Neil Young FAQ by Glen Boyd

Author:Glen Boyd [Boyd, Glen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO004000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Composers & Musicians
ISBN: 9781476813493
Publisher: Backbeat
Published: 2012-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

Rock ’n’ Roll Will Never Die

The one-month concert trek that originally spawned the Rust Never Sleeps album, was first conceived as a series of shows with Crazy Horse designed to promote the mellower, more commercially accessible Comes a Time release.

Soon enough, however, it ballooned into something else entirely—spawning not only the Rust Never Sleeps album, but a subsequent double live release and concert film as well.

No one is exactly sure what Young was thinking at the time of what became the Rust Never Sleeps tour (as if anyone ever does). But the wheels turning in his head seemed to include everything from visions of giant-sized amplifiers and hooded, red-eyed, pint-sized roadies (that looked like something straight out of the Ewok characters from Star Wars), to a determination to boldly go where no man’s eardrums had gone before.

Somehow, it not only all worked, but also went on to create one of the more pivotal concert tours in rock-’n’-roll history.

What is clear today is that this one month’s worth of shows—culminating in the October 22, 1978, performance captured for posterity on the Rust Never Sleeps concert film and Live Rust double concert album)—constitute some of the loudest, most abrasive-sounding rock ’n’ roll Neil Young and Crazy Horse have ever played. It has long since gone down as one of those “you had to be there” moments, and the stuff of legend for Young’s most devoted fans. Much of the San Francisco Cow Palace performance can also be heard on the original Rust Never Sleeps album (albeit in overdubbed versions) of the original new songs that were debuted on the tour.

To this day, roadies and others associated with this tour recall personal memories of chaos, mayhem, and hearing loss.

The Live Rust album is today regarded by many fans as Young’s best live release ever, and as one of the best live rock albums of all time (although some fans will tell you that the nineties release Arc-Weld trumps it, at least in terms of sheer overall volume). Interestingly, the only song from Comes a Time, the commercial folk-pop album the tour was originally designed to promote, represented is Young’s self-described “Fleetwood Mac” number, “Lotta Love.”

Even more revealing, though, is the filmed document of the tour, shot primarily at the Cow Palace show in San Francisco.

This footage is largely grainy by today’s high-definition, Blu-ray standards, but reveals an artist at the top of his game. From the oversized mikes and amplifiers and the hooded, Star Wars–inspired “road-eyes” (as well as characters like Briggs playing Dr. Decibel) onstage, all the way through to the taped Woodstock stage announcements bridging the gaps between sets, and the “Rust-O-Vision” 3-D glasses worn by the audience, it was clear that Neil Young was taking his game to new and unprecedented levels. Unfortunately, this was a very brief artistic high that wasn’t going to last.

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