Weekly Neil: When You Dance, I Can Really Love

While the lonely mingle with circumstance

Neil and Crazy Horse cut “When You Dance, I Can Really Love” on April 6, 1970, five months before it saw release on After The Gold Rush. They recorded two takes that day. The best-known one made it onto the album with a length of 3:45, but its outro is noticeably shortened. Just as a mildly crunching guitar — belonging to either Neil or Danny Whitten — begins to fly on top of an anxious piano riff from Jack Nitzsche, the track fades out. If you know Neil, it’s clear this could have continued for 10 minutes. But the limits of what can actually fit on a vinyl record necessitated a fadeout.

This crew laid down another version of the song that day, though. It sounds mostly the same, though a note on the Archive explains it features a longer ending jam: “At 4:05, this version is 20 seconds longer than the original at 3:45, which was edited to make it fit on vinyl. The jam at the end is complete on this version.”

That extra 20 seconds, while not much, does add a certain mood to this one. The childlike quality of the feeling that seems to paralyze Neil’s language (“When You Dance, I Can Really Love” almost seems like a phrase a non-native English speaker would utter) translates to some pretty but ultimately chaotic music. The band’s not as intense as they can be, the soft harmonies provide a pillow, and because it appears on the largely cozy singer-songwriter affair After The Gold Rush, “When You Dance” doesn’t quite hit with force. But Neil’s all twisted up. “Let me come over,” he begs. “I know you know.” He separates himself from the lonely who mingle with circumstance. That’s for folks who can’t love. But when you dance, he can. He can really love.

I’ve talked at length in past editions about how Neil’s fuzzy guitar nourishes me, which is why it shouldn’t be surprising that later live versions of this song absolute rip. “Let’s play some rock and roll!” Neil yells after finishing that final buzzsaw chord on 1978’s Live Rust, right before launching into “Sedan Delivery.” Listening to the After The Gold Rush version, though, does highlight an important musical element: The song begins with a D major chord (happy) but ends on D minor (sad). If you choose to read into this, you might intuit that Neil’s beckons throughout may be more sinister than the arrangement initially lets on. He won’t be lonely. He’s got something to tell you. His feelings are volcanic movements, like growing mountains or rolling rivers.

Of course, the music could simply be heightening the (melo)drama — he’s in love, so let him come over, would you?

“Here’s another one that sounds just like the last one,” Neil announces at the top of the 1996 Crazy Horse live album Year Of The Horse. “It’s all one song.” For this song in particular, it’s hard to refute. The hallmarks are there: distorted D tuning (“Ohio,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Fuckin’ Up,” et al), Crazy Horse harmonies, a sense of longing. But what makes “When You Dance, I Can Really Love” so memorable for me is that clumsy, ungainly title. It conveys urgency better than a lot of what the music is actually presenting. I love it when Neil replicates the vocal melody with his watery guitar during an extended solo on that Year Of The Horse recording. He’s expressing his affection in a difference language. Do you understand him yet?

I want to come back around to Danny Whitten, whom I mentioned above. He didn’t stay in Crazy Horse very long because he overdosed and died in November 1972 after Neil had to excuse him from sessions and tour work. Whitten’s death in part sent Neil into a nosedive of grief and chaos that yielded some of the most undeniably poignant art he ever made. But here, two years before that, Whitten’s harmonies also help give “When You Dance” their urgency.

“‘When You Dance’ is probably the last record with Danny that we played together on,” Neil recalled in Jimmy McDonough’s 2002 Shakey biography. “Danny kinda got himself together, did the overdubs. He wasn’t lookin’ too good at that point.”

Yet in his own book, Waging Heavy Peace, published 12 years later, perhaps with the added benefit of the passing of time, Neil writes more openly and positively about the experience. “We rerecorded a lot of the chorus vocals with Danny singing, and they were a lot better than what we had before. It was great having Danny back! It really made the record better, and it felt so good to play with Danny again.”

Something that alway struck me is this song’s placement in the After The Gold Rush tracklist. It arrives late on side two, sandwiched between “Birds,” a lovely piano number about letting someone go, and “I Believe In You,” the kind of saccharine coffee-house acoustic track that Neil would explore deeply on Harvest before sharply pivoting away from. To break them up, almost like a wake-up call, there’s “When You Dance,” a good reminder of how sometimes all Neil needs is a D chord and a feeling. Songcraft is essential, and few can even string together a couple verses and a chorus like Neil. But when he plugs in and lets loose, that remains the best goddamn thing in the world to me. I only wish he’d have let loose a bit more on After The Gold Rush.

“When You Dance, I Can Really Love,” written by Neil Young, from After The Gold Rush (1970)

Neil Young: guitar, vocals
Danny Whitten: guitar, vocals
Jack Nitzsche: piano
Billy Talbot: bass
Ralph Molina: drums, vocals
Nils Lofgren: vocals

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