The line, "it's better to burn out than to fade away" was taken from one of the songs of Young's bandmate in the short-lived supergroupThe Ducks, Jeff Blackburn.[4] It became infamous after being quoted in Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide note.[5] Young later said that he was so shaken that he dedicated his 1994 album Sleeps with Angels to Cobain.
Legacy
Young compared the rise of Johnny Rotten with that of the recently deceased "King" Elvis Presley, who himself had once been disparaged as a dangerous influence only to later become an icon. In 1977, Rotten responded by playing a song by Young on a radio program.[6]
The song may best be known for the line "It's better to burn out than to fade away". The line occurs during the introduction to Def Leppard's 1983 song "Rock of Ages". It was also used in the movie Highlander (1986), when the Kurgan (Clancy Brown) exits a church after meeting the Highlander (Christopher Lambert). Kurt Cobain's suicide note ended with the same line,[5] shaking Young and inadvertently cementing his place as the so-called "Godfather of Grunge".[7][8]
Ex-Beatle John Lennon commented on the message of the song in a 1980 interview with David Sheff of Playboy:[9]
Sheff: You disagree with Neil Young's lyric in Rust Never Sleeps: "It's better to burn out than to fade away..."
Lennon: I hate it. It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. If he was talking about burning out like Sid Vicious, forget it. I don't appreciate the worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison — it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive — Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo. They're saying John Wayne conquered cancer — he whipped it like a man. You know, I'm sorry that he died and all that — I'm sorry for his family — but he didn't whip cancer. It whipped him. I don't want Sean worshiping John Wayne or Johnny Rotten or Sid Vicious. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean, it's garbage you know. If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No, thank you. I'll take the living and the healthy.
Young, when asked to respond to Lennon's comments two years later, replied:
The rock'n'roll spirit is not survival. Of course the people who play rock'n'roll should survive. But the essence of the rock'n'roll spirit to me, is that it's better to burn out really bright than to sort of decay off into infinity. Even though if you look at it in a mature way, you'll think, "well, yes... you should decay off into infinity, and keep going along". Rock'n'roll doesn't look that far ahead. Rock'n'roll is right now. What's happening right this second. Is it bright? Or is it dim because it's waiting for tomorrow—that's what people want to know. And that's why I say that.[9]
Oasis covered the song during their 2000 world tour, including it on their live album and DVD Familiar to Millions. 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.[10]
The singer Lana Del Rey used this song as an entrance to her second set of Coachella 2024, highlighting her connection with country music and her love to the band Nirvana.
