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As the 1970s wound toward a close, Neil Young placed himself in a curious position. By that point he had been in the public eye as a musician for more than a decade; he first came to wide attention as a member of Buffalo Springfield, then as an on-again-off-again collaborator with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash (giving rise to the phrase \u201cCSN & sometimes Y\u201d).<\/p>\n
But he had launched a solo career in early 1969 as well. Recording under his own name, and sometimes billed with the band Crazy Horse, Young had released nine albums by 1978. So successful was his eclectic body of work that his label, Reprise, compiled a three-LP survey of his work. That kind of treatment of an artist was largely unprecedented, but Decade<\/i> nonetheless went Platinum in the U.S., underscoring the popularity of the idiosyncratic artist.<\/p>\n
Young’s 1978 album, Comes a Time<\/i>, mostly reflected the folkier, singer-songwriter side of Young’s music; it was a major commercial and critical success, and featured \u201cLotta Love,\u201d a song that \u2013 in a new recording featuring a more pop-leaning arrangement \u2013 would be a hit single for Nicolette Larson (Larson sang harmonies on Young’s version as well).<\/p>\n
Against the backdrop of a string of successful albums, singles and the career-spanning Decade<\/i> collection, a live album seemed to make good sense. But Young being Young, he would approach the concept from an unusual angle. Working on record for the fourth time with Crazy Horse, Young put together live recordings of nine new songs. A varied lot that would feature some of his best-ever work, Rust Never Sleeps<\/i> displays the care and focus that \u2013 at least when he wanted to \u2013 Young could apply to his projects.<\/p>\n
The original LP was divided into acoustic and electric sides. The album \u2013 which was in fact recorded live, but with most of the audience sounds edited out \u2013 opens with \u201cMy My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).\u201d The song was co-written with Jeff Blackburn, Young’s band mate in the frustratingly short-lived supergroup, The Ducks. Featuring some of Young’s most enduring lyrical phrases (\u201cIt’s better to burn out than to fade away,\u201d to cite but one), the song itself is a plaintive mediation featuring Young’s voice, acoustic guitar and harmonica. The lyrics briefly seem to allude to the death of Elvis Presley, who had died in 1977 (\u201cthe king is gone but he’s not forgotten\u201d), but that line is immediately followed by a reference to punk (\u201cthis is the story of Johnny Rotten\u201d). Ultimately, Young leaves his point something of a mystery, other than to suggest that \u201crock and roll will never die.\u201d Perhaps hinting at what he saw as the public’s failure to appreciate the depths within his own work, he adds, \u201cthere’s more to a picture than meets the eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThrasher\u201d features one of Young’s loveliest melodies, a storytelling song that would have fit nicely on Comes a Time<\/i>. Young’s heartfelt, first-person delivery of the pastoral lyric is full of vivid imagery that variously evokes rural America, the expansive Southwest and the melancholy feel that can come when setting out alone on the open road. His lyrical turns of phrase (e.g. \u201cthe motel of lost companions\u201d) at times rival those of Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n
The brief \u201cRide My Llama\u201d sounds like the kind of song Young had included on his earlier records; rather than the insistent, folky strumming of \u201cThrasher,\u201d it features a more involved and nuanced musical arrangement reminiscent of Joni Mitchell. And although the song is more or less a Young solo number, studio overdubs provide wordless vocal harmonies.<\/p>\n
The ballad \u201cPocahontas\u201d is among Neil Young’s most-covered songs. The titular subject of the fantasy lyric travels through time, meeting Marlon Brando at the Houston Astrodome sports arena. Contrasting Young’s gentle vocal delivery, the story chronicles the horror of a massacre. Young narrates the story in first-person; it’s not designed to make a great deal of sense.<\/p>\n
Building on the country flavor of \u201cPocahontas\u201d (and connecting with its lyrics by opening with the line \u201cI could live inside a teepee\u201d), \u201cSail Away\u201d wouldn’t have been out of place on AM country radio of the era. Another shimmering, fetching melody, its represents Young at the peak of his compositional ability.<\/p>\n
Once \u201cSail Away\u201d ended, record buyers who purchased Rust Never Sleeps<\/i> had to cross the room to their turntable and flip the vinyl record over to its second side. As the needle dropped into its groove, those listeners would be greeted by a very different kind of music.<\/p>\n
