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Originally Posted by Derek
Does Neil Young's Hey Hey My My count? I know it's a eulogy for rockstars such as Johnny Rotten and Elvis but the lines 'out of the blue and into the black' sort of suggest something else.
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I think the phrase "Out of the blue and into the black" has its origin in the Vietnam war and was used to refer to the act of jumping from the clarity of daylight right into the darkness of tunnels. Of course, it later became a metaphor for other things, including death. "My My Hey Hey (Into The Blue)" and "Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)", though, supposedly were mainly born out of Neil Young's fear and consideration of the possibility that his music could have been starting to become obsolete at the time, which was when punk-rock was the dominant force in rock-music if i'm not mistaken. So in this case, the phrase deals with artistic renovation rather than with addiction or death. Kurt Cobain wrote the line "It's better to burn out than to fade away" on his suicide note as a mean to explain reasons for ending it all, but it seems in the context of Neil Young's song, it was considered a dilemma of artistic nature. The line "Once you're gone, you can't come back" also took a new meaning and emphasis on the live performances that have taken place after the sad death of Kurt Cobain,
la estrella estrellada, but in Young's words, the work that sprang out of his feelings about Cobain's suicide and which he dedicated to his memory, is actually "Sleeps With Angels", released in 1994.
A Neil Young song that's actually about heroin addiction is "The Needle And The Damage Done", inspired partially by the heavy use of Crazy Horse's guitarist Danny Whitten, and the ugly consequences the junk had on him. Young has said he knew many musicians both famous and unknown, whose careers ended or got stuck because they were junkies. In his compilation, "Decade", Neil Young wrote in the liner notes in regards to this song, "I am not a preacher, but drugs killed a lot of great men". The album "Tonight's The Night" is especially worth of a mention in regards to this theme too, since it addresses the deaths due to heroin overdose of Danny Whitten and also a roadie for Neil Young And Crazy Horse, named (if i remember correctly), Bruce Berry.