LOS ANGELES – Rusty Young, who co-founded country rock group Poco in 1968 and was the only mainstay in the band’s more than five decades of history, passed away Wednesday at the age of 75.
A representative said Young died of a heart attack at his Davisville, Missouri home.
“I just got word that my friend Rusty Young has passed away and has crossed that line forever,” said co-founder Richie Furay in a statement to Variety. “My heart is sad; he was a dear and longtime friend who helped me to pioneer and create a new Southern California musical sound called ‘country rock.’ He was an innovator on the steel guitar and bore the name Poco more than 50 years. Our friendship was real and he will be deeply missed. My prayers are with his wife, Mary, and his children Sara and Will. “
Although over the years he had threatened to retire and put Poco to rest, iterations of the group continued with Young at the helm, and Poco continued to tour until March 2020, when the pandemic ended shows.
Poco was formed from the wreckage of Buffalo Springfield in 1968, when Richie Furay and Jim Messina contacted Young, who had been brought in to play steel guitar on one of that band’s last recordings, ‘Kind Woman’, for a new band. group that would continue 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.
It was Young who wrote Poco’s biggest hit “Crazy Love,” which was voted # 1 of today’s adult song of 1979. In an interview in 2008, Young said, “The only reason we have it now is” Crazy Love. ” That was our first hit single. It’s a classic and it still pays the mortgage. “
Rick Alter, Young’s (and Poco) manager for over twenty years, said, “Rusty was the most unpretentious, caring, and idyllic artist I’ve ever worked with, a natural life force that he consistently poured into his music for fans and fellow musicians alike. , he was a once-in-a-lifetime musician, songwriter, recording artist and friend. ”
Born February 23, 1946 in Long Beach, Norman Russell “Rusty” Young grew up in Denver and played lap steel 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 on sessions for Buffalo Springfield’s swan song “Last Time Around”. Together with George Grantham and Messina, along with Randy Meisner, who was soon to be replaced by another future Eagle, Timothy B. Schmit, the two found Poco soon after. Other than ‘Crazy Love’, Young is perhaps best remembered for the song ‘Rose of Cimarron’.
Richie had done it [country-rock] with ‘A Child’s Claim to Fame’ and ‘Kind Woman’, ” Young told Goldmine in a 2014 interview. roll were. You have to remember that in 1969 there were no synthesizers, so if you really wanted a certain sound, you had to have a real musician playing. So that’s why I got involved – because I could play steel guitar and dobro and banjo and mandolin, and pretty much all country instruments except violin. So I added color to Richie’s country rock songs, and that was the whole idea of using country-sounding instruments. Also, I pushed the envelope on steel guitar, played it with a fuzz tone, because no one did, and played it through a Leslie speaker like an organ, and a lot of people thought I was playing an organ because they didn’t. I don’t realize I was playing a steel guitar. So we pushed the boundaries in many different ways, instrumentally and musically in general. “
Speaking about the period in the 1970s when he came forward as the frontman along with newer recruit Paul Cotton, Young said, “I think everything went the way they were supposed to go. We had a big hit in 1978, and if not. It wasn’t for Richie leaving the band, and Timmy (Schmit) leaving the band, and Jimmy leaving the band, I would never have been a songwriter or a singer, so those things had to happen to make my life let it be as it is. So I am very satisfied. “
Young gave David Geffen credit for forcing him to become a singer-songwriter after initially contributing only a few songs to the band and never doing lead vocals 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 “starts with Tim and says, ‘Now, Tim, you write songs and sing, don’t you? Tim says, “Yes.” So he says, “Don’t worry about Richie leaving; she’ll be fine.” And he looks at Paul, and he says, “You play the 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, “Now you don’t sing or write songs, are you?” And I said, “No, I won’t.” So he said, “Well, you’re in trouble.” And that was the day I became a singer-songwriter, and if David Geffen hadn’t said that to me, it never would have happened, and I owe him a huge debt for that. ”
A 1989 reunion album, “Legacy,” brought Furay, Messina, Meisner and Grantham back into the Poco fold for a single project. In early 2010, a handful of reunion shows brought Furay and Schmit, including one at the Stagecoach Festival in California. Otherwise, the group went on with Young as the sole remnant of the group’s original legacy.
In 2014, Young stated that the group was about to retire due to the rigors of the road and his desire to focus on a memoir, but it turned out not to be. The last version of the band, which Young had backed by Jack Sundrud, Rick Lonow and Tom Hampton, still played more than 100 gigs a year, according to representatives. The group celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017. Young released his first solo album, “Waitin ‘For The Sun” that 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.
On October 16, a memorial service will be held at Wildwood Springs Lodge in Steelville, Missouri, where Young and his wife met 20 years ago.