Guest post by Nathan Arizona
When listeners first heard America’s “A Horse With No Name” in 1972 a lot of them had questions. Why did this new Neil Young song seem to pop up out of nowhere? And why would Neil write a line like “the heat was hot?”
Well, at least they knew where the band came from by its name. No, probably not. America came out of England.
The singer does sound kind of like Neil Young. And the song is more or less in his style, not to mention that of Crosby, Stills and Nash. But it was clear this was a pretty good tune. A little derivative, sure, but the influences were first-rate.
America the band was formed in England by Americans who had moved there as youngsters with their Air Force families. Maybe they looked with a certain longing at America the country and its Laurel Canyon music scene.
The band recorded “A Horse With No Name” in England but it became their first big hit after they moved to California. It shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart— replacing Young’s “Heart of Gold!
The awkwardness of their lyrics never totally disappeared. Unless you find “alligator lizards in the air” plausible.
“A Horse With No Name” has a nice hallucinatory quality, but sometimes they just can’t quite find the right word. They ride that nameless horse in a desert filled with “plants, and birds, and rocks” and, uh, “things.” Or they abandon grammar to make a line scan. The desert is a place “where there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.”
Co-founder Dewey Bunnell still tours as America. The other remaining co-founder, Gerry Beckley, recently retired from the touring part. (Dan Peek left the band back in 1977 and died in 2011). Bunnell and the band will be on the road from March into the summer, when the heat will probably be hot.
Here’s the band performing “A Horse With No Name” in a 1972 video with desert visuals. Be on the lookout rocks and things.
The group escaped the desert later that year and found itself on L.A.’s “Ventura Highway.” It took them on another trip to the top of the Billboard chart.
