The Neil Young Song He Said Was “Hard To Explain” to His Wife (Here’s Why)

Having to divulge the deep, dark secrets behind a song to a public audience is one thing. Having to divulge those deep, dark secrets to your spouse is another. (And in some cases, a songwriter might even prefer the first option over the second.)

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For singer-songwriter Neil Young, he ran into some trouble trying to explain “Cinnamon Girl”, the opening track off his second album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, to his first wife, Susan Acevedo. It’s not hard to see why, either.

Even the opening lines would be enough to raise the eyebrows of a skeptical partner: “I wanna live with a cinnamon girl / I could be happy the rest of my life with a cinnamon girl.” As a wife myself, my first questions would be, one, we’re already living together, so who, exactly, do you want to live with, and, two, you could be happy?

All I’m saying is I get Susan’s point. Young would later reveal certain female inspirations for “Cinnamon Girl”, but he and Acevedo were divorced for a while by that point, so the identity of Young’s titular character was probably the last thing on Acevedo’s mind.

So, Who Was “Cinnamon Girl” Supposed to Be About?

To be fair, Neil Young probably could have avoided any trouble with his wife by simply saying that “Cinnamon Girl” was about her. Who would know besides him? Shoulda, coulda, woulda, Neil. In any case, he was more forthcoming in subsequent interviews and liner notes. In the notes for Decade, a 1977 compilation album, Young wrote that he wrote “Cinnamon Girl” for a “city girl on peeling pavement coming at me through Phil Ochs’ eyes playing finger cymbals.” This was also where he added, “It was hard to explain to my wife.”

Later, Young’s revelations about a specific lyrical theme in his work gave another hint to the “Cinnamon Girl”’s identity. “I remember this one girl, Jean ‘Monte’ Ray,” Young told biographer Jimmy McDonough. “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 her finger cymbals. She was really great.”

Young said watching Ray play her finger cymbals could have been the driving force behind his inclusion of dancing women in his songwriting. “Good chance,” he admitted. “I kinda had a crush on her for a while. Moved nice. She was real musical, soulful.”

When asked to explicitly confirm whether Ray was the “Cinnamon Girl” in question, Young went back to being coy. “Only part of the song,” he said. “There’s images in there that have to do with Jean, and there’s images that have to do with other people.”

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