Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: 50 Years Of Neil Young & Crazy Horse

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Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: 50 Years Of Neil Young & Crazy Horse

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 (Photo by Dick Barnatt/Redferns/Getty Images)

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of Neil Young’s classic second solo album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The subject of mixed reviews at the time, the album nonetheless gave Neil his first chart success under his own name. And it’s since become a classic on the back of the three all-time Young classics, it contains “Down By The River”, “Cinnamon Girl” and “Cowgirl In the Sand”. IYLOS remembers these classic tracks – including covers by Smashing Pumpkins, Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs, Norah Jones and Type O Negative - and looks at the enduring influence of the band that came together to back Young on the album, Crazy Horse

50 years used to be an impossibly long time in rock music. In 1969, rock music was still in its infancy; it’s unimaginable now to think that Elvis’s first records for Sun Records were had been released just 15 short years previous. Or that the Beatles first appearance on Ed Sullivan - the seismic event in regards to spurning the next generation of rockers into action in the States - was only 5 years past.   

50 years ago, Canadian singer-songwriter-guitarist Neil Young was 23 years old. He was already the veteran of a couple of bands, including one who’d made a stamp on the chants and an indelible impression on American music – Buffalo Springfield. While sharing the spotlight in Springfield with Stephen Stills (and Richie Furay who would later form popular country-rickers Poco), Young had already given the world a handful of his own classic tracks including “Mr. Soul” and “Ohio”. Buffalo Springfield had split as they were still on the ascent in 1968, and Young saw the year out with the release of his first album.

 

everybody knows this is nowhere

Young’s self-titled album was critically well received but did not chart nor produce a hit single.  After tinkering with the mix and reissuing it, he followed it up May 14, 1969, with Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which showed a new approach. Whereas the first album was mostly what would be expected by a group’s singer/songwriter going solo – it was primarily a tranquil and lyrical release – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere saw Young step back into rock in a big way, with his new band of rocking renegades,  Crazy Horse, by his side.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere set the template for Neil Young & Crazy Norse; a template that is used every time Young and group reconvene. The sprawling and noisy “Down By The River” and the crunching “Cinnamon Girl” wound the guitars up and let the electricity flow...

Oddly neither of these songs, which are today amongst the songs that Young has played the most over the years and ones that even the most casual of fan knows well, were mentioned in key contemporary reviews of the album at the time. Indeed Rolling Stone magazine favoured the previous record, saying “Young’s new material is a little disappointing” and that “The most interesting tracks on the album are Running Dry and Cowgirl in the Sand." At least they got one point right...

“Cowgirl in the Sand” is the other perennial on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and another sprawling epic. Young wrote in the liner notes to his 1977 collection Decade that he composed both “Cowgirl...” and “Down by the River” while “lying in bed sweating” with a 103 temperature. And it actually sounds like it; these songs sound like fever dreams.

Of course, it would be remiss not to mention the individuals who made up Crazy Horse originally. Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina on bass and drums respectively have remained at the core of Crazy Horse since the beginning. The other member of Crazy Horse at the time was guitarist Danny Whitten, who famously died of a heroin overdose in 1972 after inspiring Neil to write “The Needle and The Damage Done”. Whitten also fronted the band on their 1971 album without Neil – simply titled Crazy Horse – which also featured a young Nils Lofgren and veteran arranger and keyboard player Jack Nitzsche as band members. Crazy Horse features the gorgeous Whitten ballad “I Don’t Want to Talk About It,” which music fans of a certain age will no doubt remember as a smash hit for Rod Stewart.  When Young first met Talbot, Molina and Whitten they were members of a band called The Rockets who’d released one unsuccessful album.

Since their appearance on this album Everybody Know This is Nowhere, Crazy Horse have come to define not only a particular style of Neil Young music but a particular kind of rock music. The band’s name is synonymous with guitar music that is loud, loose and free; they came up for a great name for the style with the name of their 1990 album with Young, Ragged Glory. Young’s 1979 album with Crazy Horse, Rust Never Sleeps, is perhaps the greatest example of the style (on the electric side at least). Itself likely inspired by the energy of punk (“The King is gone but he’s not forgotten/This is the story of Johnny Rotten”), Rust Never Sleeps created a whole new generation of Young fans, and inspired an ongoing succession of bands, from The Dream Syndicate to Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr through to Pearl Jam and beyond to the likes of Wilco and My Morning Jacket.

Let’s finish our short tribute to this classic album with four covers of classic Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere material; from grungers Smashing Pumpkins, power-popper Matthew Sweet with the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, Norah Jones with her little-known all-female rock outfit Puss N Boots,  and, somewhat bizarrely, goth-metal faves Type O Negative. 

Smashing Pumpkins 

Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs 

Norah Jones Puss N Boots 

Type O Negative 

Listen to Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere on Spotify

Listen to Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere on Apple Music

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