Initially, Young still seems to be playing his acoustic guitar, but once \u201cPowderfinger\u201d gets going, he’s joined by the electric trio of Crazy Horse: guitarist Frank \u201cPoncho\u201d Sampedro, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina. A midtempo rocker, \u201cPowderfinger\u201d features more of Young’s surreal storytelling. Again using first-person perspective, Young sings about a warship coming up the river, and includes the gallows-humor line, \u201cit don’t look like they’re here to deliver the mail.\u201d The lyrics are joined by a simple yet highly effective twin-lead guitar figure. And Young turns in one of his trademark wobbly-yet-melodic lead guitar solos. Vocal \u201cooh\u201d harmonies apply a breezy, Southern California style vibe reminiscent of Eagles; on the final chorus, those harmonies are \u2013 to borrow a phrase Young would use many years later \u2013 ragged but right.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelfare Mothers\u201d is an odd one. With somewhat off-color humor and electronic handclaps wedded to a stomping, elementary melody, it also features stacked vocal harmony overdubs that owe at least some debt to Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell<\/i>, released in 1977. It’s fun but silly, largely an excuse to use the line \u201cwelfare mothers \/ make better lovers.\u201d The tune careens on the edge of being out of tune, an approach Young would use again more than once in his long career.<\/p>\n
\u201cSedan Delivery\u201d cranks up the distortion, and the song alternates between a stomping section and a soaring, half-time break. Near the songs’ end, the vocals are shouted and deliberately offhand. The guitar signal is pushed through so much distortion that it breaks apart; sonically, it has traveled a long distance from the pristine, clear acoustic textures that opened the record.<\/p>\n
All of which sets things up perfectly for the album closer. A companion piece to the opening tune, the angry, insistent \u201cHey Hey, My My (Into the Black)\u201d serves as a contrasting bookend. Played in a different key with massive sheets of crunchy distortion, the tune also features retooled lyrics. It’s credited as a Young solo composition, suggesting that Jeff Blackburn’s contribution to \u201cMy My\u201d was limited to select lyrical bits. The nearly atonal quality of the distorted guitar parts foreshadows Young’s 1991 all-distortion-no-music live album, Arc<\/i>. But through all the wonderfully careening noise, \u201cHey Hey, My My (Into the Black)\u201d still asserts its place as a rock ‘n’ roll anthem. And it’s the perfect closer for Rust Never Sleeps<\/i>. As the needle follows its path into the vinyl LP’s runout groove, the cheering live audience is finally heard.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/live_rust.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rust Never Sleeps<\/i> was released on June 22, 1979. In the U.S., it rose to the #8 position on Billboard<\/i>‘s album chart, and earned near-unanimous rave reviews, with many critics counting it among Young’s best (a status it maintains to this day). But more than a bit bizarrely, Young would follow up the album less than five months later. And that follow-up was again a live album, this time with the audience sounds intact. Live Rust<\/i> also featured four of the songs heard on Rust Never Sleeps<\/i> in not-too-different versions. Live Rust<\/i> followed the similar acoustic-to-electric progression of songs. The double live album is superb but confounding: it’s essential and redundant in equal parts.<\/p>\n
Beyond the bookending \u201cMy My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)\u201d and \u201cHey Hey, My My (Into the Black)\u201d and versions of the best tracks from Rust Never Sleeps<\/i>, the double-live album has a number of highlights that make it special. As great as their earlier studio counterparts are, Live Rust<\/i>‘s live readings of \u201cLotta Love and \u201cThe Loner\u201d (the latter originally on Young’s self-titled 1968 debut) are definitive.<\/p>\n
And the same can be said for impassioned and majestic versions of \u201cCortez the Killer\u201d and \u201cLike a Hurricane.\u201d Both are long songs \u2013 just under eight minutes \u2013 but their studio versions were long as well. Still, the energy that comes from live performance makes each of the songs more visceral, more effective in conveying the emotional content of both the words and the music.<\/p>\n
Some of the between-song banter on Live Rust<\/i> would have made little sense to listeners who hadn’t seen Young on tour. In the context of a film, perhaps Young’s asides to \u201croad eyes\u201d might have been comprehensible.<\/p>\n
So if 1979 wasn’t already a confusing enough year for fans of Neil Young, a concert film was<\/i> released around the same time. Titled the same as the \u201cstudio\u201d LP (Rust Never Sleeps<\/i>), it follows the set list of Live Rust<\/i>, albeit with more songs (mostly from \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Rust Never Sleeps<\/i>). By that measure, it compounds the redundancy of of Young’s 1979 activities, but wait: while Live Rust<\/i> is compiled from recordings of multiple tour dates, the Rust Never Sleeps<\/i> film documents a single performance at San Francisco’s Cow Palace.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/rust_never_sleeps_dvd.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Got all that?<\/p>\n
If followers of Young’s work weren’t already flummoxed, his work in the decade to come would correct that oversight. He dabbled \u2013 some would say perversely so \u2013 in a myriad of styles from rockabilly (Neil and the Shocking Pinks’ Everybody’s Rockin’<\/i>), Vocoder-laden electronics (Trans<\/i>), straight-ahead country (Old Ways<\/i>), sterile, synthesizer-based music (Landing on Water<\/i>) and rock with a big horn section (This Note’s for You<\/i>). If he seemed intent on pissing people off, he succeeded: label head David Geffen sued Young, accusing him of deliberately turning in uncommercial projects.<\/p>\n
Geffen lost. Young returned to Reprise by 1988. Twenty-plus albums later, he’s still at it, and still with Reprise. And he continues to confound, intrigue and entertain in equal measure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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