Rust Never Sleeps is a live album by Canadian / American singer-songwriter Neil Young and American band Crazy Horse. It was released on June 22, 1979, by Reprise Records. Most of the album was recorded live, then overdubbed in the studio. Young used the phrase "rust never sleeps" as a concept for his tour with Crazy Horse to avoid artistic complacency and try more progressive, theatrical approaches to performing live.
Background and recording
The album was recorded in 1978 during the lengthy "Rust Never Sleeps" tour, in which Young played a wealth of new material. The concert tour was divided into a solo acoustic set and an electric set with Crazy Horse. The electric sets, featuring an abrasive style of guitar playing, were influenced by the punk rockzeitgeist of the late 1970s and, provided a stark contrast from Young's previous, folk-inspired album Comes a Time. Two new songs, the acoustic "My My, Hey Hey " and electric "Hey Hey, My My " were the centerpiece of the new material. The solo portions of the album including, "My My, Hey Hey ", "Thrasher" and "Ride My Llama" were recorded live in San Francisco at the Boarding House between May 24 and May 28, 1978. Two songs from the album were not recorded live: "Sail Away" was recorded without Crazy Horse during or after the Comes a Timerecording sessions, and "Pocahontas" had been recorded solo in 1976.
Critical reception
Reviewing for The Village Voice in 1979, Robert Christgau called Rust Never Sleeps Young's best album yet and said although his melodies are unsurprisingly simple and original, his lyrics are surprisingly and offhandedly complex. "He's wiser but not wearier", Christgau wrote, "victor so far over the slow burnout his title warns of". Paul Nelson, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, found its first side virtuosic because of how Young transcends the songs' acoustic settings with his commanding performance and was impressed by its themes of personal escape and exhaustion, the role of rock music, and American violence: "Rust Never Sleeps tells me more about my life, my country and rock & roll than any music I've heard in years." Rust Never Sleeps was voted the second best album of 1979 in The Village Voices annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it second on his own list for the poll, as did fellow critic Greil Marcus. The album also won Rolling Stone magazine's 1979 critics poll for Album of the Year. In a decade-end list for The Village Voice, Christgau named it the ninth best album of the 1970s. In 2000, Rust Never Sleeps was voted number 240 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums book. In 2003, it was ranked number 351 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Rolling Stone ranked the album at the same position in the list's 2012 edition. In a retrospective review, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune said that the acoustic and electric sides were both astounding. AllMusic's William Ruhlmann viewed that Young reinvigorated himself artistically by being imaginative and bold, and in the process created an exemplary album that "encapsulated his many styles on a single disc with great songs — in particular the remarkable 'Powderfinger' — unlike any he had written before." Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide, felt that "Powderfinger", "Pocahontas", "Thrasher", and "Hey Hey, My My " were among Young's greatest songs.
Track listing
All tracks written by Neil Young except where noted. ;Side one
