“Cowgirl in the Sand” by Neil Young

Neil Young wrote "Cowgirl in the Sand" in a fever, literally: he was laid up with the flu at his home in Topanga, California, the same sickbed that gave Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere "Cinnamon Girl" and "Down by the River" on the way to its 1969 release on Reprise. You can hear the heat. Young and Danny Whitten lock their electric guitars and then let them roam and snarl, while Billy Talbot's bass and Ralph Molina's drums keep the ground from giving way, Whitten and Molina singing along behind Young.

The words drift like a half-remembered dream, addressed to a restless woman who might be one girl or three, a verse apiece, adored and doubted in the same breath. Young produced it with David Briggs, who also engineered, and they left the rough edges where they fell. Live versions have surfaced on several later records, among them Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 4 Way Street.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.