly. All I could remember was looking at that album and being blinded by that bright glaring smile they all had. So this post is for my sister who probably would not have liked this particular song…but that is probably why it stuck with me. 

This is a comment on YouTube about this song “This is what happens when Mormons finally have caffeine.“

I hate to admit it…but this song is not that bad. The Osmonds had this song banned in South Africa, not because of their wild image but because the word Horse meant heroin there. The keyboard at the intro with the slide sound was a YP-30 Yamaha organ with a portmento slide. 

A few years after this song…The Osmonds were invited to see Led Zeppelin at Earls Court by the band. They went backstage and met Zeppelin’s family. The Osmonds even used their sound system when they played Earls Court ourselves the following night.

I have to admit…it’s a pretty damn hard song. It peaked at #14 on the Billboard 100, #2 in the UK, and #6 in Canada in 1972. Hmmm wonder how close we came to a Black Sabbath – Osmonds tour in the early seventies?

There was a positive message with the song…it was an environmental song about pollution… an allegory for mankind’s destructive tendencies. As much as I hate to…I’ll give them their due. They stepped out of the teenybopper box they were in and tried something different.

Jay Osmond: I remember we went in a day early because we were using Led Zepplin’s sound equipment. And so we went in to watch them and those guys were so fun and cool. We went backstage and played frisbee with their kids and then they invited us to come up and play with them on ‘Stair Way To Heaven’. And I’ll never forget, The Osmonds and Led Zepplin on the same stage.

Merrill Osmond:  “Before that, my brothers and I had been what’s now called a boy band… all our songs were chosen for us by the record company. But now, having been successful, we wanted to freak out and make our own music. We were rehearsing in a basement one day when Wayne started playing this heavy rock riff. I came up with a melody and Alan got the chords. Within an hour, we had the song. I had always been the lead singer, but I sang Crazy Horses with Jay. The line “What a show, there they go, smoking up the sky” had to be sung higher, so I did that and Jay did the verses because his voice was growlier, and this track was heavier than anything we’d ever done.”

Donny Osmond: “Ozzy Osbourne actually told me that ‘Crazy Horses’ is one of his favorite rock and roll songs. “The problem is my teenybopper career was selling like crazy and it overshadowed anything we did as a rock and roll band.”

Donny Osmond: We had a wall of Marshalls in the studio. It was so loud that you couldn’t even walk in the studio, so we had to play the organ from the control room. My brother Alan actually played it on the record. I played it live. But the secret to it was a wah-wah pedal. We opened the wah-wah just enough to get that really harsh kind of a piercing sound, but it was the loudness of the Marshalls that got us that sound. And then we doubled it. That was the secret to that sound.”

This is a song off of that album…they borrowed a Zeppelin riff for this one. 

Crazy Horses

There’s a message floatin’ in the air.
Crazy horses ridin’ everywhere.
It’s a warning, it’s in every tongue.
Gotta stop them crazy horses on the run.

What a show, there they go smokin’ up the sky, yeah.
Crazy horses all got riders, and they’re you and I.
Crazy horses (repeat 3 times)

Never stop and they never die.
They just keep on puffin’ how they multiply.
Crazy horses, will they never halt?
If they keep on movin’ then it’s all our fault.

What a show, there they go smokin’ up the sky, yeah.
Crazy horses all got riders, and they’re you and I.
Crazy horses (repeat 3 times)

So take a good look around,
See what they’ve done, what they’ve done —
They’ve done–
They’ve done–
They’ve done–
They’ve done.

Crazy horses.