Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

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"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 seminal 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. Inspired by proto-new wave artist Devo, the rise of punk and what Young viewed as his own growing irrelevance, the song today has become an anthem that 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 did by abandoning his Johnny Rotten persona.

[edit] Origins

The song itself and the title of the album on which it was featured sprung from Young's encounters with Devo and Mark Mothersbaugh in particular. Film from the era shows Young playing the song with the band, who clearly want little to do with anything "radio-friendly".

At the time, some reviewers saw Young's career as skidding after Comes a Time and American Stars 'N Bars, released at the last minute in place of two now-lost Young albums, Homegrown and Chrome Dreams.[citation needed] (Elements of the lost albums would filter throughout Young's released output over the next thirty years.) With the explosion of punk in 1977, some punks felt that Young and his contemporaries were dinosaurs, and that artists such as Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney were too content to rest on their laurels and release halfhearted material.[citation needed] 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, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones in 1977!" (Keith Richards was facing a lengthy prison term in Toronto for possessing enough heroin to make him a dealer.)

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

[edit] Legacy

Upon its release, Rust Never Sleeps was hailed as a commercial and critical revitalization for Young, and the wildly 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 (some of which he would lose with Hawks & Doves, derided by critics as a love letter to Ronald Reagan), buoyed mainly by the epic "Hey Hey, My My".[citation needed]

As Young's commercial popularity waned in the 1980s, an underground rock movement began to embrace the artist. At a time when hair 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's 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 burst onto the national stage with Nevermind, Cobain and Young took to acknowledging one another in the press.

Ironically, "Hey Hey, My My"'s most memorable impact on the history of modern rock comes from the now-chilling 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 many Britpop artists, most notably Oasis who covered the song on their 2000 world tour. A version of the song appears on their live album and DVD Familiar to Millions. 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 returned on his second "comeback" album, Freedom, in 1989, with an anthem for a whole new generation: "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, which features his most popular songs by chart position, airplay, and "known download history".

[edit] External links

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