Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Neil Young Finds Crazy Horse and Never Looks Back

“Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” runs 40 minutes across seven tracks, and it changed what Neil Young’s music could sound like. This is the 1969 album where Young first played with Crazy Horse and let the songs run long, turn rough at the edges, and pass a short song’s usual length without apology. The record is not neat. It is not trying to be. It is trying to find a looser, harder version of rock and roll, and it gets there.

Opening Run

The album opens with three tracks that set the terms fast.

1. “Cinnamon Girl” (2:58) — the riff up front does the work. It is a riff that seems to clear away any prior sense of what Neil Young sounds like within seconds. It is the shortest song here and the most direct.
2. “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” (2:26) — the title track is loose, almost broken at the edges, and that quality is the point. Crazy Horse sound like a band finding its footing while the song plays.
3. “Round & Round (It Won’t Be Long)” (5:49) — the tempo drops, the mood turns quiet, and the record’s first long piece begins.

Nine Minutes on the River

“Down by the River” (9:13) is where the album gives itself fully to the long form. Young’s guitar work here is patient and searching, built on repeating a small number of ideas rather than showing off. It is one of the tracks critics keep coming back to, and it earns that attention on its own terms — the song barely changes key and never needs to.

“The Losing End (When You’re On)” (4:03) and “Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)” (5:30) sit next to each other as a quieter pair. The first is a plain, simple song built on a country feel. The second brings in an added instrumental passage that gives the record a different color entirely — a break from the guitar around it, and one of the tracks singled out for how well it fits inside the rest of the album.

Then “Cowgirl in the Sand” (10:03) closes the album with its longest span of time. It matches “Down by the River” in shape and reach, another long guitar piece that trusts repetition to build feeling rather than let it go.

What the Reviews Said

Pitchfork gives the album 10.0 out of 10, and treats it now as one of Young’s finest records and the true starting point of his work with Crazy Horse.

The songs that keep getting named by critics form a clear shortlist:

• “Cinnamon Girl”
• “Down by the River”
• “Cowgirl in the Sand”
• “Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)”
• “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”

That is five of the seven tracks on the album. Not much filler made the cut.

Final Word

This is a record built on opposite forces held together. It is rough and it is careful. It is short songs and songs ten minutes long sitting side by side without trouble between them. Crazy Horse give Young a band that plays behind the beat and lets a feeling sit in the room instead of settling it, and that choice is what makes “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand” work as long as they do.

The album does not try to prove more than it needs to. It does not need short pop songs to prove it can write hooks — “Cinnamon Girl” does that in under three minutes — and it does not need discipline to prove it can hold a mood over nine or ten minutes. Both sides of the record support one another.

This is a record now settled into its place, its reputation built on the strength of the songs themselves. It is one of the best albums Neil Young ever made, with or without Crazy Horse.

1969 albums · album review · classic rock · Crazy Horse · Neil Young