In his mid-teens, Neil Young was a member of The Squires, a Winnipeg dance group whose booming instrumentals attempted to mimic the sounds of the Ventures and the Shadows. Then, as if by magic, Bob Dylan and The Beatles appeared, upending the Etch-a-Sketch of mainstream culture.
In a Rolling Stone interview with Cameron Crowe, Young reminisced, “I never forget that you knew the Beatles or Dylan were way beyond it every time a new album came out.” They never stopped moving down the queue and doing something else. Neil Young took up a pen and began writing his reflective lyrics due to the seismic upheaval they were a part of, eschewing the big band scene that seemed to be dated almost overnight.
Soon, he was pulling off the cunning trick of turning his heroes into fans, with Dylan and the Fab Four expressing some enthusiasm for his work. But not everything he concocted could win them over, and the notoriously prickly John Lennon would later express his contempt for one of his lyrics from the latter days in particular.
The relevant line is from the Rust Never Sleeps song “My My, Hey Hey,” where Young appears to have established his own rock ‘n’ roll motto: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” which, Lennon’s opinion, was more about self-destruction in a vague sense than a creative blaze of glory, and which he found especially deplorable in light of the time of its release.
In an interview with Playboy in 1980, just before his murder, John Lennon stated, “I love all this punky stuff.” It is unadulterated. However, I don’t like people who ruin themselves.
John Lennon said, “I hate it,” in response to the question of whether Young’s line went too far in this direction.
“It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out,” the Beatle continued. I don’t like worshipping dead people like John Wayne, James Dean, or Sid Vicious. It’s identical to that. Jim Morrison, making Sid Vicious a hero? I think that’s garbage. I honor those who make it through life. Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson. They claim that John Wayne defeated cancer, “whipped-ping it like a man.”
Though John Wayne, who passed away in 1979, can hardly be viewed as a hero for his sinister reasons, Lennon’s sentiment regarding his death from cancer is deserving of far more criticism than his interpretation of Young’s lyrics. With less than discretion, the erstwhile Beatle continued, saying, “I‘m sorry for his family, but he didn’t whip cancer.” It gave him a whip. Sean, his son, shouldn’t be idolizing Sid Vicious or John Wayne, in my opinion. What do they instruct you in? Nothing. Demise. Why did Sid Vicious die? for us to rock? You know, it’s garbage, I mean.
He continued with more scathing contempt, quoting: “If Neil Young is so fond of that idea, why doesn’t he act on it? Since he faded away and returned numerous times like all of us. Thank you, but no. The living and the healthy, I’ll take.
Two years later, Young would reply, “The spirit of rock ‘n’ roll is not survival.” Rock ‘n’ roll musicians should live. To me, however, the essence of the rock ‘n’ roll spirit is that it’s better to burn brightly rather than fade into eternity. However, if you approach it with maturity, you’ll conclude that “Yeah, you should just keep going along and decay off into infinity.” Rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t seem to be that far off. The era of rock & roll is now. what is taking place at this very moment? Is it illuminated? People want to know if it’s dim because it’s waiting for tomorrow. And for that reason, I say that.
