Neil Young once picked out the “best garage band in the world”
Following his formative spell playing with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield and later collaborating with David Crosby and Graham Nash, Neil Young made his breakthrough as a solo artist with After the Gold Rush in 1970. This balanced and eclectic record marked the beginning of a prolific and pivotal decade for the Canadian singer-songwriter.
Throughout the ’70s, Young frequently joined his famous backing band Crazy Horse when in need of a fuller, rock-orientated sound. This relationship’s output struck a peak in 1979 with the release of Rust Never Sleeps, a hybrid live/studio album that, thanks to heavy overdriven tracks like ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’, earned Young the nickname ‘Godfather of Grunge’.
Young’s heavier stylings were commonly cited among grunge bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Melvins. In fact, so influential was Young’s work on Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, the troubled songwriter cited lyrics from ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’ in his suicide note: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
In his 2012 autobiography, Neil Young admitted that the suicide note had left him scarred. He wrote: “When he died and left that note, it struck a deep chord inside of me. It fucked with me.”
“The fact that he left the lyrics to my song right there with him when he killed himself left a profound feeling on me, but I don’t think he was saying I have to kill myself because I don’t want to fade away,” Young added. “I don’t think he was interpreting the song in a negative way. It’s a song about artistic survival, and I think he had a problem with the fact that he thought he was selling out, and he didn’t know how to stop it.”
As the progenitor of grunge, Young is a fan of his disciples’ work, especially that of Pearl Jam. In 1995, Young released his 21st solo studio album, Mirror Ball. Instead of calling on his sturdy yet Crazy Horse to record the LP, he employed the capable hands of Pearl Jam members Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Jack Irons, Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder.
In 1997, Young sat down with Emmanuel Tellier from Les Inrockuptibles to discuss his recent work and future plans. “Right now, I don’t know what I’ll do after [1997 live album] Year of The Horse. I’m thinking that doing something with Jack Nitzche should be a great idea, but perhaps I will go in the studio with Crazy Horse,” he said.
Adding: “It’s not me who will decide, it’s the songs. I think that Mirror Ball had to be played with another band; that’s why I did it with Pearl Jam, even if Crazy Horse thinks that they could have proposed something more powerful for those songs”.
Continuing, Young revealed why he occasionally switches up his backing band. “It’s always difficult to tell old friends that I won’t play with them for the next album, but it’s the ability to live separately that enables us to be together after all these years,” he said.
“Crazy Horse is the best garage band of the world, and when I want to do that kind of music, I ask for them. When you want a song to take off, there is no better band like Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse is a machine, it’s not a passing attraction, it’s not a toy. Grunge was a passing attraction, not the music we play together. Crazy Horse was there before the grunge movement, and Crazy Horse survived to the grunge.”
Listen to Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’ below.
