‘Powderfinger’: how Neil Young gave the world the first grunge anthem
As the 1970s got underway, grunge wasn’t even a flicker in rockers’ eyes yet. There had been seeds planted for what would become known as alternative music years later, but the biggest names in the business were already making music that was better suited to massive stadiums than anything to do with Seattle. There was still one godfather stomping across the land, though, and once Neil Young got to work on ‘Powderfinger’, he indirectly birthed what grunge would become.
Before he even started moulding his legacy, Young never fit that snuggly into one particular sound. Even when he had hits like ‘Heart of Gold’, it wasn’t out of the question for him to switch things up on the next record just because he wanted to go in a different direction or because he woke up on the other side of the bed that morning.
Then again, no studio was bound to do Young justice. The only way that he truly came alive was on the live stage, and Rust Never Sleeps was bound to be the moment where he brought the magic. Even though many veterans like The Who and The Rolling Stones had put out phenomenal live albums, debuting new material like ‘Powderfinger’ was inconceivable at the time, especially coming from a massive act like Young.
While much of the first side is made up of acoustic cuts more in line with Young’s country leanings, ‘Powderfinger’ kicks the door down with some of the most aggressive guitars to be found on any of his records. You can practically feel him squeezing the life out of Crazy Horse with every word he sings.
But when looking at how Young is playing, the blueprint for grunge music was being laid. The raucous sounds of the feedback in the background are already reminiscent of the Seattle sound, and the way that everything sounds like a glorified jam session feels like a long-lost Pearl Jam song that somehow got released years before Eddie Vedder ever had a dream of singing ‘Jeremy’.
In fact, the lyrics themselves also have a twinkle of grunge disparity in them as well. Young sounds completely lost on this track, and hearing him sing lines about lost love and hiding away from outlaws like Powder and Finger are the same kind of word paintings that can be found in the songbooks of everyone from Chris Cornell to Kurt Cobain.
But Young wasn’t looking to launch a whole new movement or anything. When he put out Rust Never Sleeps, he seemed to be at war with everyone, and his recent sabbatical from Crosby, Stills, and Nash probably led to all of that fury being channelled into his music. And since the punk movement was also emerging, other tracks like ‘Hey Hey My My’ made him one of the few classic rock voices competing with frontmen like John Lydon.
Once those Seattlites did come to pay their respects, though, it’s not like Young was too good for them. If anything, this was the approach to rock and roll he had been waiting for, eventually cutting an entire album with Pearl Jam and writing a eulogy song to Kurt Cobain after being unable to reach him in time before his tragic passing.
