This one of the absolute best basic three power chord rock songs ever. My understanding is that Neil Young wrote this song as tribute to all the beautiful Afro-Caribbean women he saw on his first visit to the Islands.
Well, Neil did stay away from the hardest stuff, but he wrote in his autobiography that every song he wrote and every show he played, he was smoking pot...
When my daughter was born, the nurse commented that she had hair the color of cinnamon. Hence a nickname was born, and we would play this for her, as a baby, all the time.
Cinnamon girl double drop D tuning basically a single note solo on the studio version. One of my favorite songs to play. No effects on the pedal just low volume high gain saturating those tubes.
I never associated drugs with this song. I always felt it was about a song about the love he had to a woman. Never saw Neil live. But I did get a chance to see CSN live many years ago.
I love your show. Neil Young is pretty amazing. I saw him jam with Pearl Jam in the 90s and he brought the house down. Being a romantic, I always thought it was about a special "Cinnamon Girl". Saw him with CSN&Y back in the day and always loved his moody, thoughtful, hard rockin' sounds. His song "Mr. Soul" with Buffalo Springfield is awesome. You should check out Phil Ochs sometime. An amazing protest singer who put a lot of people in the streets to protest the Vietnam war with his song "I ain't a marchin' anymore". I like how you tune in to the emotions of the artist and the meaning of the lyrics. Two thumbs up.
I wore out my copy of this record when I was 17. It is a great showcase for Neil Young's songwriting, and for his unique guitar solos. On this album, "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" are spectacular tracks.
That "Weld"-tour was one of the best live performance of Neil Young's career, just awesome. Check out "Like a Hurricane", "Sugar Mountain", "Powderfinger", "Cortez the Killer" or "The Needle and the Damage Done" from the "Live Rust" album.
I dig the way the camera cuts to all the gorgeous women in the front rows, especially the cinnamon girls! These babies love to dance! Neil is an institution, like Muddy Waters or Johnny Cash. There's nothing fancy about his stuff, he just flat out rocks!
India, during most of your reaction it seemed you weren't really feeling it. Another Neil Young song I think you'll really like and be surprised by is 'Cortez The Killer'.
I always took it as a love song about a girl with skin the color of cinnamon. For some reason I always mentally went to a tropical setting for this. Him and a bronze skinned beauty dancing in the sand.
He’s never said it’s abt drugs. The only thing he’s said is it is partially abt Jean Ray who was associated with Phil Ochs. I don’t think Neil would do a joyous song abt drugs. I think it’s abt a generation that for the first time didn’t have to do what their parents wanted, esp women, the freedom to explore and that joy that comes with that.
“Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere “ was to actually Neil’s second solo effort but most think of it as his first because every cut is a masterpiece by itself. Cinnamon Girl was the intro cut. This album was followed by “After The Goldrush “ another masterpiece. Check out the title cut then “Southern Man” that’s song that Lynyrd Sknyrd famously mentioned in their famous cut “Sweet Home Alabama “
His third or fourth album after leaving Buffalo Springfield. Neil is god in Canada. He has covered multiple genres of music and is called the Godfather of Seattle Grunge. One of the few artists whose career has spanned more than six decades that never sold out to commercial interests. Neil is half native American and many of his songs concern injustice against the aborigines in the "new" world. He squeezes in a little Norwegian Wood from the Beatles in the coda. "I don't sing for Pepsi. I don't sing for Coke. Don't sing for no one who makes me look like a joke." God wishes he could compose and play guitar as well as Neil Young.
Got to see this tour live, probably my most favorite concerts of all time!!! His version of "Blowin in the wind" at this show, always give me chill bumps!!! 😃
I bought that album when it came out and mastered neil young after he left Crosby stills nash and young the 3rd and final time I think his writing skill exploded I knew learned every song on the album I figured out real quick at 14yrs old if you can play neil young on the guitar the girls flock to you..so to answer your question is it about drugs or a girl well really to a teenager they are the same in the 70s.but neil did sing about drugs check out needle and the damage done.
I can not believe it was 50 years ago when I first heard this song and instantly fell in love with Neil Young. It still does it for me!! 64 and still rockin'.
ooo one of my fav's ...Neil is the master of the one note solo...and this song just rocks... same LP ... Cowgirl in the Sand....Sugar Mountain all bad ass
I was driving home with my 25 year old daughter tonight and we were trying to figure out what he was singing about. But we were all about him singing about a girl. Maybe about a dark skinned girl, a native American or perhaps a black girl. Never thought it was about drugs. Maybe it is knowing Neil.
Always felt it was about a girl that he was totally smitten over ... " I could be happy the rest of my life with The Cinnamon Girl" ...straight from the lyrics ! 😎
Cinnamon is 60s slang for heroin. Young also admitted it in a radio interview in the 90s When the interviewer was like "sure, it's about a girl, wink wink. He made up about 5 different stories that made absolutely no sense.
