Neil Young – Down By The River

This song and Like a Hurricane are high on my list of Neil’s songs. I also like the live versions of this song, which can stretch into 15 minutes at times. He keeps it interesting. 

Young traded licks with Danny Whitten of Crazy Horse, Neil wrings every drop of feeling out of a few simple chords as he always does. He has always been one of the best at getting everything out of one simple note. That is why he is one of my favorite guitar players. He doesn’t do it with technical brilliance or flash, just total feel. He can sit on one note and make it scream. 

This song was on the 1969 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere released in 1969. Crazy Horse was on the album also…Crazy Horse included Danny Whitten – guitar, Billy Talbot – Bass, and Ralph Molina on drums.  The album included Cinnamon Girl and Cowgirl in the Sand. This was the first album of many to feature Crazy Horse. 

Neil Young wrote Down by the River and Cinnamon Girl in 1968, reportedly during a bout of high fever and delirium while bedridden with the flu at a house in Topanga Canyon, California. That is a great day’s work, sick or not. Young used a Gibson Les Paul nicknamed “Old Black,” run through a small Fender amp cranked to overdrive for a natural distortion.

The album peaked at #32 in Canada and #34 on the Billboard Album Charts in 1970. Down by the River didn’t chart, but Cinnamon Girl did peak at #25 in Canada. With the chorus of “I shot my baby down by the river,” this song gets your attention. In a 1970 interview, Neil Young cleared it up: “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.” 

Neil Young: “I’d like to sing you a song about a guy who had a lot of trouble controlling himself, he let the dark side come thru a little too bright.” The explanation goes on the describe the murder, the killer’s arrest and, finally, the guilt he feels as he realized what he’s done.”

Neil Young: “I’m trying to make records of the quality of the records that were made in the late Fifties and the Sixties, like Everly Brothers records and Roy Orbison records and things like that. They were all done with a sort of quality to them. They were done at once. It’s just a quality about them, the singer is into the song and the musicians were playing with the singer and it was an entity, you know. It was something special that used to hit me all the time, that all these people were thinking the same thing, and they’re all playing at the same time. It happens on a few cuts, you can hear it. I think “Cinnamon Girl,” “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” and “Round And Round” has that feeling of togetherness, although it was just Danny and me and Robin Lane.”

Down By The River

Be on my side I’ll be on your side, baby
There is no reason for you to hide,
This much madness is too much sorrow,
It’s impossible to make it today,
Hey, hey, ooh-ooh

She could drag me over the rainbow,
Send me away.

Down by the river
I shot my baby
Down by the river,
Dead, shot her dead.

You take my hand, I’ll take your hand,
Together we may get away.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

37 thoughts on “Neil Young – Down By The River”

  1. Another great song from Young for sure. For whatever reason it’s never been high on my list but for someone to write this and Cinnamon Girl on the same day is impressive. Some could go their whole career and not write two songs this good.

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    1. You were talking about writing more than one big song in one day…I guess this would qualify. I like how it’s not slick and polished…it’s just there.

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  3. Lol…you know that’s my favorite Neil Young song from his classic 1970 album! Now, I was in 1st grade & never heard that song until sometime in the mid-70’s on college/album rock FM radio but it’s one of my favorite grooves of all-time.

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    1. Somewhere Carl…I heard this as a kid. It wasn’t a huge hit but somewhere I heard it because I get a certain memory when I hear it as a kid. Maybe our AM station played it.

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      2. Yea it could be because I don’t think I would have went over to a fellow 4 year old house and heard this song…must be it.

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  5. A good one from Neil’s dark side. And rock one. Few have been able to put out such quality material both as pre-grunge rock and acoustic folk as Neil. Lately I’ve heard ‘Four Strong Winds’ by him a lot on a couple of ’70s satellite stations, which is nice, another Neil one not so many remember (though obviously from his acoustic side)

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    1. He does have a lot of sides. I always compare him to Bowie…not musically but by the way they never get comfortable and more than willing to take chances. I like Four Strong Winds!

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  6. Young has always been an interesting character, I love the way Stills refers to Young in that doc Echo in the Canyon as ‘becausehe’s Canadian’…..Trump using his Rockin’ in the Free World when he launched his first campaign (did he know Young is a Canuck?)….he made a lot of enemies here in oil country when he drove up here in an electric car….he’s always done whatever he’s wanted to no matter what anyone else thought, and has always spoke his mind….Live Rust both the soundtrack and movie rocked my world, but love his occasional trip into country music, Comes a Time, and Mr Soul is always on my soundtrack….I spent most of highschool irritating friends with me attempting Cowgirl in the Sand…

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  8. Those guys know how to jam together. With CSNY you have 4 musical geniuses, but sorry, Neil shines just a little brighter than the rest and the other guys’ egos couldn’t take it. I do like the solo Graham Nash stuff, and Stills can get down with his bad self. Crosby was talented but too much of an azzh*le for me to pay too much attention to him. Why Melissa Etheridge chose him to be her babydaddy is still a mystery to me.

    I like the NY quote you included about quality. One thing you can say about him is that he never dials it in.

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    1. Crosby was a piece of work. I never fully understood him. Nash treated him really good in his book and Crosby still bitched. Yea that is a mystery on why him!
      No he never dials it in and doesn’t stay in one place for long.

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  9. p.s. When Dutch Henry was together and my friend and I were their (platonic) groupies, between their original songs, they’d always play Cinnamon Girl for my friend and Ohio for me. They did effin good covers of those tunes also. Two lead guitars made them howl.

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    1. That was probably the first Neil Young song I knew….I love that song so that was a great one to play. We played it as well. I got the single when I was a small kid but with one problem…it wasn’t Neil…it was a band called “The Gentrys” doing it…but I have to admit…they did a good job…not the original but they stayed faithful to it.
      Here it is…so this is how I was introduced lol.

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      2. Ok that sounds good! Chris called and he had to go out of town but when he comes back we are playing. He is an attorney…but a cool guy.

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  10. I got one word for you, dude: E.P.I.C. !!! 🙂

    As you well know, I love Neil Young, even though his output has been uneven. At the same time, that’s part of his charm. He tends to be spontaneous and not to overthink. His guitar-playing oftentimes is crude, especially on the electric, and sometimes even borders on sloppy, but it works – and that’s the key.

    Now I feel like listening to Neil’s terrific 1977 compilation “Decade”!

    Okay, that was more than one word! 🙂

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    1. LOL…that will work!
      It is a good description of his work. I like the crude though…like this one has NO polish on it and it sounds great!
      Yea I know that Decade…I love it.

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  12. He can be all over the shop, but in a good way. And life ain’t a box of chocolates with him, you can get some crackers and some crumbs as well, but you sure will have a hell of a selection to chose from.

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  13. Pingback: Neil Young – Down By The River – MobsterTiger

  16. My conflicted take on Neil Young: Great songwriter with inimitable style who overextends his performances with sloppy, overindulgent instrumental passages. Which, I know, others seem to love. Different strokes.

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    1. You know what is funny? I totally agree with you but I like it! I do like some of this guitar playing because it’s not by numbers…it’s a total feel BUT…I get it completely!

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