The 25 Best Live Rock Recordings - No. 12: Live Rust --OR-- Weld
No. 12 - Neil Young & Crazy Horse- Live Rust (Reprise, 1979) --OR-- Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Weld (Reprise, 1991)
Sometimes it’s about an acquired taste. Neil Young has never been anything other. He is reputed to be a worse singer than Bob Dylan and a worse guitarist than just about anybody.
Neil Young…the sonic center of 4 Way Street.
That being said, early in his career, at the beginning of each decade, Young managed to get mad and record a masterpiece, ergo: After The Gold Rush (Reprise, 1970), Rust Never Sleeps (and Live Rust) (Reprise, 1979), and Ragged Glory (Reprise, 1990) (and Weld (Reprise, 1991), beyond these the paradigm breaks down but this is enough to work with.
When Neil Young gets mad and records a live album, at least in these two cases he strikes the white-hot anvil and sparks explode. Live Rust had the prodromal Rust Never Sleeps released seven months prior providing him with the most potent live material since Zuma (Reprise, 1975) and Tonight’s The Night (Reprise, 1975)1. On Live Rust, Young emulates Bob Dylan’s ‘60s shows, opening acoustically with delicate grace and light before burning San Francisco’s Cow Palace down. “Sugar Mountain” emerges as a hard-bitten “Puff The Magic Dragon,” but does retain its folk music bonafide.
Not so in 1991, Young no longer gave a remote shit about the sweet acoustic bye-and-bye. On Weld, he swoops in on an air attack intending to soften up the terrain for the ground war, with a molten “Hey, Hey, My, My.” Young was having none of the “Me Me” 1980s. He was touring to support Ragged Glory, not Shakey’s sunniest moment, and he is letting his audience understand that the last decade had been all a bad dream clothed in fine clothes, using Cristal as bong water.
Seven songs are common to both Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust and Weld:
"Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" (from Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust)
"Welfare Mothers" (from Rust Never Sleeps)
"Cinnamon Girl" (from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere)
"Cortez the Killer" (from Zuma)
"Powderfinger" (from Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust)
"Like a Hurricane" (from American Stars 'n' Bars)
"Tonight's the Night" (from Tonight’s The Night)
No “Down By The River,” “Southern Man,” and not a peep from his most popular recording Harvest (Reprise, 1972, save for “The Needle And The Damage Done” on the acoustic part Live Rust)2. Young’s agenda was moving toward total sound, LOUD total sound. Live Rust was Young getting a running start out of the disappointing 1970s and into (what had to be) the more promising 1980s. These were the seven songs Young chose to provide the fuel necessary to reach escape velocity into a decade where he hoped for more but could gain no purchase regardless of how he spun his wheels.
Hawks & Doves (Reprise, 1980), Re·ac·tor (Reprise, 1981), Trans and Everybody’s Rockin’ (Geffin, 1983), Old Ways (Geffen, 1985), Landing On Water (Geffen, 1986), Life (Geffen, 1987), This Note’s For You (Reprise, 1988)…eight albums over a decade of Young wandering in the desert before stubbing his toe on Freedom (Reprise, 1989), “Rockin’ In The Free World,” and “Wrecking Ball,” resetting his trajectory into Ragged Glory (Reprise, 1990) and finally his definitive live statement, Weld.
Young had held his breath through his Geffen contract and the maudlin, selfish 1980s, and, in the end when he finally exhaled, he did so "As one great furnace flames yet from those flames No light but rather darkness visible.”
A LOUD “darkness visible.”
"Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" explodes with an industrial momentum piercing a fresh “Crime In The City” before impaling the false hope of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind,” reducing that anthem to radioactive ashes. A determined “Fuckin’ Up” from Ragged Glory, leads the listener into Young’s Liebestod: the dark march of “Cortez The Killer,” the staggeringly perfect country “Powderfinger,” the flag-waving “Rockin’ In The Free World,” into rock music’s Iliad, “Like A Hurricane” and its Odyssey, “Tonight’s The Night.”
Had Young stopped here, his place in music history would have been quenched in the fire of his passion and anger.
Come to think of it, Young was pretty mad in the mid-1970s also, making these two notable recordings.
Those looking for Harvest-era live Neil Young are directed to Time Fades Away (Reprise, 1973), Tuscaloosa (Reprise, 1973/2019), and Roxy: Tonight's the Night Live (Reprise, 1973/2018).