Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE

Released: 14th May 1969

Cinnamon Girl

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Round & Round (It Won't Be Long)

Down by the River

The Losing End (When You're On)

Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)

Cowgirl in the Sand

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the second studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young, released in May 1969 on Reprise Records, catalogue number RS 6349. His first with longtime backing band Crazy Horse, it emerged as a sleeper hit amid Young's contemporaneous success with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, ultimately peaking at number 34 on the US Billboard 200 in August 1970 during a 98-week chart stay.^[7] It has been certified platinum by the RIAA.

The album is on the list of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.^[8] In 2003, the album was ranked number 208 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and at number 407 in the 2020 edition.^[9] Additionally, it was voted number 124 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).^[10]

The album is Young's first with longtime collaborators Crazy Horse. Guitarist, songwriter and singer Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina had already been performing and recording together as The Rockets. They met Young through the Laurel Canyon music scene and started playing together. In a February 2021 interview, drummer Ralph Molina remembers how the group ended up collaborating with Young:

From Wikipedia

My plan with the Leonard, Joni and Young project was to purchase the albums on vinyl. This was drived by two things:

1. Neil and Joni had decided that Spotify was not for them and withdrew all their studio albums from the streaming service.

2. I got a new record player.

However, this approach did also serve to slow me down to such an extent that the decision is now over a year old and I’m only about 6 albums in. At some point last year, Neil and Joni relented and all that content was quietly returned to Spotify, so I am now in a position to crack on, even if I need to make some minor modifications to the content that stemmed from the vinyl-buying strategy.

At the time of writing (March 2025) Young has just announced he’ll be performing at Hyde Park in London in July with Van Morrison and Yusuf/Cat Stevens on the same bill (I hesitate to say they’re ‘supporting’ him, despite him being at the top of the bill - Van, who I am sure is an avid reader, would probably get the right hump). Young will be backed up by ‘The Chrome Hearts’, which brings me to this album, which is the first featuring Crazy Horse.

It’s striking quite how definitively Neil Young this album is. It’s his second album and yet we get hit with ‘Cinnamon Girl’, ‘Down By The River’ and ‘Cowgirl In The Sand’, all of which stand a good chance of an airing in the summer of 2025. ‘Down By The River’ and ‘Cowgirl in the Sand’ both showcase something I like about Young in that they’re 9-10 minute songs with an extended guitar mid-section but it never gets tedious or outstays it’s welcome. He seems to have nailed the long-form country-rock song in a way that the prog-rockers who came later and wrote complex epics of shifting themes couldn’t hope to emulate.

I guess that as I proceed, the Crazy Horse albums will emerge has having their own style which is distinct from the truly solo albums, probably heavier and, at risk of stating the obvious, more band-like. I know that as I approach the early nineties and Ragged Glory and Sleeps With Angels come into view I’ll be moving into some of his best work with them. The Rockets, referenced in the song ‘Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets), were the band that gave rise to Crazy Horse.

I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that this second album is quite so accomplished. Young had been plying his trade for quite a while in Buffalo Springfield and knew all about being a successful rock act but it’s rare that an artist from this era produces what amounts to a classic on their second attempt.