The Mountain People are the inhabitants of the region whimsically, but happily, called Appalachia. They are the descendants of the Scots-Irish, driven from the North of Ireland by the stupidity of the Stuart kings.1
Opening up the electric side of Neil Young’s 1979 masterpiece Rust Never Sleeps, Powderfinger is a remarkable short story set to incredible, dense, simple, but electrifying music. It’s one of his greatest songs, and one that deserves real dissection.
Musically it’s straightforward, in the key of G, four verses and no chorus, with the twin guitars of Young and Frank Sampedro meshing together to create a wall of sonic rock, perfect and precise. And lyrically it’s a cryptic tale of death, fear and hope.
Recorded live, with minimal overdubs, the song starts up with one chord and the following words. Words that Young wrote in 1967 but took eight years to complete:
Look out, Mama, there's a white boat comin' up the river
With a big red beacon and a flag and a man on the rail
The image is set immediately. I picture our narrator deep in the valleys and woods near the Appalachian Mountains. Perhaps close to Tennessee or Kentucky or in the New River in West Virginia. The white boat has a big red beacon and a man as lookout. It’s clearly not good news.
I think you better call John
'Cause it don't look like they're here to deliver the mail
The narrator calls for John because he can tell this is not good news too. I don’t imagine they usually have boats delivering the mail, it’s a touch of sarcasm to me, but wherever they are the arrival of a government boat signals a problem. I like to imagine some sort of illegal moonshine business or a group of survivalists living off grid. The use of Bmaj7 sliding to C here is fantastic, and the cooed backing vocals of Crazy Horse remind us just how melodic they could be whilst crunching out huge chords at the same time.
And it's less than a mile away, I hope they didn't come to stay
It's got numbers on the side and a gun and it's making big waves
The boat is coming. The numbers on the side point to its official status, a Coast Guard runner or police boat perhaps, and the gun adds to the terror. This boat is making big waves, so I assume it’s either a big boat or it’s coming in fast. Whatever the situation, something needs to be done. It’s at this point we first hear the set of twin notes played by the two guitars. Each verse finishes with a short riff that resolves the music from the final D chord back into the G to start again. The notes are fifths, an electrified country lick, and they are clever end to each verse.
Daddy's gone, my brother's out huntin' in the mountains
Big John's been drinkin' since the river took Emmy-Lou
You need no other pair of lines than this to tell us the history of our narrator. Where has Daddy gone? We don’t know: most likely dead but I like to imagine he’s been incarcerated somewhere for similar illegal activities. His brother is out hunting, so this sets the story in the daytime, and I always imagine it to be early morning. A good time to hunt, but a good time for a surprise attack from the government too.
Big John, probably a different John to the one mentioned in the first verse, has a tragic backstory told in that simple line “the river took Emmy-Lou”. We don’t need to ask any further why he’s not here to help resolve the situation.
So the powers that he left me here to do the thinkin'
Whatever’s happened in the past, we’ve had the authorities here before, and they took the decision to leave the narrator in charge, to “do the thinkin’” for his family. When did this happen, because if, as we find, he’s only just turned 22 the decision to leave him in charge must have happened a few years before, long enough for the situation to result in another boat being sent to them. Are the authorities partly to blame for this?
And I just turned twenty-two
I was wonderin' what to do
The closer they got the more those feelings grew
The protagonist is young, and not sure what to do in the situation, alone as he seems to be. The boat gets nearer, accentuating his fear and his desire to make the right decision.
We get the first guitar solo here, a brilliant improvisation around the melody, powerful and sharp, and the way it links with those delightful backing vocals is remarkable.
Daddy's rifle in my hand felt reassurin'
Young uses the cliched language of the deep south: a 22-year old saying, “Daddy’s rifle” and it again tells us a little of what’s going on. The character has his father’s rifle, ready for this very situation.
He told me, “Red means run son, numbers add up to nothin’”
And his father has already warned him of the situation. So this isn’t just some little moonshine still, but something much more serious. This is why I think his father is most likely in jail rather than dead. He’s had time to warn his son of the red beacon, and if it’s on its way it’s time to get out of there. However, things are happening so fast there’s no time to escape.
But when the first shot hit the dock I saw it comin'
These people haven’t come to talk. They’re shooting first and asking questions later.
Raised my rifle to my eye
Never stopped to wonder why
And so our protagonist doesn’t stop to think but readies himself to fight back. Without wondering why, he has the rifle up are ready to shoot back.
Then I saw black and my face splashed in the sky
It’s over in a flash (or a splash). Whoever is in the white boat has the power, and the narrator is shot almost immediately as he raises his rifle to his eye. Young and the band mourn him with another great solo. Slightly different from the first one, it dances around the fretboard, starting higher up, and finishing with a rock and roll groove that is Young at his very best.
The opening lines of the final verse are sung by the band, a downhome plea:
Shelter me from the powder and the finger
Cover me with the thought that pulled the trigger
It’s too late to be sheltered from the life our narrator has. The “powder and the finger” is, for me, a life where guns solve problems, where the thought is to pull the trigger first - for whatever reason, this is the life the narrator finds himself in.
Think of me as one you never figured
Would fade away so young
With so much left undone
He hopes anyone who he left behind will recognise the potential he had. That “so much left undone” is a real regret. What was his life, because it’s gone now at age just 22.
Remember me to my love, I know I miss her
And he speaks from the grave, or perhaps with his dying breath, hoping his love will remember him too. One final play of the wonderful riff and then it finishes on a crunching, clanging G chord. It’s exhausting…
It’s incredible. Without a doubt one of his greatest songs2, and one that will endure forever, thankfully to be discovered by future listeners. I would love to be hearing this for the first time again.
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The Land of Saddle-Bags, James Watt Raine [1924]
I don’t know what my top five are, but this and Cinnamon Girl are in it.
A killer track. One of my favourite Young songs.
One of my favourites. I’d thought of it as being Vietnam coming home to the US. Imagine the boat in Apocalypse Now coming up a river and one of the crew shooting some random kid standing on his deck, for no reason at all.