Rust Never Sleeps

by Neil Young

Albums In Order Review Series by Mike "Expecting 2 Fly" Cordova

In 2004 Rustie, Mike "Expecting 2 Fly" Cordova posted a series of articles on his experience listening to all of Neil Young's albums in chronological order. Here is one in the series. For a complete listing, see Albums in Order reviews.

Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:51:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Rust Never Sleeps

[An aside: thanks to those of you who read these little memory pieces. I thank everyone, even those that hit the delete key as soon as they see the subject line, for allowing the self-indulgence of this entire series.]

Summer of '78 to summer of '79 was one of the most demanding in my life. Air Force pilot training is an intense and high-pressure experience. I did have some time for friends and women and even music sometimes though.

I had some idea, through the media, about what Neil was up to. I remember reading in Rolling Stone about theatrics "belittling" Neil Young's concerts on this tour. I *almost* had a chance not only to see one of those shows, but to see THE show that's documented on Live Rust. I had tickets to the Cow Palace show. But my pilot training schedule would not allow me to leave, so I gave away my tickets to a couple of friends. The had lost track a bit of album release schedules, but I remember early summer of '79 turning on my car radio and hearing a lead guitar part and thinking "hey, that's Neil Young!!" and then hearing the last part of Powderfinger. Whoa that was great. I ran out to buy the album as soon as it came out shortly after that.

I was initially surprised at how mellow the acoustic side was after hearing the electricity of Powderfinger. But I thought the songs on side 1, the acoustic side, were very good. MMHH: hey, an anthem. Thrasher was complex and unendingly interesting. Ride My Llama was, ahem, otherworldly. Llama was pronounced in a weird way, but what the heck, great song. I remembered Pocahontas from my one and only (at the time) concert back in '76 and I thought it was a very powerful song; fantastic, incredible. [It still today can give me goosebumps to hear it.] Sail Away, so very obviously an outtake from the Comes A Time sessions was and is a very nice tune. Yet another song that would have, IMHO, fit so much better on the CAT album than the (sorry Ian and others of you who like this song) atrociously bad Motorcycle Mama.

I thought Powderfinger which kicked off side two was just about the best Neil Young song I had ever heard. Holy cow, what imagery, what a story, what mystery and magic this tune conjured up. Welfare Mothers was surprisingly not-so-good, IMO. I can kind of see how it would have some appeal maybe, but after the genius of Powderfinger, to me, WM is a big letdown. Sedan Delivery was, on the other hand, a great tune. I had heard Neil was really into what punk bands were going for and this was the only tune on the album except for Hey Hey, My My that came close to sounding like it was influenced by punk. Hey Hey, My My was a good closer for the album and I used to love to crank that one way up and hear those guitars pound into my head.

Overall, a great album, no doubt about it. I did notice at the time though that many of the tunes were not very new. Pocohontas dated back at least to '76; I had heard it in concert that year. Sail Away was from the '77 CAT sessions. I had read a couple of years before this album came out that Powderfinger and Sedan Delivery were handed over to Lynyrd Skynyrd a few years before. Hey Hey, My My and MMHH were the same song. So that meant there were only 4 "new" songs on this album and one of those was the atrociously bad Welfare Mothers. But Thrasher and RML were pretty darn good songs and Hey Hey, My My/MMHH was a decent rock anthem.

I very much enjoyed listening to Rust Never Sleeps today.

Mike - Expecting To Fly

For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.