Rust Never Sleeps

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 rock zeitgeist of the late 1970s and, provided a stark contrast from Young's previous, folk-inspired album Comes a Time.[7]

Two new songs, the acoustic "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and electric "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" were the centerpiece of the new material. The solo portions of the album including, "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)", "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 Time recording sessions,[8] and "Pocahontas" had been recorded solo in 1976[8] (original recording without overdubs was released in 2017 on archival release Hitchhiker).}

After his final performance at the Boarding House on May 28, Young collaborated with the art punk band Devo on a cacophonous version of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" at the Different Fur studio in San Francisco and, would later introduce the song to Crazy Horse.[9] During the Different Fur studio session, Devo vocalist Mark Mothersbaugh added the lyrics "Rust never sleeps", a slogan he remembered from his graphic arts career promoting the automobile rust proofing product Rust-Oleum. Young adopted the line and used it in his Crazy Horse version of the song, as well as for the title of his album.[10] The lyrics, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." were widely quoted by his peers and by critics.[9]

The electric sets were recorded during the Neil Young/Crazy Horse tour in late 1978, with overdubs added later.[11] Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening and closing songs.

Retrospective professional reviews

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[12]
Chicago Tribune	[13]
Christgau's Record Guide	A+[14]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[15]
The Great Rock Discography	9/10[15]
Music Story	[15]
MusicHound Rock	4.5/5[15]
Q	[2]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[16]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	10/10[15]

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".[17] 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."[18] Rust Never Sleeps was voted the second best album of 1979 in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll.[19] Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it second on his own list for the poll, as did fellow critic Greil Marcus.[20] The album also won Rolling Stone magazine's 1979 critics poll for Album of the Year.[21] In a decade-end list for The Village Voice, Christgau named it the ninth best album of the 1970s.[22]

In 2000, Rust Never Sleeps was voted number 240 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums book.[23] In 2003, it was ranked number 351 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.[24] Rolling Stone ranked the album at the same position in the list's 2012 edition, and later at number 296 in the 2020 edition.[25][26] In a retrospective review, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune said that the acoustic and electric sides were both astounding.[13] 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."[12] Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), felt that "Powderfinger", "Pocahontas", "Thrasher", and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" were among Young's greatest songs.[16]

All tracks written by Neil Young except where noted.[27]

Side one

1. "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" (Neil Young, Jeff Blackburn) – 3:45
2. "Thrasher" – 5:38
3. "Ride My Llama" – 2:29
4. "Pocahontas" – 3:22
5. "Sail Away" – 3:46

Side two

1. "Powderfinger" – 5:30
2. "Welfare Mothers" – 3:48
3. "Sedan Delivery" – 4:40
4. "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" – 5:18

• Neil Young – vocals, guitars, harmonica, organ, percussion

with (on "Sail Away")

• Nicolette Larson – vocals
• Joe Osborn – bass
• Karl T. Himmel – drums

Crazy Horse (on side two)

• Frank "Poncho" Sampedro – electric guitar, backing vocals
• Billy Talbot – bass, backing vocals
• Ralph Molina – drums, backing vocals

• McDonough, Jimmy (2002). Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. New York City, NY: Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-42772-8. OCLC 47844513.

• Rust Never Sleeps at Discogs (list of releases)
• Rust Never Sleeps at IMDb