Gloomy Tunes: “Powderfinger,” Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Gun Week continues at Gloomy Tunes with a song where a gun leads to tragedy. A highlight of  1979’s Rust Never Sleeps, “Powderfinger” is a tale of young man (only 22, he says) left by the “powers-that-be” to be in charge on the day a boat come up the river, and it isn’t ferrying tourists. It’s got a red beacon, numbers painted on the side, and armed men on board. Even though he’s been instructed to run, he decides to fight back. Even though “daddy’s rifle in my hand is reassuring” it’s no enough, and he sees the shot that kills him coming, As he’s dying, he asks for absolution, his last words “remember me to my love/I know I’ll miss her.”  Chugging along at a steamboat’s tempo, the melody rising and falling like the wake of a boat, and Neil sings the song at the higher end of his register, giving the story a tremulous innocence, the backing vocals on last verse sending the young man to his final rest in heavenly harmonies, the guitar finishing the song on a ringing, slowly fading harmonic tone.

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.