“Rust Never Sleeps” by Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Neil Young’s forward-thinking masterstroke turns 45.

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Welcome to a new edition of the Best Music of All Time newsletter!

Today’s music pick marks the 45th anniversary of Neil Young’s forward-thinking masterpiece.

Genre: Rock, Grunge, Folk

Label: Reprise

Release Date: July 9, 1979

Vibe: 🤘

There aren’t too many albums where you can hear an artist reinventing themselves in real-time. Fewer still burn as many expectations to the ground or rewrite as many genre rules in the process. Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps, a masterpiece that turns 45 this week, accomplishes all this with a clarity of vision that’s nothing short of stunning. As epochal as it is eerie, it signaled not simply a new direction for Young and Crazy Horse but also what was to come for rock music for the remainder of the 20th century. Much of what we take for granted about alt-rock subgenres like industrial, shoegaze, grunge, and so on can be traced back to what you hear on this record.

Rust was also seen as a return to form for an artist who, like Bob Dylan during more or less the same timeframe, seemed to have lost his way somewhat. On the heels of an unprecedented run of creative success that began with 1970’s After the Gold Rush and ended with 1975’s haunting Tonight’s the Night, Young embarked on an uneven run of stylistic experimentation. Say what you will about American Stars ‘n Bars or Comes a Time, but it’s safe to say that Young was … well, playing it safe. Singles such as “Like a Hurricane” have stood the test of time, but most of that material has been shoved to the background by casual and hardcore Neil Young fans alike.

Clearly, it was time to shake things up. To that end, one of the most critical aspects of Rust’s production was that this LP was recorded live on tour, save for some after-the-fact overdubs in the studio. The first three tracks are solo acoustic performances from Young that were taped in May 1978 during a run of shows at the Boarding House in San Francisco. During those sets, he debuted other songs for the first time and played rarities like “I Believe in You” on piano. The entire second side, which I’ll dive into in more detail shortly, was recorded in October 1978 during the Neil Young/Crazy Horse tour. During those shows with the Horse, Young leaned into that uniquely harsh guitar sound he considered a “wake-up call” for rock.

The album’s title is an evocation of what happens when you don’t heed the warning signs around you. Taken in part from the lyrics to the arresting opener, “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue),” Devo vocalist Mark Mothersbaugh put the finishing touches on the final phrase. Said Young in 1981: “We were doing this version of ‘Out of the Blue’ together and we were in the studio playing and [he] just had a lyric sheet and it said 'It's better to burn out than to rust' and he just said 'Well it's better to burn out 'cause rust never sleeps' and I thought, well all right, that makes a lot of sense to me.” The lyric, forever seared into the fabric of rock’s cultural canon, is the ultimate treatise against complacency. Stop moving and, like a shark, you’ll die, however slowly and painfully. It was a fate he seemed intent on avoiding personally, but also steering rock’s mothership, quickly losing market share to disco and dance records, away from the cliff’s edge.

What’s so interesting about this LP in the context of Young’s career is that following Rust Never Sleeps, his commercial and critical performance took a nosedive for most of the 80s. He managed to turn things around again in 1989 with Freedom, which shares many similarities with this album. Still, during the intervening decade, you have to wonder if he avoided taking his own advice. Maybe the transition to an existence as one of rock music’s elder statesmen left him scrambling, or maybe the music he produced in the 80s, again like Dylan’s output at that time, was (and still is) wildly misunderstood and underappreciated. Unlike resets and rebrands forecasting a new era of prosperity, Rust captures lightning in a bottle, freezing this version of Young in amber forever.

As pretty as the acoustic numbers and Comes a Time cast-offs “Pocahontas” and “Sail Away” are, the real reason to listen to this record is for its sawtoothed second act. Beginning with “Powderfinger,” one of Young and the Horse’s very best songs, it’s unlike anything else in his discography. It’s despairing and relentless, exploring themes of exhaustion and frustration with the status quo (not unlike much post-COVID sociopolitical discourse). The thematic elements extended to violent crime in America, reflecting the mindset of a nation that’d seen its homicide rate balloon from 4.6 per 100,000 residents in 1962 to 9.7 in 1979. That sadness and anger seeps into “Powderfinger,” where the central character is gunned down trying to protect his family, and even in “Sedan Delivery,” where the homeless (?) protagonist hints at the desperate measures he’s forced to take in desperate times (”I saw the movie and I read the book/But when it happened to me/I sure was glad I had what it took/To get away”).

Despite its intensity throughout (or maybe because of it), Rust remains one of the most lauded albums in Young’s body of work. In his review for the Village Voice, Robert Christgau said:

“For the decade's greatest rock and roller to come out with his greatest album in 1979 is no miracle in itself […] The miracle is that Young doesn't sound much more grizzled now than he already did in 1969; he's wiser but not wearier, victor so far over the slow burnout his title warns of. The album's music, like its aura of space-age primitivism, seems familiar, but while the melodies work because they're as simple and fresh as his melodies have always been, the offhand complexity of the lyrics is unprecedented in Young's work.”

In his write-up for Rolling Stone, Paul Nelson underscored the immediacy of the writing, adding, "Rust Never Sleeps tells me more about my life, my country, and rock & roll than any music I've heard in years." The fact that it resonated with so many people across a broad demographic spectrum is one of the reasons that the LP eventually became a Platinum-level seller. Those who had been out on Young were suddenly back in. For anyone who, like me, discovered it long after its initial release, this record is one of those moments where Young’s particular brand of rebelliousness clicked. Sure, the folk/country material is pleasant enough, but angry, fuzzed-out Neil Young is the version of him that’ll continue to influence musicians for another 45 years or more.

👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