Editing Rust Never Sleeps (section)

==Writing==
The album sees Young reunited with Crazy Horse, his first credited to the band since 1975's ''[[Zuma (Neil Young album)|Zuma]]''. Four of the album's eight songs date from the sessions from that previous album: "Pocahontas", "Ride My Llama", "Powderfinger" and "Sedan Delivery". Studio attempts at each of these songs from the summer of 1975 have since been released through Young's ''Archives'' series. Young explains in his memoir, ''Waging Heavy Peace'': "The album ''Zuma'' I s the first album we made with Crazy Horse after Poncho joined the band. We kept playing day after day and partying at night. We did the original "Powderfinger" and held it back. We did "Sedan Delivery" and held it back. "Ride My Llama" was completely finished and mixed and held back. Today I like listening to all of those tracks together in a compilation I call ''Dume'' that is in [[Neil Young Archives Volume II: 1972–1976|The Archives Volume 2]]."<ref>Young, Neil. 2012. ''Waging Heavy Peace''. Penguin Publishing Group.</ref>

The album's title, ''Rust Never Sleeps'' takes its name from the song that bookends the album, titled "[[My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)]]" and "[[Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)]]". The line "It's better to burn out than it is to rust" was borrowed from a line in a song by Jeff Blackburn, Young's bandmate in [[The Ducks]], with whom he toured in 1977.<ref name="auto">Mcdonough, Jimmy. 2003. ''Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography''. New York: Anchor Books.</ref> 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]].{{sfn|McDonough|2002|pp=531}} Young recalls in a 1981 ''[[Rockline]]'' interview: {{blockquote|"I think Mark had the idea in the first place. We were doing this version of "Out of the Blue" together and we were in the studio playing and Booji Boy was there and he was singing 'Hey Hey, My My' and he just had a lyric sheet and it said 'It's better to burn out than to rust' and he just said 'Well it's better to burn out 'cause rust never sleeps' and I thought, well all right, that makes a lot of sense to me."<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=April 1982 |title=The Neil Young 'phone-in' [transcript] |url=https://sugarmtn.org/ba/pdf.ba/web/ba_viewer.html?file=%2Fba/pdf/ba005.pdf |magazine=Broken Arrow |issue=5 |page=6 |via=Sugar Mountain: Neil Young Set Lists}}</ref>}}

Young adopted Mothersbaugh's lyrics and created a new version of the song with Crazy Horse. He also adopted Mothersbaugh's lyrics for the title of his album as a metaphor about the hazards of complacency on his music career and the need to keep moving forward.{{sfn|McDonough|2002|pp=531}} Young explained in a June 1988 interview for ''[[Spin Magazine]]'' how the lyrics resonated with him, and how he felt both the record industry should be shaken up at the time, and how he applies the sentiment of the song to his style of recording: {{blockquote|"I never met Johnny Rotten, but I like what he did to people. He pissed off a lot of people who I think needed waking up. Rock 'n' roll people, who in the Seventies were asleep and thinking they were just so fucking cool and they knew what had to happen. They were telling me why don't you make a real record. People became aware that there was more to it than perfection and overdubs, and fucking equipment and limousines back and forth to Studio B, and the other group down the hall and getting high in the bathroom with the other group that's going in and singing on their record. That's not intense enough for me. I think art is a private thing. I'm not sharing my creative moment with whoever's in the hallway. Rust implies you're not using anything, that you're sitting there and letting the elements eat you. Burning up means you're cruising through the elements so fucking fast that you're actually burning, and your circuits, instead of corroding, are fucking disintegrating. You're going so fast you're actually fucking the elements, becoming one with the elements, turning to gas. That's why it's better to burn out."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.spin.com/2019/09/neil-young-june-1988-interview-forever-young/|title=Neil Young: Our 1988 Interview |website=Spin.com|access-date=June 27, 2024}}</ref>}}

The lyrics, "It's better to burn out than fade away", were widely quoted by his peers and by critics.{{sfn|McDonough|2002|pp=531–532}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=Neil Young Powderfinger |url=https://americansongwriter.com/neil-young-powderfinger/ |access-date=March 27, 2023 |website=Americansongwriter.com}}</ref> In a 1980 interview with [[David Sheff]] from ''Playboy'' magazine, [[John Lennon]] was dismissive of the lyric and the song's reference to [[Johnny Rotten]] for what he interpreted as worship for the dead saying, "No, thank you. I’ll take the living and the healthy."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young |url=https://www.classicrockreview.com/2014/11/1979-neil-young-rust-never-sleeps/ |access-date=March 27, 2023 |website=Classicrockreview.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Neil and The Beatles |url=http://hyperrust.org/Rust/TheBeatles.html |access-date=March 27, 2023 |website=HyperRust.org}}</ref> In 1994, [[Kurt Cobain]] quoted the lyric in his suicide note.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kurt Cobain and Neil Young |url=http://thrasherswheat.org/jammin/nirvana.htm |access-date=March 27, 2023 |publisher=thrasherswheat.org}}</ref> After Cobain's death, Young vowed never to perform the song again, but reversed his stance at the request of the surviving members of Nirvana.<ref>{{Citation |first1=Andy | last1=Fyfe |year=2023 |title=Neil Young Archives:1945-2023 |work=Mojo |publisher=Bauer Publishing |issn= 2514-4626 }}</ref>

