A Horse With No Name | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
||: Em | D6/9/F# :||
Verse 1
||: Em | D6/9/F# :||
On the first part of the journey.
I was looking at all the life.
There were plants and birds and rocks and things.
There was sand and hills and rings.
Verse 2
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz.
And the sky with no clouds.
The heat was hot and the ground was dry.
But the air was full of sound.
Chorus 1
||: Em | D6/9/F# :||
I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert, you can’t remember your name.
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
Chorus tag 1
||: Em | D6/9/F# :||
La la la la la la…
Verse 3
After two days in the desert sun.
My skin began to turn red.
After three days in the desert fun.
I was looking at a riverbed.
And the story it told of a river that flowed,
made me sad to think it was dead.
Chorus 2
You see, I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert, you can’t remember your name.
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
Chorus tag 2
La la la la la la…
Solo
||: Em | D6/9/F# :||
Verse 4
After nine days I let the horse run free.
‘Cause the desert had turned to sea.
There were plants and birds and rocks and things.
There was sand and hills and rings.
Verse 5
The ocean is a desert with its life underground.
And a perfect disguise above.
Under the cities, lies a heart made of ground.
But the humans will give no love.
Chorus 3
You see I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert, you can’t remember your name.
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
Outro (chorus tag 3)
||: La la la la la la… :|| to fade
A Horse With No Name Chords: Learn the progressions
You could argue that, since it only uses two chords, A Horse With No Name makes a great beginner song.
One of these two chords may sound complicated (I’m thinking of D6/9/F#), but they are both easy to fret.
The exact strumming pattern could be simplified to simple up-and-down strokes. Countless beginner guitar teachers have done just this.
However, listening closely to the original recording reveals several layered guitars, far beyond the average beginner’s capability.
This means that playing A Horse With No Name chords well is not as simple as it first appears.
To get it right, you need to find a way to combine these parts into a single acoustic guitar part, and to do that, you need tablature (TAB) demonstrating how to break up the strumming.
Learning this process is essential, as almost all recordings feature more than one guitar. When playing live, you’ll always encounter some kind of arrangement challenge.
To help you, I’ve created two TAB examples. Moving between them creates the illusion of several guitars: A Horse With No Name – Guitar Lesson with TAB.
Once you can play this, if you’re not singing, a simple chord chart reminding you of the chords and extensions will suffice.
Here’s a chord chart I made for you.
A Horse With No Name Chord Chart | PDF + iReal Pro
This is an unusual chord chart format. Since all sections of the song use the same chords, detailing whether you’re playing a verse, chorus, tag, or solo seems pointless.
Instead, I’ve included two different strumming ideas as chord extensions, then listed the sections as follows: In (intro), A (verse), B (chorus), C (tag), and D (solo).
To download this chart, here’s a PDF: A Horse With No Name Chord Chart PDF.
This chart was created using iRealPro. Here’s a link to that file: A Horse With No Name iReal Pro. Using this and the iReal Pro app, you can change the key.
The secret behind A Horse With No Name’s success!
Released as the first single before the self-titled debut album America
(1971), A Horse With No Name became the band’s greatest success.
Charting in the top 5 in eight countries, it eventually sold an impressive 1 million copies in the U.S. alone.
Since its release, it has remained relevant for two main reasons: firstly, because it “only has two chords”, it’s considered a great beginner song for aspiring guitar players.
Secondly, the joke about the lyrics – that you should know the horse’s name by now if you’ve been through the desert – persists.
There’s a theory that “horse” is slang for heroin, and the lyrics refer to a bad trip. This is what Nile Rodgers calls the DHM (deeper hidden meaning), claiming it’s the secret to his success.
Perhaps the secret to A Horse With No Name’s success is all these elements combined!
A Horse With No Name Chords | Related Pages
A Horse With No Name | Guitar Lesson + TAB
With this guitar lesson, you can learn to play A Horse With No Name by America using TAB and chord analysis.
| Em | D6/9/F# |
On the first part of the journey…
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
America tunes
Named America so people wouldn’t think they were using a fake accent, the band
formed in London during the late 60s.
Their most popular tunes include A Horse With No Name, Ventura Highway, and
Sister Golden Hair.
America on the web
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about A Horse With No Name‘s chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not by practising scales or studying theory in isolation.