The guitar gear used by Neil Young on the classic Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

In early 1969, it came time for Neil Young to record the album that would come to be known as Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. This was to be his second solo album, although his first with the backing band that he called Crazy Horse.

• READ MORE: The guitar gear used by Neil Young on his Harvest album

Crazy Horse consisted of guitarist, songwriter, and singer Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina. The album was co-produced by David Briggs, who would be a frequent collaborator for Neil Young all the way up until his passing in 1995.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (EKTIN) is still considered one of the finest albums of the folk era, but not much is known about the gear used to record the album, but there is plenty of speculation. In this article, we will do our best to sift through all the evidence and come up with the best representation of what we know was used on the album.

Old Black

One guitar that has been confirmed to have been used on the album by multiple sources, including Young himself, was Old Black. For those who don’t know, Old Black has been a constant companion of Young’s throughout his solo career, much akin to Willie Nelson’s Trigger. Old Black has been subjected to several modifications over the years and the version of Old Black that we hear on EKTIN is different from the one we hear today. The most notable difference is the pickup. Today, Old Black has a Firebird humbucker in the bridge position, but that wasn’t added until 1973. In 1969, Old Black still had the original pickups in it, as Young explained:

“Well, there’s a lively Firebird pickup on the treble side of my Les Paul, but when I did Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, it didn’t have that pickup, which had got a bad hum in it. I took it to a music store to see if they could do anything with it.

“I went back to get it, and the store was closed, and everything was gone. I never got the pickup back, so now there have been two or three pickups in place of the original. I guess I used the Firebird pickup on all the things I played on my black guitar since 1973.”

Old Black began its life as a 1953 Goldtop which meant it would have originally had cream colored P-90 pickups in it. When Neil Young got the guitar, the neck allegedly had a Grestch DynaSonic single-coil pickup. There is some debate over whether the neck had been replaced or just the headstock. Old Black was certainly the main guitar used for the EKTIN sessions. A Bigsby vibrato had also been added by the time the sessions rolled around.

Other Guitars

Some claim that Neil Young used a Fender Telecaster on the record. Others claim that they can distinctly hear a Gretsch. Even some reports claim that he used a ’59 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. While it is true that Neil Young did own all of those guitars at the time of the sessions, and some of them were probably used on the record, it is impossible to confirm what was used, and where. Neil Young had a Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins that he used in Buffalo Springfield and traded to Jim Messina for Old Black. However, there is photographic evidence of Young playing Gretsch guitars during the timespan when the sessions were going on.

Having spoken with Billy Talbot and Nils Lofgren, I’ve come to understand that a Neil Young recording session is a situation where instruments are more communal than private possessions. I know there are instances where Nils Lofgren or the departed Danny Whitten would play some of Young’s guitars for live shows and in the studio. Whitten was known to play Young’s Gretsch 6120 through a bevy of Fender Tweed Deluxes and Bassmans, which were also largely thought to be owned by Young, at a series of shows that occurred in the weeks after recording EKTIN.

Whitten’s story is a tragic one; in fact, it would inspire the song The Needle and the Damage Done just a few years later. But EKTIN saw Whitten at his pinnacle. Listen to the guitar work on Down By The River for more proof of that. Many have insisted that he also used a Stratocaster but that remains unconfirmed and is only backed by those who claim to “hear” the sound of a Strat on the record.

Amps

As mentioned before, Young has long been a fan of vintage Fender amplifiers, and we may assume that they were the primary amp used for the recording of EKTIN, specifically Deluxe Tweeds and Bassmans – I think most would agree that the tone is pretty consistent with those amplifiers. The amplifier tone is even more clearly recognizable due to the lack of effects units on the album. The album is lauded for its raw and organic sound. If you hear distortion or fuzz, it is the amps being driven hard rather than some stomp box. Some speculate there may have been some amp reverb or studio spring reverb as that was pretty common at the time. But again, this is unconfirmed.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was an incredibly important album for the career of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, not only because of its success, but it also established a new sound in rock and roll – loose, gritty, and raw, with distorted guitars at the core.

That sound is often cited as a precursor to the grunge movement that would take place decades later. The solos have an element of spontaneity to them that lends a genuine feel to the music. It stripped the polish of the studio away and focused on delivering the songs with a sound that was just as much a statement as the lyrics were. That sound is something that many tonechasers have spent their life pursuing.