Crazy Eyes

Crazy Eyes is the fifth studio album (and sixth album overall) released by the American country rock band Poco. Released in 1973, Crazy Eyes was the album with which founding member Richie Furay ended his original tenure with the group. Overview Crazy Eyes, recorded at RCA Victor Studio (Los Angeles) during May 21–27, 1973, was the second of three Poco albums produced by Jack Richardson. Richardson's first collaboration with Poco -- A Good Feelin' to Know (1972) -- had been considered the band's most viable bid for mainstream stardom to date but proved a commercial disappointment. After that failure, and while Crazy Eyes was in its planning stage, Asylum Records CEO David Geffen had offered Furay the opportunity to co-lead the Souther–Hillman–Furay Band; Furay was receptive to Geffen's offer but opted to record a final album with Poco and kept silent about his departure until the album was nearly completed. Poco included songs from the Crazy Eyes sessions in the setlist for the tour the group played during the summer of 1973, and Furay ended his original tenure as a member with the band's concert at Worcester Polytech (Mass) on September 4, 1973, eleven days before the release of Crazy Eyes. (Furay would have a second tenure with Poco in 1988–89, recording the 1989 album Legacy as a group member.) The title track of Crazy Eyes was written by Richie Furay about Gram Parsons in 1969, when Parsons was in the Flying Burrito Brothers. According to Furay, he and Parsons "had lived across the street from each other in Greenwich Village in 1964." Furay himself gave credit for the iconic 9+-minute recording of the song to "Jack Richardson and Bob Ezrin, who did the orchestration. I just had a little folk song and the next thing I knew – wow, it was a whole production that stayed true to the original intent of the song." The album also features Furay's rendition of the Parsons composition "Brass Buttons", which Furay said that Parsons had originally taught him back in Greenwich Village.