Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

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, Molina remembers how the group ended up collaborating with Young: Young recalls the atmosphere in an interview with J.C. Costa: "We got together, started rehearsing and we went right in. That whole album was like catching the group just as they were getting to know each other. We didn't even know what we sounded like until we heard the album." Young credits the album's unique sound to the guitar playing of Whitten and the interplay between the two. He explains in the biography Shakey: ==Songs==

The album contains several songs that became standards in Young's performance repertoire. "Cinnamon Girl", "Down by the River", and "Cowgirl in the Sand" were written in a single day while Young had a 103 °F (39.5 °C) fever. Young explains in his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace: The song "Cinnamon Girl" is in D modal tuning, a tuning Young first used with Stephen Stills on "Bluebird". Young explains his relationship with the tuning with Nick Kent for Mojo magazine in December 1995: "Stills and I discovered this D modal tuning at around the same time in '66, I think... We'd play in that tuning together a lot. This was when 'ragas' were happening and D modal made it possible to have that 'droning' sound going on all the time, that's where it started. Only I took it to the next level which is how 'The Loner' (released on Young's first solo album) and 'Cinnamon Girl' happened. You make a traditional chord shape and any finger that doesn't work, you just lift it up and let the string just ring. I've used that tuning throughout my career right up to today. You can hear it on everything from 'Fuckin' Up' on Ragged Glory to 'War of Man' and 'One of These Days' on Harvest Moon. Lots of songs”. In the Decade liner notes, Young states that he wrote "Cinnamon Girl" "for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me thru Phil Ochs eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife." He further explains in interview for the biography Shakey: "I remember this one girl, Jean "Monte" Ray; she was the singing partner of Jim, Jim and Jean, a folk duo. Had a record out called "People World," and she did a lot of dancing with finger cymbals. She was really great. Might’ve been her. Good chance. I kinda had a crush on her for a while. Moved nice. She was real musical, soulful. There’s images in there that have to do with Jean and there’s images that have to do with other people." "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" had been attempted for Young's previous, debut album. Its lyrics express dissatisfaction with the pace of showbusiness life. "Round and Round" is the oldest song on the album. Young recorded the song as a solo acoustic demo while a member of Buffalo Springfield. The demo appears on the 2001 Buffalo Springfield box set. "Down by the River" has become one of Young's signature songs, and, like Cinnamon Girl, one of his most frequently performed in concert. Its lyrics tell a tale reminiscent of "Hey Joe," that of a man who murders his lover. In a 1970 interview with Robert Greenfield, Young suggests otherwise: "There's no real murder in it. It's about blowing your thing with a chick. See, now, in the beginning, it's 'I'll be on your side, you be on mine.' It could be anything. Then the chick thing comes in. Then at the end, it's a whole other thing. It's a plea; a desperation cry." The lyrics to "The Losing End (When You're On)" are about the experience of finding out that your romantic partner has moved on. "Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)" is dedicated to The Rockets, the six-piece band that evolved into Young's collaborators Crazy Horse. Rocket violinist Bobby Notkoff plays on the track. Young expresses his feelings about breaking up The Rockets in the 1997 film Year of the Horse: "I asked those three guys to play with me as Crazy Horse. And I thought the Rockets could go on, too. But the truth is, I probably did steal them away from the other band, which was a good band. But only because what we did, we went somewhere. What they were doing, it didn't go anywhere at that time, so this thing moved, this thing took off, and the other thing didn't. But the other thing could have gone on, I guess. That's the hardest part, is the guilt of the trail of destruction that I've left behind me." "Cowgirl in the Sand" attempts to convey an emotion, a moment in time without being too specific, so that the listener can relate to the song and free-associate with it. Young explains to the audience in a 2007 concert: "These songs, some of them are like they're antiques like me and the rest of us. But they're really just about people like you and me, and feelings. And you only feel it for like a second and then you write it down. After that you don't walk with that all the time. That's why the songs live. Some of them live longer than others." He explains further in Shakey: "The words to 'Cowgirl in the Sand' are very important because you can free associate with them. Some words won't let you do that, so you're locked into the specific fuckin' thing the guy's singin' about. This way it could be anything. The thing is, as long as there's a thread that carries through it, then when you imagine what it's about, there's gonna be a thread that takes you to the end, too. You can follow your thought all the way through if you happen to have one, or if you don't, you realize it doesn't matter. ==Recording==

