Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Acoustic Version (1969)

I just posted an acoustic version of Neil Young's first solo album, 1968's "Neil Young." As I explained in my write-up for that album, I'm experimenting with using the sound editing program Spleeter. I think one of the more interesting things that program can do is remove the drums and bass from songs to make acoustic mixes. With Young's first album, I actually only used Spleeter on one song, since he's performed solo acoustic versions of all the other songs, and I could use them. So I want to post this too, an acoustic version of his second solo album, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," to give you a better idea of how Spleeter is helping my edits.

For 1969's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," Young was backed by the band Crazy Horse, who would occasionally work with him for decades to come. As a result, it had more of a rocking sound than his first album. The album had two songs with long guitar solos, a nine-minute long "Down by the River," and a ten-minute long "Cowgirl in the Sand." "Cinnamon Girl" is a lot shorter, but it has a really rocking arrangement.

Normally, I wouldn't be able to create acoustic versions out of those kinds of songs. I consider Spleeter good for making minor changes, not completely transforming a song. But luckily for this album version, Young came up with solo acoustic arrangements for all three of those songs. So I've used concert versions for those, recorded from 1969 to 1971. In the case of "Cinnamon Girl," he usually played that on guitar, but I used an interesting piano version instead.

The song "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" was also payed in solo acoustic style in concert, so I was able to use one of those versions. "The Losing End" was played in solo acoustic style three times in 1969, but unfortunately no recordings of those versions are publicly available. He played the song later, starting in 1973, but generally such versions were done with a band until many years later. "Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)" has been played in concert just twice, and that was all the way in 2019. "Round and Round (It Won't Be Long)" has never been played in concert.

For "Round and Round," luckily, Young recorded a solo acoustic demo in 1967, so I was able to use that. But for "The Losing End" and "Running Dry," I decided my best option would be to use Spleeter to remove the bass and drums. So that's what I did, and I think those versions sound pretty decent.

If one replaces the long electric versions of "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" with short acoustic ones, it makes the album significantly shorter. In fact, this version is only 27 minutes long. But it so happens that Young came up with some more good original songs he didn't release at the time, plus two songs that would appear on the 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album "Deja Vu." I've chosen to include them here because they were recorded in 1969.

Nearly all these extra songs were performed in solo acoustic mode in 1969, so I was able to use those versions. All of those, plus two more from the main album, are taken from an officially unreleased 1969 Canterbury House concert that is a pristine soundboard. (As I often do, with those and other live versions, I removed the audience noise to make them sound more like studio versions.)

Only one of these extra songs turned out to be a problem for me. I'm referring to "Sea of Madness." This song was performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in concert a number of times in late 1969, and a version they did appeared on the Woodstock movie soundtrack. However, no studio version was ever released, and Young has never tried the song in concert on his own. It turns out CSNY did attempt a studio version, but it remains officially unreleased. I used Spleeter on that version, removing the bass and drums. 

But in this case, it didn't work so well. The performance is fundamentally a band version, with the organ as the main instrument, and lots of backing vocals (which Spleeter can't remove). Turning that into an acoustic version isn't ideal. I've included it as the last song, so you can choose to keep it, or not.

This album is 46 minutes long. I think it's quite interesting, with significantly different versions for many songs, all in excellent sound quality.

If people like these acoustic versions, I can continue the series pretty easily with acoustic versions of his next two albums, "After the Gold Rush" and "Harvest." But beyond that it's much harder to find good acoustic versions of many songs, so I'm not sure how doable some of those albums would be.

01 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
02 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
03 Round and Round [It Won't Be Long] (Neil Young)
04 Down by the River (Neil Young)
05 The Losing End [Edit] (Neil Young)
06 Running Dry [Requiem for the Rockets] [Edit] (Neil Young)
07 Cowgirl in the Sand (Neil Young)
08 Wonderin' (Neil Young)
09 Everybody's Alone (Neil Young)
10 Dance Dance Dance (Neil Young)
11 Helpless (Neil Young)
12 Country Girl (Neil Young)
13 Sea of Madness [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848224/NeilY_1969c_EvrybdyKnwsThisIsNwhereAcoustc_atse.zip.html

Since I'm making an alternate version of an album, it would be nice to use an alternate version of the album cover. Most of the time, good alternates don't exist. In this case, the cover photo continued onto the back side of the album. I found a version of the back side without any writing on it, so I used that. I added in the text in a different spot, using the same font as the original.

Obviously, Neil Young isn't in the photo. But since the album title is "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," I thought it was fitting that he's nowhere to be seen.