STEEL-DRIVING MAN

As Crazy Horse drop their latest, World Record, Nils Lofgren reflects on his tenure with Neil Young, his new tour with Bruce, and his latest obsession: the pedal steel.

- GARY GRAFF

IT'S EARLY barely past sunrise in Nils Lofgren's area of Arizona, not far from Scottsdale. But the veteran multi-instrumentalist is awake and into his day, accompanied by Rose, the 95-pound mixed-breed Lofgren and his wife, Amy, rescued last year.

She and the couple's 14-year-old Chihuahua, Outlaw Pete, meanwhile, are still asleep.

"I like getting up super early, sometimes in the dark," Lofgren, 72, says. "When I'm on the road it's different; I can't sleep because of the performance adrenalin. But at home, when I'm able to get a little sleep, I'm an early riser."

Lofgren isn't one to waste any of that time, either. He's been a recording artist since he was a teenager in the band Grin - which got its break thanks to the patronage of Neil Young and his co-producer, the late David Briggs, who made Lofgren part of Crazy Horse for 1970's After the Gold Rush. Lofgren is now in the midst of his third tour of duty with Crazy Horse, back in the saddle since 2018 and Frank "Poncho" Sampedro's retirement from the group. He's made two pandemic projects with the band: Barn, recorded June 2020 in, as the title indicates, a converted barn, dubbed Studio in the Clubs, in Colorado's Rocky Mountains; and World Record, released this past November, made with Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La studio in Malibu.

Lofgren has also logged a solo career that he began with a self-titled effort in 1975 and has been part of the E Street Band since replacing Little Steven Van Zandt in 1984, playing on eight of Springsteen's studio albums. He served tours of duty with Ringo Starr's first two All-Starr Bands, co-wrote with the late Lou Reed on 1979's The Bells (along with songs that became part of Lofgren's 2019 album, Blue With Lou), and he was the lead guitarist on onetime Foreigner frontman Lou Gramm's first solo album, Ready or Not, in 1987.