"Thrasher" was written while filming ''[[Human Highway]]'' in [[New Mexico]] with [[Dennis Hopper]]. Young remembers in a 2022 post to his website: "After leaving [[Taos, New Mexico|Taos]] with Carpio, a Native American friend I had met during the filming of ''Human Highway'', sitting in the front seat of his car, I wrote this song, "Thrasher". Driving through the magnificent beauty of New Mexico, the words just kept coming to me. I saw the eagles circling, the deep canyons, the road ahead, reflecting on my journey through recent years, and thankful to be where I was."<ref>March 7, 2022. Neil Young Archives.</ref>

In the song's lyrics, he uncharitably describes his [[CSNY]] bandmates as "dead weight."<ref name="auto1">{{Cite journal |last=Kent |first=Nick |date=December 1995 |title=I Build Something Up, I Tear It Right Down: Neil Young at 50 |url=https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/i-build-something-up-i-tear-it-right-down-neil-young-at-50 |journal=Mojo |access-date=August 26, 2023}}</ref> Young explains in a 1985 interview: "Well, at that point I felt like it was kind of dead weight for me. Not for them. For me. I could go somewhere and they couldn't go there. I wasn't going to pull them along, they were doing fine without me. It might have come off a little more harsh than I meant it, but once I write I can't say, 'Oh, I'm going to hurt someone's feelings.' Poetically and on feeling it made good sense to me and it came right out. I think I'd be doing a disservice to change it based on what I think a reaction would be. I try not to do that."<ref>Flanagan, Bill. 1986. ''Written in My Soul''. McGraw-Hill/Contemporary.</ref>

Young chose not to perform the song for several years after its initial release, due to his reaction to a particularly harsh review of the song. He would tell a 2014 audience "This song, you know, I did it, I haven't done it that much in my life because at a very vulnerable moment I read something about it. Just like the worst fucking review I've ever read. So for all your reviewers, if you feel like your words don't mean anything, you're probably right, but in that case, in that case they were damaging. So, anyway, I think I got this, I think this it's the one here. I hope so."<ref>Comments to the audience, April 1, 2014. Hollywood, California.</ref>

"Ride My Llama" tells a tale of space travel and playing guitars with an alien. When introducing the song at The Boarding House, Young described it as "an extraterrestrial folk song" about "close encounters of the finest kind." He further shares that he wrote the song the same day as "Cortez the Killer".<ref>Comments to the audience, May 1978, The Boarding House, San Francisco.</ref> Young and Crazy Horse would first record "Cortez the Killer", "Ride My Llama" and "Sedan Delivery" on the same day at the beginning of the ''Zuma'' sessions. 

"[[Pocahontas (Neil Young song)|Pocahontas]]" was written at the home of CSNY road manager and video producer Taylor Phelps "one night when I was just sitting around on one of my friend's farms out there. We were getting high sitting there in front of that old pot belly, thinking about what it could've been like. I turned over and said, 'Wow, I wish I had my 12-string with me right now'."<ref>Comments to the audience, November 24, 1976, Atlanta.</ref> The song was written "just after [[Marlon Brando]] received his [[Academy Award]] and didn't accept it. And sent an [[Sacheen_Littlefeather|Indian girl]] to receive the award and make a few comments."<ref>Comments to the audience. November 17, 1992. Chicago.</ref>

"Sail Away" was first performed live in 1977 with [[The Ducks]]. Referring to the song, Young shares on his website in 2018 that "When i think about the road, I always see those long strips of blacktop cutting through immense valleys."

"[[Powderfinger (song)|Powderfinger]]" took several years to write. When Young first played the song live at The Boarding House, he claimed he still didn't know it well. Young explains its evolution in a 1993 interview: "It's a unique thing when you start a song at one point and finish it years later. Something happens. You get an original idea and get it going, and something stops you. It could be anything--some distraction that happens and takes your mind away from it. You could be trying too hard. These things happen, and you don't finish the song. "Powderfinger" took a long time. I wrote the first line in 1967 and didn't finish the song until 1975. It was funny to pick up where I left off. Something blocks me once in awhile, and I don't try to force anything to an unnatural end. I just put it away and maybe come back to it later."<ref>Gary Graff. ''Guitar World''. June 1993.</ref>

Young would offer the song to [[Lynyrd Skynyrd]] for one of their albums, but members of the group died before it could be recorded.<ref name="auto1"/> [[Cameron Crowe]] remembers in a post to his blog, ''The Uncool'': "Neil Young gave a tape to [[Joel Bernstein]] to give to me which I gave to Ronnie [Van Zant], that had three songs on it - "Captain Kennedy," "Sedan Delivery," and "Powderfinger" - before they'd come out. And he wanted to give them to Lynyrd Skynyrd if they wanted to do one of his songs."

"[[Sedan Delivery]]" appears with a faster tempo and with one less verse than its studio performance from the ''Zuma'' sessions that surfaced on ''[[Chrome Dreams]]''. In a 1995 interview with [[Nick Kent]] for ''Mojo'' magazine, Young denies any influence of UK punk rock on the album: "I wasn't really influenced by that scene. Most of the songs on that album had been written well before the [[Sex Pistols]] were ever heard of."<ref name="auto1"/> Instead, in a 2019 post on his website, he does credit Devo's influence: "This version was inspired by DEVO in attitude, moving a lot faster than the original earliest recording of "Sedan Delivery"."