For the Sake of the Song: Steve Young “Rock, Salt & Nails”

Before embarking on this feature, to avoid duplication, I conducted a search on ‘Steve Young’, on the AUK website and was surprised to find there are precious few recent pieces devoted to someone who was surely one of the giants of Americana music. Plenty of ‘Steves’, loads of one particular ‘Young’, but not much about Steve Young (although his son, Jubal Lee Young gets some well-deserved coverage).

However, perhaps this is just a reflection of the way he operated somewhat under the popular radar for the best part of 50 years until his death in 2016, despite writing, performing and releasing a catalogue of great music throughout his career. This item will, therefore, go some very small way to rectifying the situation. I only saw him perform once, at the greatly missed Borderline, off Charing Cross Road, and he was mesmerising. His reputation among fellow musicians and critics, nonetheless, remained as high as Artemis II, currently circling the moon as this is being written.

His best known songs  are probably Lonesome, Ornery & Mean (thanks to Waylon Jennings), Seven Bridges Road (thanks to lots of musicians, including The Eagles, Dolly Parton and Joan Baez), and Montgomery in the Rain (thanks to Hank Williams Jr).

Somewhat contradictorily, the song I have chosen was not one he wrote. Rock, Salt & Nails came from the pen of the poet, fellow activist and singer/songwriter, Utah Phillips. And as Young wryly notes in his spoken introduction to the attached video clip, “…if this is a love song, it is the world’s most bitter one”. My excuse is that Young saw himself principally as an interpreter of other’s songs, despite his own writing talents. Check out his versions of Dick Gaughan’s Handful of Earth or Willie Nelson’s It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way as compelling evidence.

So, Steve Young was a four-way talent – a great songwriter, wonderful singer (the second greatest country singer after George Jones, according to Waylon Jennings), splendid guitar player, and peerless interpreter. The part-Cherokee was one of the original, if less heralded, so-called outlaws of Americana music, cropping up in the ‘Heartworn Highways’ film, which featured so many of those who warm the cockles of AUK readers’ hearts. He said he incorporated country, folk, blues, Celtic, and gospel into his songs, and he surely absorbed many influences as he travelled the world.

Anyway, “Rock, Salt & Nails is a great song, and was the title track to his first solo album in 1969 (the record he said was his personal favourite, with Gram Parsons and Gene Clark among those who appeared on it). It is the lament of a man whose experience with ladies and love has clearly not gone well and has left him with a rather regrettable vindictiveness. The lyrics speak for themselves. As always, Young conveyed the emotional essence of the song with total commitment.