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. Neil Young Decade liner notes 1977

I'm trying to make records of the quality of the records that were made in the late Fifties and the Sixties, like Everly Brothers records and Roy Orbison records and things like that. They were all done with a sort of quality to them. They were done at once. They were done in Nashville.... It doesn't matter where you do it. Nashville, it happened to be done there. Could be done anywhere. It's just a quality about them, the singer is into the song and the musicians were playing with the singer and it was an entity, you know. It was something special that used to hit me all the time, that all these people were thinking the same thing, and they're all playing at the same time. EB: Like the early Beatles. Yeah, yeah, right. That's what I'm tryin' to get. That's what I want to get, on this next album. I started approaching getting it on the last album, on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. It happens on a few cuts, you can hear it. It's there all the time.... EB: Which cuts would you say? Uh, I think "Cinnamon Girl," uh, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," and, uh, "Round And Round" has that feeling of togetherness, although it was just Danny [Whitten] and me and Robin Lane. Neil Young Rolling Stone by Elliot Blinder April 20, 1970

JM: Where did the inspiration come from for the hand claps on “Cinnamon Girl”? Remember “My Boyfriend’s Back”? Neil Young "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough 2002

JM: Who inspired all the dancing-women songs? I don’t know … I remember this one girl, Jean “Monte” Ray—she was the singing partner of Jim, Jim and Jean, a folk duo. Had a record out called “People World,” and she did a lot of dancing with finger cymbals. She was really great. Might’ve been her. Good chance. I kinda had a crush on her for a while. Moved nice. She was real musical, soulful. JM: So is she the Cinnamon Girl? Only part of the song. There’s images in there that have to do with Jean and there’s images that have to do with other people. Neil Young "Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough 2002

WH: Who's Cinnamon Girl? NY: Oh, she was an actual person. She danced and she sang and she had finger cymbals. And cinnamon is my favorite spice. Neil Young The Times/Will Hodgkinson May 28, 2016

A few weeks before the people who would found Crazy Horse (as yet unnamed), Danny, Billy, Ralphie, and me, got together in my Topanga living room, I had been sick with the flu, holed up in bed in the house. Susan was bringing me soup and good stuff, but I still felt like shit. I was delirious half the time and had an odd metallic taste in my mouth. It was peculiar. At the height of this sickness, I felt pretty high in a strange way. 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. Then I took the guitar out of D modal and kept playing. At the time, there was a song in E minor on the radio that I liked, “Sunny” or something like that. I remembered hearing it in the drugstore at Fairfax and Sunset while I was shopping for something to ease the flu. The song kept looping in my head, endlessly, like some things do when I’m sick and maybe a little delirious. So I started playing it on the guitar, and then I changed the chords a bit—and it turned into “Down by the River.” I was still feeling sick, but happy and high. It was a unique feeling. I had two brand-new songs! Totally different from the last album! Then I started playing in A minor, one of my favorite keys. I had nothing to lose. I was on a roll. The music just flowed naturally that afternoon, and soon I had written “Cowgirl in the Sand.” This was pretty unique, to write three songs in one sitting, and I am pretty sure that my semi-delirious state had a lot to do with that. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012

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. Neil Young Waging Heavy Peace Sept 2012

JO: “Cinnamon Girl.” The one-note solo. NY: Oh yeah, two strings though. The same note on two strings. The wang bar made every one sound different. When people say “one-note solo,” I listen to it and every one sounds different to me. It sounds like it’s all different in that one place. As you’re going in farther, you’re hearing all the differences, but if you get back, it’s all one. Neil Young March 1992 Guitar Player/Jas Obrecht