The album represents a break from the recording methods of Young's work with Buffalo Springfield and his debut album, in which layers of overdubs are used to create each track. Instead, the songs on the album were largely recorded live, without overdubs. Young explains to DJ B. Mitchell Reid: "That’s when a change came over me, right then. I started just tryin' to be real instead of fabricate something. Since then I've just been striving to get realer and realer on record. As in more real." He continues in Shakey: "'Down by the River' was really edited. We got the vibe, but it was just too long and sometimes it fell apart, so we just took the shitty parts out. Made some radical cuts in there; I mean, you can hear 'em. But Danny just played so cool on that. He made the whole band sound good. Me and Billy and Ralph sounded like Crazy Horse right away. All I had to do was come up with the songs and the riffs. I started realizing how long we could jam. It was fantastic." The band would return to Wally Heider on March 20 and record "Cinnamon Girl," "Losing End" and "Running Dry". "Cinnamon Girl" features handclaps, inspired by the 1963 single "My Boyfriend's Back" by The Angels. According to Young, "people say that it is a solo with only one note but, in my head, each one of those notes is different. The more you get into it, the more you can hear the differences.” He elaborates in a 1991 interview: "The same note on two strings. The wang bar made every one sound different. When people say 'one-note solo,' I listen to it and every one sounds different to me. It sounds like it's all different in that one place. As you're going in farther, you’re hearing all the differences, but if you get back, it's all one." On March 23, the band convened with singer Robin Lane at Sunwest Recording Studio in Hollywood to record the final song for the album. "Round and Round" was performed live in the studio for the album to achieve a more authentic sound. Young would explain in an April 1970 interview for Rolling Stone: "There were three people sitting like you and me, and then another, and six microphone booms coming down, absolutely stoned out of our minds in the studio, singing a song with the guitars, three guitars goin' at once. If you listen to it, "Round And Round" is one of my favorites on the second album, because ... the echo from the acoustic guitar on the right echoes back on the left, and the echo from the guitar on the left comes back on the right and it makes the guitars go like this: one line starts goin' like da-da-daow, and then you can hear like one voice comes in and out, and that's 'cause Danny was rockin' back and forth. Those things are not featured, they're just in it, you know, and that's what I'm trying to get at. I think they last longer that way. Doing it live and singing and playing all at once just makes it sound more real." Singer Robin Lane was caught off guard that her performance on the song became the master take. "I thought we were rehearsing. I didn’t even know what I was singing. Neil was the original punk rocker." ==Release==

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was originally released on vinyl by Reprise on May 14, 1969. It was first released on CD in December 1987. A remastered version was released on HDCD-encoded CD and digital download on July 14, 2009, as part of the Neil Young Archives Original Release Series. The remastered CD exists both as a standalone album and as Disc 2 of a 4-CD box set Official Release Series Discs 1–4, released in the US in 2009 and Europe in 2012. Digital high-resolution files of the album are also available via the Neil Young Archives website. The front cover is a grainy photo depicting Young leaning against a tree with his dog Winnipeg at his feet. The photographer was Frank Bez. ==Promotion==

Young would tour with Crazy Horse upon completion of the album, playing various dates in North America in May and June 1969. From August to December, Young would join Crosby, Stills and Nash for their tour of North America promoting their debut album. The group would perform at Woodstock and the Big Sur Folk Festival and perform "Down by the River" on ABC Television. In February and March 1970, Young would once again tour with Crazy Horse, performing the bulk of the album in the setlist. Performances at the Fillmore East with Miles Davis opening would see release in 2006 as Live at the Fillmore East. ==Reception==

Upon its release, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere received generally favorable reviews from critics. Bruce Miroff of Rolling Stone wrote a favorable review, describing Young's voice as "perpetually mournful, without being maudlin or pathetic. It hints at a world in which sorrow underlies everything [...] because that world is recognizable to most of us, Young's singing is often strangely moving." Despite stating that "in several respects [the album] falls short of his previous effort" and that "the lyricism of the first album can only be found in faint traces," he concluded that the album "offers ample rewards. Young's music partially makes up for its lack of grace by its energy and its assurance." Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice that "Young is a strange artist and I am not all the way into him yet, but this record is haunting". The original review was printed with a grade of "B+", but Christgau later said he would have changed it to an "A−". In a retrospective review in Rolling Stone, Greg Kot called the record "raw, rushed, energised", and the band's interplay "at once primitive and abstract", a "gloriously spontaneous sound" that "would endure, not only as a blueprint for Young...but as an influence on countless bands." William Ruhlmann of music database website AllMusic said of the album, "released only four months after his first [album], [it] was nearly a total rejection of that polished effort." He noted that "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" were "useful as frames on which to hang the extended improvisations Young played with Crazy Horse and to reflect the ominous tone of his singing". He concluded that the album "set a musical pattern Young and his many musical descendants have followed ever since [...] and a lot of contemporary bands were playing music clearly influenced by it". In 2013, the album was ranked 398 on NMEs list of the '500 Greatest Albums of all time'. In 2018, the album won the Polaris Heritage Prize Audience Award in the 1960–1975 category. ==Track listing==

All tracks are written by Neil Young. Track timings are from the original 1969 vinyl release, catalogue number RS 6349. == Personnel ==

• Neil Young – guitar, lead vocals Crazy Horse • Danny Whitten – guitar, harmony vocals, co-lead vocal on "Cinnamon Girl" • Billy Talbot – bass guitar • Ralph Molina – drums, harmony vocals Additional musicians • Bobby Notkoff – violin on "Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)" • Robin Lane – guitar and harmony vocal on "Round and Round" Technical • David Briggs – engineer, producer • Neil Young – producer • Henry Saskowski – engineer • Kendal Pacios – engineer ==Charts==

Weekly charts Singles Year End Chart == Certifications ==