I heard this song a couple of days ago on the wonderful internet radio byte.fm - I think it was the album version which I linked to above - and I realised how stellar the guitar play was. Somehow last week I started to talk to a friend & young father about Neil Young and the soothing effect of his music on babies (book quote). This song though is maybe not as well suited for the tiny ear of the suckling as it involves a wee bit of distortion but on the other hand babies scream themselves so why shouldn't they like shrieking guitars?

Let's get back to the song. It starts with a calm acoustic guitar playing an innocent, slightly wistful line which for me evokes meditative Indian music. It is a dreamy setting, someone could be lying at the beach and gazing into the rising sun. After half a minute there is a long pause. Total silence for an eternity. And then at once the whole band kicks in full blast, the guitars chase the natural serene beauty away like an electrical storm. From now on people who listen to this in stereo - it is especially great in the car or on headphones - will be able to distinguish the two guitarists and their different styles very well. First there is Danny Whitten - who died of a heroin overdose later on and inspired The Needle and the Damage Done - on rhythm guitar on the left channel. He is setting the groove, repeating and varying the riff ad infinitum together with Billy Talbot whose melodic bass is humming like a dancing bear. Going round and round. On the right channel there is Neil Young's lead guitar and he is doing his own thing. While the others are providing the rhythmic base he is orbiting around them and sometimes shooting off into the sky with his rough & noisy improvisations. But they always catch him back on the ground. Greil Marcus wrote that Neil Young makes his guitar talk like the old bluesmen. At least there is no doublespeak - see last paragraph - when he picks the strings. The most amazing thing about this piece is that after ten minutes it suddenly stops in the middle. I am always surprised when it is over. All the repetition of the band together with Young's creative excursions make it never boring. Additionally there is the stark contrast of Young's falsetto and his guitar feedback. For me it could go on forever. This song has no end! There are actually live versions of 18 and more minutes around but I haven't listened to them.

What does a cowgirl make in the sand? Isn't that too slippery for a down to earth girl? Neil Young said about this song that he wrote it with 103° fever in bed in Topanga (liner notes of Decade). At a concert he said "This is a song I wrote about beaches in Spain. I've never been to beaches in Spain... but here is an idea of what it was like over there." Fantasy seems to be the key to the interpretation. The lyrics point into the direction that the song may be about a femme fatale who wants to seduce him ("When so many love you is it the same? It's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game") but doesn't succeed ("To be a woman and to be turned down"). Or about himself coping with stardom ("When so many love you is it the same?") and already - we are in 1969, this is on Neil Young's second solo album - doubting the future of his career ("Has your band begun to rust?"). The ambivalence of the lyrics makes me think of this drawing where depending on your perspective you either see Abraham Lincoln or a nude woman. "Hello woman of my dreams. This is not the way it seems" summarises the blur of the plot. The woman may be only existing in his imagination. She is just a fata morgana Young sees in his fever dreams, therefore she is in the sand!