(Credits: Far Out / MUBI)
Sun 15 February 2026 4:00, UK
Yorkshire – God’s own country and once the industrial heart of an entire empire – this green and pleasant paradise has given the world so much over the centuries, from the invention of film, to the world’s oldest football club, and, of course, Marks and Spencer. Even arguably, the star-spangled song in the history of classic rock has its roots in Yorkshire.
Upon initial listening, it is utterly impossible to escape the overwhelming Americanism of the 1971 folk-rock classic ‘A Horse with No Name’. Its country twang and plodding rhythm immediately conjure up images of great plains and technicolour westerns starring recognisable yet problematic actors. Aside from anything else, the band that made the song into a transatlantic hit were made up the children of US Air Force members and were called… America.
Yet, like many things attributed to the United States, the true origins of ‘A Horse With No Name’ began thousands of miles away from the land of cowboys and horses. The line-up of America might have been, well, American, but it was in London that they first came together, while their fathers were stationed in the English capital.
In fact, premier songwriter Dewey Bunnell was actually born in the leafy surroundings of Harrogate in North Yorkshire – making him perhaps the only Yorkshireman to be called Dewey.
So, despite being an American citizen, Bunnell’s upbringing was largely influenced by those Yorkshire surroundings, and it was there that he struck upon his magnum opus, ‘A Horse With No Name’. As he recalled during a 2020 interview with American Songwriter, “The song was born out of pure boredom. I had just graduated high school in London, and my family moved up to Yorkshire, where my mother was from.”
That combination of boredom and a certain degree of resentment over having to swap the fast-moving surroundings of London for the Roman baths of Harrogate eventually led to that legendary song. “I wanted to stay in London, so I moved into the home of a friend and his family,” Bunnell recalled of his relocation to Dorset.
“America had signed with Warner Brothers and had a record out. We had been recording and were in full gear, playing shows and recording,” he continued. “I wrote the song alone in this guy’s bedroom that I shared. I wrote it all in one fell swoop. I wrote it in a couple hours.”
That one fell swoop ended up being America’s defining moment as a band, with ‘A Horse With No Name’ topping the US singles charts and peaking at number three in the UK, becoming one of the defining songs of a particularly productive year in rock history during the process.
So, while America’s greatest hit is unavoidably indebted to the band’s cultural roots in the United States, it is worth remembering that it was written in Dorset and influenced more than a little by Dewey Bunnell’s relationship with Harrogate – a town whose musical impact often goes underrated, even by the standards of Yorkshire, which has produced some of Britain’s all-time greatest artists, spanning the spectrum from fellow Harrogatonian Barry Dransfield to Hull’s Spiders from Mars.