NEIL YOUNG

SECOND ALBUM

"Everyone's Knows This is Nowhere"

On this day in music history: May 14, 1969 - “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, the second studio album by Neil Young is released. Produced by Neil Young and David Briggs, it is recorded at Wally Heider Studio 3 in Hollywood, CA in January and March 1969.  Recorded in just two weeks worth of studio time, it is the first to feature Young’s backing band Crazy Horse. The album features some of Neil Young’s best known material including “Cinnamon Girl (#55 Pop), “Down By The River”, and “Cowgirl In The Sand”. Young writes all three songs in one day while sick in bed with a 103° fever. The three singles issued from the album are released over a nearly one year period, with the title track proceeding the full album in March of 1969. It is followed by an edited version of “Down By The River” in October, which also does not chart. In the interim, “Oh Lonesome Me”, the first single from Young’s next album “After The Gold Rush” is released in February of 1970. Issued eleven months after the album, “Cinnamon Girl” is put out almost as an afterthought, but becomes Neil Young’s first chart single. In spite of its modest chart placement, it becomes one of the musician’s most popular and enduring songs. Released only four months after his solo debut, the raw and rocking “Nowhere” establishes the template of how Young writes and records many of his seminal recordings in the future, also influencing many other musicians that follow. Originally released on CD in 1987, it is remastered and reissued in 2009 with HDCD encoding, and as a digital download. It is also released as a 180 gram vinyl LP, individually and as part of a limited edition box set featuring Young’s first four solo albums. The reissue replicates the original album packaging including the gatefold sleeve. The album had also been scheduled for release as a high resolution Blu-ray disc, but to date has not been released in that format. “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” peaks at number thirty four on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified Platinum in the US by the RIAA.

I was turned on to Neil Young by my then wife to be way back in the early seventies and this album still stands as a favourite. The master of the one note guitar solo!

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