LOS ANGELES – Rusty Young, who co-founded the country rock group Poco in 1968 and was the only pillar in the group’s history of more than ten decades, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 75.
According to a representative, Young died of a heart attack at his home in Davisville, Missouri.
“I just got the message that my friend Rusty Young has passed away and crossed the border into eternity,” co-founder Richie Furay said in a statement to Variety. “My heart is sad; he was a dear and longtime friend who helped me pioneer and create a new Southern California music sound called ‘country rock’. He was an innovator on the steel guitar and took the name Poco for “Our friendship was genuine and he will be greatly missed. My prayers are with his wife, Mary, and his children Sara and Will.”
Although he had threatened to retire over the years and bring Poco to rest, the group’s reruns with Young at the helm continued, and Poco continued to tour in March 2020, when the pandemic stopped the show. .
Poco was formed from the Buffalo Springfield wreck in 1968, while Richie Furay and Jim Messina teamed up with Young, who was brought in to play steel guitar on one of the group’s last recordings, ‘Kind Woman’, to form a new form to form. group that continues in the tradition of Springfield’s softest, most rooted material. After both Furay and Messina left the group, Young shared frontman status with Paul Young for some of Poco’s most successful years in the ’70s and early’ 80s.
Young wrote Poco’s biggest hit, “Crazy Love,” as the number 1 adult contemporary song of 1979. In an interview in 2008, Young said, “The only reason we’re talking now is ‘Crazy Love.’ “Our first hit single. It’s a classic, and it still pays off.”
Rick Alter, manager of Young (and Poco) for more than two decades, said: “Rusty was the most unpretentious, caring and idyllic artist I have ever worked with, a natural life force that he poured into his music throughout. To fans and fellow musicians, he was a unique musician, songwriter, artist and friend. ‘
Norman Russell, “Rusty” Young, grew up in Long Beach on February 23, 1946 and grew up in Denver, playing shotgun in local country and psychedelic rock bands in his teens. It was in 1967 that he came to LA at the request of Furay to play steel during sessions for Buffalo Springfield’s swan song, ‘Last Time Around’. The two soon after founded Poco with George Grantham and Messina, along with Randy Meisner, who was soon replaced by another future Eagle, Timothy B. Schmit. Besides ‘Crazy Love’, Young can best be remembered for the song ‘Rose of Cimarron’.
‘Richie did it [country-rock] with ‘A Child’s Claim to Fame’ and ‘Kind Woman,’ “Young said in a 2014 interview with Goldmine. It was the part of Springfield where Neil (Young) and Stephen (Stills) were more rock-and-roll. . You have to remember that in 1969 there were no synthesizers, so if you wanted a certain sound, you had to play a real musician. That’s why I got involved – because I could play steel guitar and Dobro and banjo and mandolin, and almost all the country instruments except for violin. So I added color to Richie’s country-rock songs, and that was the idea of using country-sounding instruments. Also, I pressed the envelope on steel guitar and played it with a fuzz tone, because no one did, and played like an organ through a Leslie speaker, and many people thought I was playing an organ , because they do not I do not realize I play a steel guitar. So we pushed the envelope in different ways, instrumentally and musically. ‘
Of the period in the ’70s when he emerged as a frontman, along with newer recruiter Paul Cotton, Young said: “I think things went as they were supposed to go. 1978 had a big hit, and if it had not been for Richie leaving the band, and Timmy (Schmit) leaving the band, and Jimmy leaving the band, I would never have been a songwriter. or was a singer, so things had to happen for my life to be life as it is so I’m very happy. ‘
Young attributed to David Geffen that he forced himself to become a singer-songwriter, after initially contributing only a few songs to the group and never doing the first song on the early albums.
When it became clear that Furay was leaving to start the Souther-Hillman-Furay band, Young said there was a meeting where Geffen ‘started with Tim and said,’ Well, Tim, you’re writing songs and singing, not true not? “And Tim says, ‘Yes.’ So he says, ‘Well, don’ t worry Richie’s going; you’re fine. ‘ And he looks at Paul, and he says, ‘You play guitar and sing and write songs, don’t you?’ And Paul says, “Yes.” … Then he looked at me and George, and he looked me in the eye and he said, ‘Well, you do not sing and you do not write songs, do you?’ And I said, ‘No, I do not.’ That’s why he said, “Well, you’re in trouble.” And that was the day I became a singer-songwriter, and if David Geffen had not told me, it would never have happened, and I owe him a lot for that. ‘
A reunion album in 1989, “Legacy”, brought Furay, Messina, Meisner and Grantham back into the Poco fold for a single project. In the early 2010s, Furay and Schmit brought a handful of reunion shows, including one at the Stagecoach Festival in California. Otherwise, the group continued with Young as the sole remnant of the group’s original legacy.
In 2014, Young stated that the group was on the verge of ending it due to the difficulty of the road, and his desire to focus on a memoir, but it did not appear to be. The final version of the group, which Young supported by Jack Sundrud, Rick Lonow and Tom Hampton, still performed more than 100 performances a year, according to representatives. The group celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017. Young released his first solo album ‘Waitin’ For The Sun ‘the same year.
Young is survived by his wife, Mary, their daughter, Sara, son, Will, and three young grandsons, Chandler, Ryan and Graham, as well as Mary’s three children Joe, Marci and Hallie, and grandchildren Quentin and Emma.
A memorial service will be held on October 16 at Wildwood Springs Lodge in Steelville, Missouri, where Young and his wife met 20 years ago.