Neil Young – Cinnamon Girl

Love the nasty sound Neil has on his guitar. It’s a raw, fuzzed-out letter to the cosmos, sealed with a one-note guitar solo and dropped in the mailbox of your brain forever. It never leaves. This is a song I grew up on, but not this version. Somehow, I had The Gentrys version in my small record collection given to me by someone. It’s close, but no cigar. 

That riff, oh that riff. It’s a heavy, descending chunk of molten iron, equal parts garage and pre-grunge blueprint. It’s played in double drop D tuning, which is basically the rock ’n’ roll equivalent of letting the air out of your tires before racing. Everything sounds lower, meaner, sludgier. The minute it hits, it’s clear: Neil doesn’t want perfection. He wants feel. We played this song so many times that I know it by heart. 

Neil recruited guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina from a local psychedelic group called The Rockets and renamed them Crazy Horse. The song was on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The album peaked at #34 on the Billboard 200 album chart and #32 in Canada.

In the liner notes of his Decade compilation, Neil said, “Wrote this for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me through Phil Ochs’ eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife.” Although Neil Young never said who it was about, the bit about finger cymbals could be a reference to ’60s folk singer Jean Ray, who performed with then-husband Jim Glover under the name Jim and Jean. 

Brian Ray, who is currently Paul McCartney’s guitarist and Jean’s younger brother, has said the song is indeed about his sister. Jean also said that she inspired another Neil Young track from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Cowgirl in the Sand.

The song peaked at #55 in the Billboard 100 and #25 in Canada in 1970.

Cinnamon Girl

I want to live with a Cinnamon Girl
I could be happy the rest of my life 
with a Cinnamon Girl

A dreamer of pictures, I run in the night
you see us together chasin’ the moonlight
my Cinnamon Girl

Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow
the drummer relaxes and waits between shows
for his Cinnamon Girl

A dreamer of pictures, I run in the night
you see us together chasin’ the moonlight
my Cinnamon Girl

Pa, send me money now
I’m gonna make it somehow
I need another chance
You see, your baby loves to dance
yeah, yeah, yeah

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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.

44 thoughts on “Neil Young – Cinnamon Girl”

  2. Pingback: Neil Young – Cinnamon Girl – MobsterTiger

  9. Great song no matter who he had in mind when he wrote it. Great description too of how he got that sound . It’s right there with the best of his ‘rock’ canon

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  11. As close to a perfect song as you can get. Dutch Henry, a local group I used to go see live all the time always played this song because they knew my friend liked it. They seriously emulated the original.

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    1. I don’t think you could cover this song and do it another way…I don’t think it would work without that heavy guitar. We loved playing it as well.

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  13. Only in the ’80s could Neil Young be wearing what he is wearing in that video and still be playing “Cinnamon Girl”. John Entwistle did a cover that was an outtake from his first album, and it was a bonus track when it was released on CD. His version is virtually indistinguishable from Young’s. I think you’re right, there’s no other way to tackle the song.

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    1. LOL…I knew it was from the eighties right away!
      I’m listening now…yea even his voice is close to Neils…and thinking about it…always has been but I never put it together.

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  14. This does pound along heavily but not ponderously.

    I never knew the back story about Jean. Good luck when you waltz in the door Neil. ‘Hey darling, it’s only a song, we’re just good tour bus band buddies, honest!’

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  15. In the Small World department…Jean Ray also claims to be the inspiration for “Cowgirl in the Sand”, long before joining McCartney her brother Brian was part of the Crypt Kicker Five (with Bobby “Boris” Pickett), famous for “Monster Mash”, and there was a folk blues trio out of Minneapolis called Koerner, Ray, and Glover. As far as I can tell, Dave Ray is not related to Jean and Brian, and Tony Glover is not related to Jim Glover. Jim and Jean once lived with Phil Ochs (one of the greatest singer-songwriters ever, IMHO). And I doubt it’s mere coincidence that a husband and wife duo in the Coen Brothers film “Inside Llewyn Davis” were named Jim and Jean (with Jim played by Justin Timberlake).

    Though I’m not a Neil Young fan, look what you dragged out of me with a Neil Young post! 😉

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  16. yes. the thing about Neil is he’s always going to go his own way. the story of him leaving Buffalo Springfield just as they were just about to become huge. This song along with Mr Soul are classics, but then he’d go and do something like Needle and the Damage Run, or writing things like Lotta Love for Nicolette Larson, going Rockabilly, then country….and the anger in Ohio….I guess it’s a Canadian thing, cause Joni Mitchell has done the same thing

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    1. Oh and don’t forget the electronic phase of the 1980s! Neil and David Bowie remind me of each other…not musically but by changing completely.

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  17. I first heard the Everyone Knows… Album and Cinnamon Girl in the spring of 1969. That songs immediately hit me as the best song on the album. I was 18 then, and playing bass in a pretty good band, so we put Cinnamon Girl into our set list that summer. We had a two good lead guitarists, which is why I was playing bass, and the one who took the solo just couldn’t make it right with just that one note throughout, so he added his own flourishes and the audiences like it just fine. But Neil made it sound great with just that one note. A special talent that way. It still rocks, makes me happy, as a somewhat younger (2nd generation listener to it) can hear that.

    FYI, what’s extra impressive is that he did it on 1950’s technology. Most of that old guitar equipment was poor. Yes, I include the vintage Fender guitars and amps that so many non-working musicians pay huge bucks for as fetish items in modern times. I played regularly on (but didn’t own) a 1958 Stratocaster, a mid-60’s Telecaster, a mid-60’s Gibson ES339, Fender Super Reverbs and several Princetons, and did own a Vox “Super-Beatle” amp and a 1964 Gibson/Epiphone, several now-revered Ampegs, and none of it sounded even a fraction as good as my modern (2014) US assembled Stratocaster and 2022 Mesa Amp. But Neil (who did have a great sounding old then-discontinued Les Paul, which was out of the price range of most players then), made it sound great regardless of the limitations of his amplifiers. A special talent.

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      1. Excellent! He’s a talented musician and a great entertainer. His gag with this song was that it was his first time playing guitar. He played it straight for most of the song but when it came to the guitar solo he played just one string over and over.

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  21. I am not a Neil Young fan, but this is one of his songs that I love. That Crazy Horse band did a couple of records for Reprise, and I cannot praise the first one highly enough. A great record that has influenced a lot of people. Danny Whitten was a great songwriter.

    Somebody mentioned Koerner, Ray & Glover. WOW!!! They were great for what they did.

    And I agree with the general consensus. There is no other way to do this song.

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