Rust Never Sleeps

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Neil Young (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars); Frank Sampedro (guitar); Billy Talbot (bass); Ralph Molina (drums).

Additional personnel: Nicolette Larson (vocals); Joe Osborne, Carl Himmel.

Producers: Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Tim Mulligan, David Briggs.

As far as pure songcraft goes, it’s hard to beat this 1979 offering from Young and Crazy Horse. By the end of the ’90s, Young, Talbot, Molina and Sampredo had refined their crushing sonic assault to the extent that they could bludgeon the listener with Wagnerian riffs and rhythms (the entropy hymn “Hey Hey, My My”) or provide just enough grit to keep Young’s far-out lyrics from ascending into the stratosphere (“Ride My Llama.”) Songwise, RUST is a schizophrenic album. Young moves from the brilliant surrealist imagery of “Pocahontas,” with its evocation of “Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me,” to the sharp narrative perspective of the equally transcendent “Powderfinger” and the good-humored social commentary of “Welfare Mothers.”

What the critics say…

Q (1/03, p.64) – Included in Q Magazine’s “100 Greatest Albums Ever“
Q (8/93, p.107) – 4 Stars – Excellent – “…it flows, it’s got a couple of his strongest issue songs in ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘Powderfinger,’ and it’s even rather good-humored…“
Mojo (Publisher) (11/01, p.151) – “Half-acoustic, half electric, the tracks ranged from beautifully affecting to menacing…”