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Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

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"Hey Hey, My My"
Song
B-side"My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)"

"Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" is a rock song by Neil Young. Combined with an acoustic rendition entitled "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)", it bookends Young's successful 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. Inspired by proto-new wave group Devo, the rise of punk and what Young viewed as his own growing irrelevance, the song today crosses generations, inspiring admirers from punk to grunge and significantly revitalizing Young's then-faltering career. The song is about the alternatives of continuing to produce similar music ("to rust" or — in "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" — "to fade away") or to burn out, as John Lydon of the Sex Pistols did by abandoning his Johnny Rotten persona.

A lyric from the song, "it's better to burn out than to fade away," became infamous in modern rock after being quoted in Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide note. Young later said that he was so shaken that he dedicated his 1994 album Sleeps with Angels to Cobain.

Origins

The song "Hey, Hey, My, My..." and the title phrase of the album, "rust never sleeps" on which it was featured sprang from Young's encounters with Devo and in particular Mark Mothersbaugh.[1] Devo was asked by Young in 1977 to participate in the creating of his film Human Highway.[2] A scene in the film shows Young playing the song in its entirety with Devo, who clearly want little to do with anything "radio-friendly". ( Of note is Mothersbaugh changing "Johnny Rotten" to "Johnny Spud" ) Also, the famous line, "It's better to burn out than it is to rust" is credited to Young's friend Jeff Blackburn of The Ducks.[3]

Some reviewers viewed Young's career as skidding after the release of American Stars 'N Bars and Comes a Time. With the explosion of punk in 1977, some punks felt that Young and his contemporaries were dinosaurs, and that such artists now seemed too content to rest on their laurels and release halfhearted material. Young worried that these punks were right. The death of Elvis Presley that same year seemed to sound a death knell for rock, as The Clash gleefully cried, "No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones in 1977!," in the song 1977.[4]


From Young's fear of becoming obsolete sprang an appreciation of the punk ethic, and the song was born, initially an acoustic lament that became "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)". Upon embarking on a tour with his backing band Crazy Horse, the song took on new life in a rock arrangement, punctuated by Young's guitar solos that would go on to inspire players of the proto-grunge scene, including Sonic Youth, The Meat Puppets, Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. - who in turn begat Nirvana.

Legacy

Upon its release, Rust Never Sleeps was hailed as a commercial and critical revitalization for Young, and the successful, bizarre tour (featuring oversized amps, road crews dressed as Jawas from the then-new Star Wars film, sound technicians in lab coats, music from Woodstock played from disintegrating tapes, etc.) earned him a new generation of fans and good will, buoyed mainly by the epic "Hey Hey, My My".

As Young's commercial popularity waned in the 1980s, an underground rock movement began to embrace the artist. At a time when glam metal and bubblegum pop saturated commercial airwaves, disaffected bands used Young as a prime example of the perfect blend of noise and melody, braggadocio and vulnerability, folk and hard rock. J Mascis' guitar style, widely acknowledged to be the primary predecessor of Kurt Cobain's "idiot savant" playing, was based on Young's trademark screech captured in "Hey Hey, My My". A collection of Neil Young covers emerged in the late eighties, featuring a veritable who's-who of the pre-Nirvana grunge scene. When Nirvana appeared on the national stage with Nevermind, Cobain and Young took to acknowledging one another in the press.

"Hey Hey, My My"'s most memorable impact on modern rock comes from the line "It's better to burn out than to fade away" (actually only spoken in full in the acoustic "My My, Hey Hey"). Kurt Cobain's suicide note ended with the same line, shaking Young and inadvertently cementing his place (ironically, given his firm groundings in folk and classic rock, to say nothing of his status as an FM radio staple) as the so-called "Godfather of Grunge".

The song also had an impact on Britpop artists. Most notably Oasis covered the song on their 2000 world tour, including it on their live album and DVD Familiar to Millions. Not coincidentally, the band acknowledged Cobain's attachment to the song by dedicating it to him when they played it in Seattle on the sixth anniversary of his death.[5] Scottish band Big Country recorded a version, which can be heard on their Under Covers album. It is also used as live-intro to System of a Down's "Kill Rock 'n Roll" in some live performances.

The song still frequently appears on FM radio today, most often on stations formatted for "classic rock". Young's penchant for bookending an album with the same song in different renditions, which had already been utilised once on Tonight's the Night, returned on his second "comeback" album, Freedom, in 1989, with "Rockin' in the Free World".

Young performs the song at nearly every concert in one form or another. It is included on his Greatest Hits.

Def Leppard begins their song Rock of Ages with the lines "I got something to say / It's better to burn out than fade away"; the same lines were used in the movie Highlander by The Kurgan.

In the video game Unreal Championship 2 (xbox) one of Sobeks taunts is "It's better to burn out, than to fade away".

The Argentine rock band La Renga covered this song on the album 'La Esquina del Infinito' in 1999. Only the title was sung in English; the remainder of the song was translated into Spanish.

The Finnish glam rock band Negative recorded a cover of the song on their 2004 album Sweet & Deceitful.

In 2008, Dave Matthews Band began covering this song in some of their concerts.

New Zealand band Die! Die! Die! have a song titled Out of the Blue, in which the repeated singing of the lyrics "Out of the blue, into the black" make up the chorus.

References

  1. ^ Shakey: Neil Young's Biography, Jimmy McDonough, 2002, Anchor
  2. ^ Oh Yes, It’s Devo: An Interview with Jerry Casale Brian L. Knight, The Vermont Review, Retrieved December 15 2007
  3. ^ Shakey: Neil Young's Biography, Jimmy McDonough, 2002, Anchor, pp. 534-535
  4. ^ The Last Gang in Town: The Story and Myth of the Clash, Marcus Gray, 1996, New York: Henry Holt and Company, pp. 187-188
  5. ^ "Oasis Pay Tribute to Cobain". NME news. 2000-06-04. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)Retrieved December 15 2007
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