Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere |
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Released: May 14, 1969 Peak: 34 US, -- UK, 32 CN, -- AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 2.40 US, 0.60 UK, 3.50 world (includes US and UK), 5.88 EAS Genre: classic rock |
Tracks:Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 40:29 The Players:
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Rating: 4.326 out of 5.00 (average of 20 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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A Change in Sound“Neil Young’s second solo album, released only four months after his first, was nearly a total rejection of that polished effort.” AM “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was breathtakingly different…both for Young and for rock in general, and it reversed his commercial fortunes, becoming a moderate hit.” AMCrazy Horse“The difference was that, while Neil Young was a solo effort, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere marked the beginning of Young’s recording association with Crazy Horse, the trio of Danny Whitten (guitar), Ralph Molina (drums), and Billy Talbot (bass) that Young had drawn from the struggling local Los Angeles group the Rockets.” AM They “hadn’t been together for more than eight weeks when they cut this album.” 500They “quickly cut a set of loose, guitar-heavy rock songs…that redefined him as a rock & roll artist.” AM “Young lowered his voice from the near-falsetto employed on his debut to a more expressive range, and he sang with greater confidence.” AM “It’s down-home hippie-grunge with the feel of a jam session conducted by master jammers.” 500 “The songs were deliberately underwritten and sketchy as compositions, their lyrics more suggestive than complete, but that made them useful as frames on which to hang the extended improvisations.” AM David BriggsYoung did retain David Briggs as producer; he’d previously “assisted Jack Nitzsche on the overdub-heavy Neil Young. By contrast, Everybody Knows… embraced Briggs’ great love of live recording, a method that perfectly suited Young and Crazy Horse’s spontaneous, raw, epic, country rock.” RDThe SongsThe album’s “crunch was never better displayed than on Cinnamon Girl.” RD The “starts off the guitar attack” KN on the album as the opening song. It features “overloaded guitars [and] bruising modal harmonies from the speakers.” RD It “was Young’s first big solo single, three minutes of crunching distortion featuring a one-note guitar solo for the ages.” 500 Young said the latter was “the closest thing Crazy Horse had to a hit.” 500“Elsewhere, Young essays a frayed Americana on the loping The Losing End and Round and Round.” RD Those two songs shared the “country-folk style [of Neil Young’s debut album but] they were altogether livelier and more assured.” AM The title cut “is a country-sounding tune and the best of the mellow songs on the album; it's also the shortest cut on the LP.” KN Bobby Notkoff’s gothic fiddle on Running Dry is bewitching.” RD The “standouts are the two loose, elongated jams” RD Down by the River, and Cowgirl in the Sand. They featured “extended guitar interplaying between Young and Danny Whitten.” KN The former is “about a guy who killed his lover and now is on the make for a new one.” KN It was an unexpected take for “a hippie dude” to be taking “killing so lightly” “when love and peace was what was mainly being sung back then.” KN The latter “is one of the greatest guitar driven rock songs ever record, if you love guitar rock and weaving guitars.” KN |
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First posted 3/28/2010; last updated 9/7/2026. |
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