Young used the phrase "rust never sleeps" as a concept for his tour with Crazy Horse to avoid artistic complacency and try more progressive, theatrical approaches to performing live.

[10] The album was recorded in May 1978 during solo acoustic performances at The Boarding House in San Francisco and in October 1978 during the "Rust Never Sleeps" tour, in which Young played a wealth of new material.

The overdubbed live tracks are complemented with two outtakes from Young's previous album, Comes a Time.

He also adopted Mothersbaugh's lyrics for the title of his album as a metaphor about the hazards of complacency on his music career and the need to keep moving forward.

[16][17] In a 1980 interview with David Sheff from Playboy magazine, John Lennon was dismissive of the lyric and the song's reference to Johnny Rotten for what he interpreted as worship for the dead saying, "No, thank you.

[20] After Cobain's death, Young vowed never to perform the song again, but reversed his stance at the request of the surviving members of Nirvana.

Young remembers in a 2022 post to his website: "After leaving Taos with Carpio, a Native American friend I had met during the filming of Human Highway, sitting in the front seat of his car, I wrote this song, "Thrasher".

I saw the eagles circling, the deep canyons, the road ahead, reflecting on my journey through recent years, and thankful to be where I was.

[26] Young and Crazy Horse would first record "Cortez the Killer", "Ride My Llama" and "Sedan Delivery" on the same day at the beginning of the Zuma sessions.

"Pocahontas" was written at the home of CSNY road manager and video producer Taylor Phelps "one night when I was just sitting around on one of my friend's farms out there.

Referring to the song, Young shares on his website in 2018 that "When i think about the road, I always see those long strips of blacktop cutting through immense valleys."

Young explains its evolution in a 1993 interview: "It's a unique thing when you start a song at one point and finish it years later.

"[29] Young would offer the song to Lynyrd Skynyrd for one of their albums, but members of the group perished before it could be recorded.

"Sedan Delivery" appears with a faster tempo and with one less verse than its studio performance from the Zuma sessions that surfaced on Chrome Dreams.

In addition to the three tracks on the album he also debuted "Powderfinger", "Shots" and "The Ways of Love" and played the rarities "Out of My Mind" and "I Believe in You" on piano.

[30] Following the May 27th performances at The Boarding House, Young joined Devo onstage at the punk club Mabuhay Gardens.

Young would later push Crazy Horse to match Devo's intensity of performance when recording their version of the song for the album.

Audience noise is removed from the album as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening and closing songs.

Young adopted a new look for the concerts, with much shorter hair and wearing a sport coat and bolo tie.

The concerts incorporated several visual stunts: ridiculously oversized amplifiers, Star Wars Jawa-inspired "road-eye" characters roaming the stage and 3D "Rust-O-Vision" glasses were given out to the audience.

[32] The electric sets provided a reenergized response to the punk rock revolution and, were in stark contrast from Young's previous, folk-inspired album Comes a Time.

[33][34] Reviewing for The Village Voice in 1979, Robert Christgau called Rust Never Sleeps Young's best album yet and said although his melodies are unsurprisingly simple and original, his lyrics are surprisingly and offhandedly complex.

[45] Paul Nelson, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, found its first side virtuosic because of how Young transcends the songs' acoustic settings with his commanding performance and was impressed by its themes of personal escape and exhaustion, the role of rock music, and American violence: "Rust Never Sleeps tells me more about my life, my country and rock & roll than any music I've heard in years.

"[46] Rust Never Sleeps was voted the second best album of 1979 in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll.

[50] In 2000, Rust Never Sleeps was voted number 240 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums book.

[36] AllMusic's William Ruhlmann viewed that Young reinvigorated himself artistically by being imaginative and bold, and in the process created an exemplary album that "encapsulated his many styles on a single disc with great songs — in particular the remarkable 'Powderfinger' — unlike any he had written before.

[55] with (on "Sail Away"): Crazy Horse (on side two) Additional roles Singles Year End Chart ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.