“Wrote this for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me thru Phil Ochs eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife.” Decade liner notes, 1977
RustWorks continues with an ode to one of the purest pop rock songs ever written. “Cinnamon Girl” encompasses all those themes about which Neil has long written: love, longing, mystery, dreams, girls, sex, music, the moon, the road. And it’s all contained in that explosive musical package with a hook and a melody that you just can’t get out of your head. Whether played acoustic or electric, you hang on every lyrical and musical phrase waiting for the release of that ascending guitar riff followed by its descent down to that wonderful F-G power chord.
Some songs have that moment where you arrive at a chord change, a lyric, or a note that “makes” the song. “Layla” has Duane’s incredible guitar riff, “Ticket to Ride” has Lennon’s sigh on the final chorus, “Cinnamon Girl” has two of those moments. The first is the climactic “You see your baby loves to dance, yeah, yeah, yeah” followed by the rush into that “one note solo” and, as the first guitar break begins, “WHOOOOH!!!!”
The story of how Neil wrote “Cinnamon Girl (along with “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Down by the River”) while running a fever is well known but I imagine Neil hanging out at home one afternoon, fooling around with his acoustic guitar, and suddenly his fingers play “the riff.”
“I had a guitar in a case near the bed—probably too near the bed in the opinion of most of the women I had relationships with. I took it out and started playing; I had left it in a tuning I was fond of, D modal, with the E strings both tuned down to D. It provided a drone sound, sort of like a sitar, but not really. I played for a while and wrote “Cinnamon Girl.” The lyrics were different from how the song eventually ended up, but all those changes happened right there, immediately, until the song was complete.” Waging Heavy Peace, Sept 2012
Watch Neil teach a fan to play “Cinnamon Girl".”
“I have made an Early Daze record of the Horse, and you can hear a different vocal of ‘Cinnamon Girl’ featuring more of Danny. He was singing the high part, and it came through big-time. I changed it so I sang the high part and put that out. That was a big mistake. I fucked up. I did not know who Danny was. He was better than me. I didn’t see it. I was strong, and maybe I helped destroy something sacred by not seeing it. He was never pissed off about it. It wasn’t like that. I was young, and maybe I didn’t know what I was doing. Some things you wish never happened. But we got what we got.” Waging Heavy Peace, Sept 2012
But of the song’s myriad live performances (854 to be exact, according to Sugar Mountain, thanks Tom!), I find myself returning to this early live recording with the Danny Whitten era Crazy Horse. What strikes me about the March 7th Fillmore East performance is the driving rhythm, the crispness of the electric guitars, and the ever-rising intensity and drive of the song. Compared to later performances emphasizing its grungier aspects, this “Cinnamon Girl” is all uptempo melodic mayhem, the famed one-note solo ranging up and down the fretboard, Danny and that solid rhythm section locked in through that climactic conclusion.
Listen to the 1970-03-07 performance of “Cinnamon Girl” here: