Nothing can free him

Step aside

Open wide

He's the loner.

Although Young gets carried away with stage antics in the movie, his between-song-schticks are less obtrusive on Live Rust. After a pre-recorded bit of nostalgia from Woodstock, he launches into "The Needle and the Damage Done," his sermon on heroin and eulogy for the friends it has conquered.

For his finale, Young returns to the amplification and distortion of old stalwarts, "Cortez the Killer," Cinnamon Girl" and "Like a Hurricane." To the delight of the crowd, he thumps "into the black" in a rousing encore of "My My." As the album ends, however, the name on Young's lips is not Johnny Rotton, but Bruce Berry, a man whose only claim to fame was picking up after Crazy Horse on the road and overdosing on smack. Young brings the audience full circle by ending with Berry's tragic story, "Tonight's the Night."

During one of his more depressed periods, Young used to play this song over and over for each audience, in effect, demanding that his fans understand the suffering that contributes to success. He makes a similar demand today with Live Rust. After struggling through a turbulent decade, he wants to retell the stories he thinks are the most important.

Neither burning out nor fading away, Young is pausing to add an embellishing brush stroke to the picture of his musical career thus far. He seems confident that he can carry on, writing the songs he believes in, ignoring the births and deaths of transient musical fads.