America was formed in England by sons of US servicemen who were stationed there. Lead singer Dewey Bunnell wrote "A Horse With No Name" when he was 19. Although the song is commonly misinterpreted about being on drugs, it is not: Bunnell based the images in the lyrics on things he saw while visiting the US.
This was originally titled "Desert Song," since Bunnell wrote it based on the desert scenery he encountered when his dad was stationed at an Air Force base in Santa Barbara County, California.
"The desert as a topic had been burning in my head after years in the UK," Bunnell told Mojo magazine. "As kids, my brother and I had spent time in the desert - New Mexico, Arizona, southern California - catching snakes and lizards and poking around. I was also conjuring up another kind of weather, since England was notorious for being rainy."
The song tells a rather abstruse tale about a trip though the desert. While the landscape is unforgiving, the singer also finds comfort in that scenario.
According to Dewey Bunnell, the "horse" represents a means of entering a place of tranquility, and this tranquil place was best represented by the desert, which sounded pretty good to him while he was stuck in rainy England.
As for why the horse had no name and why it went free after nine days, Bunnell doesn't have any answers - it seems the various listener interpretations are far more colorful than any meaning he assigned to it.
The group's self-titled debut album was released in the UK in late 1971, but didn't contain this song. When they were contemplating a single, they considered "
I Need You," but decided to come up with a new song instead. The group went back to the studio and recorded "A Horse With No Name," which Bunnell had written.
Released as a single in the UK, it shot to #3 in January 1972, prompting the group's label, Warner Bros., to issue the single in the US and also release the album with the song included. On March 25, both the single and album hit #1 in the US; the song stayed at the top spot for three weeks, the album for five.
The album was recorded in London where the band was located. In February, when the song started climbing the charts in the US, the group embarked on a tour of the States, playing club shows before supporting the Everly Brothers as the opening act on their North American tour.
"I Need You" was released as the follow-up single, reaching #9 US. The group would become one of the most successful acts of the '70s and score another US #1 hit with "
Sister Golden Hair."
Many people thought this was a Neil Young song when they heard it, and many rock critics pointed out the similarities. In a strange twist, "A Horse With No Name" replaced Young's "
Heart of Gold" at #1 in the US.
Dewey Bunnell explained that he was well aware that he sounded like Neil Young on this song, but claimed he wasn't trying to imitate the singer. He told
Rolling Stone in 1973: "I try to use a different voice so that I won't be branded as a rip-off. It's such a drag, though, to have to not sound like someone when you can't help it in the first place."
America remained active into the '10s, typically playing about 100 shows a year. When Songfacts
spoke with Gerry Beckley in 2016, he said: "I'm always asked, 'What's your favorite song?' And I usually default to 'Horse' because the song itself represents the start of the journey. You know: 'On the first part of the journey.' It actually says it in the song. But that's what it's been - it's been an unbelievable journey."
"Horse" is slang for heroin, leading to myriad rumors (denied by the band) that the song is about drugs.
"I had no idea horse was a street name for heroin, and it got banned, like Kansas City Radio wouldn't play it," Bunnell told Mojo. "Maybe that helped create some other side bar of Darkness to the song. We dabbled in some of the drugs of the day, but never hard drugs."
Dewey Bunnell played 6-string acoustic guitar on this track; his bandmate
Gerry Beckley played 12-string acoustic, and the third member of the group, Dan Peek, played bass. Session musicians rounded out the instrumentation: Kim Haworth on drums and Ray Cooper on percussion.
This appears on a fifth-season episode of
Friends called "The One With Joey's Big Break." In it, Joey and Chandler go on a road trip to Las Vegas (hence, "through the desert").
Other TV series to use the song are:
Parks and RecreationThe Simpsons Six Feet Under Movies include:
Air America (1990)
Hideous Kinky (1998)
The Trip (2002)
American Hustle (2013)
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Suggestion credit:
Brett - Edmonton, Canada
A 2010 episode of the TV series Breaking Bad is titled "Caballo sin Nombre," Spanish for "Horse With No Name." At the beginning of this episode, the main character, Walter White, sings along to the song on his car radio, and then at the end he sings it again.
The San Francisco band The Loud Family named their first album Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things after a line in this song.
This song found a new audience when it was used in the video game Grand Theft Auto. The band had some reservations about letting the song be used in the violent game, but Gerry Beckley's son Joe helped convince them to do so. "And now, almost weekly, we'll have some kid come up to us and say, 'I learned about your music through Grand Theft Auto,'" Beckley told us in 2016.
On the '90s sitcom NewsRadio, Dave Nelson (Dave Foley) records himself singing the song, and the tape is discovered by Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman). In real life, Hartman designed three album covers for America while his brother John was the band's manager. Before venturing into comedy, his graphic arts business led him to design for other bands, including Poco and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
In 2017, Michelle Branch and Patrick Carney, who married two years later, recorded "A Horse With No Name" for the Netflix series BoJack Horseman. Carney, who also wrote and performed the opening theme for the show, said: "It was a lifelong dream of mine to write a theme song for an animated horse who drinks too much and is constantly struggling with depression."
The bad grammar in the song was intentional.
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
Burrell told Mojo: "The poor grammar in the lyrics was me inventing a character to sing the song, because I didn't talk like 'There ain't no-one for to give you no pain.' It just felt right."
Singer-songwriter Andrew Gold told Burrell the song "just annoyed the hell out of him, because of the line, 'the plants and birds and rocks and things...' couldn't I just come up with one more thing."