Saw this tour in 91. Took all of his cute protest songs and transformed them into grungy epic performances. At the end of the night the audience was exhausted. In that good way...
Thanks for your reaction to this one. I just want to second a suggestion that came apon your "Harvest Moon" reaction. "Like a Hurricane", was suggested by someone. How did I forget that?
This came out when I was still in elementary school, so my perception of it then may have been quite different from adults who grew up in the fifties and the decade of my early childhood.
It was a while before I heard the original. Type O Negative came out with their cover when I was in High School, and that was the version of this song that I've always had in my head, even after I heard the Neil Young version.
Neil wrote 3 of his greatest songs, Cinnamon Girl, Down by the River, and Cowgirl in the Sand at one shot when he had the flu with a 103 degree fever. He recalls having sheets of paper strewn over his bed to write on and was quite delusional regarding the imagery!
Heroin. "Ten silver saxes, the bass with a bow, the drummer relaxes In-between-shows with his cinnamon girl..." Lots of very great famous acts used Heroin. It was Jazz dudes who really slammed it first tho. Blues too.. In "Take a whiff on Me" Leadbelly sang about "Horse and Cocaine" (speedballs) ...then move on thru to the late 60's, the Beatles even sang a lot about all sorts of drugs, although in thick code.. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" hints "Of course Henry the Horse dances the Waltz..." Heroin isn't just a downer, it's an extremely mystically charged experience which eliminates inhibitions, mental blocks... very difficult to kick it though. 3 days in a row and one might indeed be "...the rest of my life" (because cut very short) .
Problem with today's music is there's no jamming, no guitar rifts or drum solo's, try to imagine a singer with today's ego's giving up the spotlight...ya right...jmo
@@thawk6792 I really enjoy Grace's music, but in 1 of her interviews she spoke about A.T., I can't remember what all she said. There's not a top tier artist that doesn't use it when in studio cutting a disk/track, not done! Why do you think Beyonce, Katy, Brittany etc...etc..use 50-100 dancers, it's to distract from not hitting the right note all the time.
My favorite Neil Young song! I read in an interview with Neil that Cinnamon Girl was a groupie he met on the road and tripped on LSD with. They went running around naked in the moonlight! 💙🎼✌️
Its often the case with Neil Young, and many from this period, that songs about love could be about drugs, just as many blues songs about trifling women were actually about their bosses. "Down by the River" is another example of this. My favorite Neil Young song is "Don't let it bring you down", check it out
India, I love your openness to all music! This was a great Neil song, but check out his song, “Helpless,” with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. He wrote the song and his voice was so vulnerable and haunting. He was amazing in that group, too!
We ALL walked out of Africa - it is only a question of when. Love whom you wish, whether they be ebony, sky-blue pink - or...... Cinnamon! Love you, baby girl, & be safe - Europe is not.
You could shock everyone and do Crosby Stills Nash and Young with Tom Jones doing vocals on Almost Cut My Hair...its on You Tube and doubt hardly anyone has seen...they are way completely different acts that do a great job on it
Neil has the tendency to be blue/depressing with his music. Needle And The Damage Done, Old Man, and Down By The River, are 3 super star Neil songs. Try some in acoustic. That is Neil at his best!
To me this song is about the band as young guys falling for all these "Cinnamon girls".. and the idea of the hippy days where the Boomers as young people were asking their parents to send them money to live their hippy lifestyles...aka.. Loving to dance, "going to make it" somehow. Also to me the description "cinnamon" may be about darker-featured girls for these very white Canadian type guys- possibly Latinas or the tan California-styled babes
India, you have reviewed several Neil Young songs. Here are two more Neil songs I would like you to listen to: "Ohio" (about the Kent State riots, and government reaction to), and "You Are Like A Hurricane."
I think I saw an interview somewhere where Neil talks about who it may have been, it was just a woman who was super pretty. He said something like "I had a hard time explaining this song to my wife" LOL :-)
Neil Young never said who his Cinnamon Girl was because he likes to leave lyric interpretation to the listener, but at the time he was married to Susan Acevedo. It was always believed to be her.
At the beginning of the end jam, am I the only one who heard a touch of "Norwegian Wood"? I don't play any instruments so I'm trying to get out the correct wording. I heard 3 guitar lines of The Beatles, "Norwegian Wood". Anyone else? I played it 4 times.
Yes, I heard it too. At about 4:56 for the next 8 sec or so. It's the melody of the beginning of the lyrics "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me."
Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, Prince, Van Morrison and Elvis Costello each individually wrote and recorded over a days worth of original material to listen over, the Beatles by comparison clock 10 and half hours with all their studio albums
Should do The Needle and the Damage Done by Neil, short but powerful song. Another short song performed by The Civil Wars called 20 Years would be another great song to react too - do a 2 for 1 :)
