Rust Never Sleeps

Certain Songs #1263: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)”

July 14, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rust Never Sleeps
Year: 1979

Recorded at the Cow Palace, San Francisco on October 22, 1978

Believe it or not, when Live Rust came out, there was actually some debate as to whether or not it even needed to exist.

After all, Neil had recently put out the career-spanning retrospective, Decade, on which you could find near-definitive versions of many of the songs, and even more scandalous, Live Rust repeated four tracks from Rust Never Sleeps, including the exact same recording of “Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black),” making it the only song that used the exact same performance on all three documents that came from that tour: Rust Never Sleeps, Live Rust and the film Rust Never Sleeps, though this version has some overdubs.

Certain Songs #1262: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Sedan Delivery”

July 13, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rust Never Sleeps
Year: 1979

Recorded at St. Paul Civic Center on October 15, 1978

So yeah, this is the song we named our band after. Pretty sure it was Doc who came up with it. And while it musically represented the Neil Young + The Replacements vibe we were going after, it wasn’t a song that we ever did, probably because that would have a bit too much.

Certain Songs #1261: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Powderfinger”

July 12, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rust Never Sleeps
Year: 1979

Recorded at McNichols Arena, Denver on October 19, 1978

It says here that “Powderfinger” is Neil Young’s greatest song, and one of the greatest songs of the 20th Century. That is, of course, a highly personal opinion, and Neil has loads of songs that are “one of the greatest songs of the 20th Century,” but to me, “Powderfinger” is both endlessly fascinating and the older I get, the sadder it seems.

As the song which starts the electric half of Rust Never Sleeps it’s a perfect transition from the all-acoustic side one, as “Powderfinger” feels like an ancient folksong, sporting both a melody and a story as old as America herself.

Certain Songs #1260: Neil Young – “Pocahontas”

July 11, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rust Never Sleeps
Year: 1979

Recorded at Indigo Ranch, Malibu on August 11, 1976 w/ overdubs at Triiad Studios, Ft. Lauderdale on September 4, 1977

This is where I came in — with Rust Never Sleeps — a little over a decade after Neil Young’s career started, back when that meant that he was considered, you know, “old,” because the concept of being a life-long rock and roller was still suspect, even for a guy who was declaring that rock and roll would never die.

Rust Never Sleeps came out the summer before my senior year of high school, and it and Live Rust were part of the soundtrack of my life as surely as The Clash, The Who, The Jam and The Rolling Stones, especially the second side, which was as noisy as any punk rock and as singable as any pop.