Young’s drummer follows own beat

SYLVIE BELMOND/Acorn Newspapers STILL ROCKIN’ AFTER ALL THESE YEARS—Ralph Molina, right, spends time with his grandson, Joshua, 10, at his Agoura Hills home. Molina is the drummer for Crazy Horse, a band that has played with Neil Young for more than 35 years. The fun isn’t over yet for Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, 58, who has played with Neil Young for more than 35 years. As one of the band’s three founding members, the Agoura Hills resident played his part in numerous hit songs with his forthright drumming style and steady pace.

Even after three decades, Young and Molina have managed to stay together. Crazy Horse still performs live and a new album may be on the way, Molina said.

The next recording project will probably be a sequel to Greendale, a musical novel depicting the life of a fictitious family in a small all-American town, but everything changes, so nothing is set yet, Molina said.

“Greendale is a merger of music and film that resonates with themes of idealism through a changing of the generational guard with some small-town blues,” said early reviews.

“The concerts were different from most. It was cool because it took the audience away from us and they enjoyed a visual show,” Molina said.

Molina enjoys working on individual project with friends. He writes and composes songs during his time off with the band and likes to complete projects before he moves on to something new, he said.

The drummer’s career enabled him to perform worldwide and mingle with musical greats such as Paul McCartney, Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan, but now his interest is closer to home where he enjoys spending time with his loved ones, he said.

As he sat by the pool at his home of 25 years, Molina was proudly watching his 10-year-old grandson Joshua and prompting the boy to dive for pennies. He has been married to wife Barbara for 30 years and credits the lasting relationship to mutual understanding. Barbara is a hypnotherapist in Thousand Oaks and the couple have one son, Michael Angelo, Joshua’s father.

But music will always stay in the foreground for this veteran musician who has lived the rockand-roll life and survived it. Molina has seen the devastations caused by drug abuse and over time he learned to stay on track and away from the temptations of drugs, he said.

The successful and long-lasting career wasn’t easy to achieve at first, but Molina and his fellow band members persisted. They struggled for about six years until they developed into a lucrative band.

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changed in some ways, but not in others, said Molina. “Back then, we were just stepping through life and we let everything fall into place through determination.”

He added that the challenge is the same for today’s aspiring musicians. They should stay together and with persistence, something will happen for them.

Now business is driving the music, as opposed to the music driving the business, and the Internet makes it harder to sell CDs, Molina said.

The singer, who learned the drums in his late teens, also credits his success and longevity in the hectic music business to the solid foundation his family gave him. “My upbringing kept me on a straight path,” Molina said.

The son of a Puerto Rican father and a Spanish mother, Molina grew up in Manhattan’s lower East Side during the 1950s.

“I used to walk around singing a lot,” Molina said. But sports were also a big part of his young life as stabilizing force. “I thank God I played a lot of sports and stayed away from gangs.”

When the family moved to Florida, Molina started to sing at school events and his affection for music grew. He formed a doo-wop vocal group called Danny and The Memories with future Crazy Horse members Danny Whitten and Billy Talbot.

The trio only performed vocals, but when they relocated to Los Angeles in 1966, the members began to play instruments and Molina ended up behind a drum set because he was agile, he said.

The band was renamed The Rockets, with Whitten at the guitar and Talbot at the bass. Bobby Notkoff, violin, and guitarists Leon and George Whitsell joined in. They recorded one album in 1968 and met Neil Young shortly after he left Buffalo Springfield to launch a solo career.

“He was looking for a rhythm section,” said Molina, so The Rockets jammed with Young at the renowned Whisky A Go-Go and they have performed together on and off ever since.

The band contributed to many of Young’s hit songs, including “Down by the River,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and “Cinnamon Girl.”

The band and Young later released the 1969 classic “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” and The Rockets signed on with Young full-time under the new name Crazy Horse.

During the extended breaks between performances with Young, Crazy Horse released a self-titled debut album in 1971. The record failed to equal the success of the band’s work with Young but it proved that Crazy Horse, with guest guitarist Nils Lofgren and producer/pianist Jack Nitzsche, was not merely Young’s backing band.

When Whitten became addicted to heroin and left the band in 1972, he opened a revolving door for potential replacements as Young’s career continued to thrive. Young wrote “The Needle and the Damage Done” for Whitten, who died from an overdose soon after he was asked to leave the band.

In the wake of several druginduced deaths around them, Molina and Talbot contributed to Young’s darker “Tonight’s the Night” recording sessions. They also toured with The Santa Monica Players, but Crazy Horse didn’t reemerge as a band until Frank “Poncho” Sampedro joined in late 1973.

The new trio forged a musical alliance, writing songs and performing regularly through most of 1974. Young re-established his connection with Crazy Horse thereafter.

Over the next 30-plus years, Crazy Horse and Young created many hit songs and Molina isn’t thinking about retirement any time soon. He’s still ready for new projects and enjoys a quiet life between the gigs, he said, with a glimmer in his deep blue eyes.