Happy 45th Anniversary to Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Live Rust, originally released November 14, 1979.
Neil Young is considered the godfather of grunge, which is fair. He rocked hard. He still rocks hard. He loves distortion. He has a weird facial hair pattern. He checks all the boxes. But the thing that's always amazed me about Neil Young is that for all of the chaotic grunge energy that powers him, he's never sloppy. Even live.
Like on Live Rust, his album with his on-again, off-again backing band, Crazy Horse. The performances are raw and electric, but also amazingly tight. The energy is palpable, but it's all under control. And you wouldn't think that would be the case, given it's a live album of a live album. It was filmed and recorded during the tour for Rust Never Sleeps, a studio album that was recorded live in front of an audience, much like a 1970s sitcom, but without the nitrous oxide-induced laughter.
The recursively conceived Live Rust was the soundtrack to Rust Never Sleeps, Young's documentary concert film, which he directed under the name Bernard Shakey (his pseudonym for film work). The album works quite well as a stand-alone live album. I coincidentally listened to Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense (1984) while writing this piece and was struck by how both concert soundtracks were albums first and films second, even if both films are also very good (on the other end of the concert soundtrack spectrum, you might have something like Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same, which is a movie first and a music listening experience fourth or fifth).
While Live Rust is a Crazy Horse album in name, Young handles half of the sixteen tracks himself, which is part of what makes it such an impressive album. Here you have Young touring a raucous, rocking band behind an electric album. It's not a reach to assume most artists would have kept that kind of energy flowing. But not Young. Instead he begins the album with an overview of his folkier hits.
This might say more about Young's fans than Young. Anecdotally, his fans seem to love him across the board, not making distinctions between his delicate, acoustic work and heavy electric jams (there also seems to be a tacit fan understanding not to discuss Trans, Young's foray into electronic sounds, and Everybody's Rockin', his mercifully short rockabilly album, which actually contributed to Young's label suing him for, essentially, not sounding like himself).
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Live Rust is also a bit of a Young solo career retrospective which is unusual given he's performing with Crazy Horse. The album kicks off with "Sugar Mountain," a song written by a teenage Young for The Squires, an early band of his. He then moves into "I Am a Child," a Buffalo Springfield tune. From there, Young moves closer to his present self, taking on "Comes a Time" and "After the Gold Rush," from his solo career. Finally, Young reaches the present, launching into the acoustic version of "My, Hey (Out Of The Blue)," from Rust Never Sleeps, the album he’s actually touring.
Young keeps rolling through solo acoustic work, finally stopping at "The Needle and the Damage Done," inspired by Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten, who died of an overdose in 1972. Whitten's death led to Young's Tonight's the Night (1975), considered to be one of the most harrowing albums of all time.
Which brings us back to Young's ability to let it all hang out emotionally, while never letting his songs feel like they're degenerating into atonal noise. Musically, his acoustic and electric work has the energy of a truck with its brakes cuts, barreling down a hill, yet somehow not hitting anything and even managing to parallel park perfectly at the bottom.
It means that even when Young is finally joined by Crazy Horse, over half an hour into the album, and even as the songs begin to sprawl, everything stretches, but nothing breaks. An epic, eight-minute version of "Like a Hurricane" allows Young's vocals to soar over a fog of distortion and lead lines that alternate between the textures of fudge and piano wire. Part of the control is certainly due to the Crazy Horse rhythm section, who won't let themselves get knocked off of the song, no matter where Young tries to pull them. But the other variable is Young's innate sense of melody, which infects his singing and lead work, building songs within songs.
The album concludes with "Tonight's the Night," from the aforementioned Whitten tribute. Young's anger and frustration is still apparent in the vocals and the guitar playing, even some seven years after Whitten's death. His guitar tone crackles like a downed power line as he leads Crazy Horse through the stops and starts of the rhythm, letting his solo take off into what could almost be considered free jazz. Ralph Molina's drums and Billy Talbot's bass never leave the groove, but play off of Young's guitar, occasionally leaving their post for a moment, only to quickly get back to their assigned position, like old-school NBA centers.
It's a perfect demonstration of the power of Young and of Crazy Horse: the ability to give in to the Id, for mere moments, before snapping back, just in time, preserving the structure of the song.
Young brings a comparable energy to the acoustic songs, although staying much more within the song's borders, as one must (or at least should) do when serving as the only instrument in a song. But Young's solo guitar and piano work, although never ragged, has a frenetic energy. It's challenging to captivate an audience for over half an hour with nothing besides an instrument and voice (with some harmonica blasts liberally thrown in). And yet Young is spell-binding.
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Some people might prefer Weld, Young and Crazy Horse's 1991 live album, because it's entirely electric, and because it's more recent. Both are great albums, but Live Rust is a true testament to Young's skills as a songwriter and performer. Hearing the two extremes together, the folk and the rock, you come to appreciate how much Young understands his true self. But hearing Young with Crazy Horse, you also come to appreciate how much the backing band forces Young to maintain that personal sound, by keeping him from wandering off too far. None of this is new or surprising information about Young or Crazy Horse, but the beauty of Live Rust is how it puts it all in one just-neat-enough package.
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Editor's note: this anniversary tribute was originally published in 2019 and has since been edited for accuracy and timeliness.