From ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ to ‘Sleeps With Angels’

In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain quoted a famous line from a Neil Young song: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

Young has written an answer.

The veteran singer-songwriter--rather than one of Cobain’s grunge peers--will become the first major rock figure to pay tribute in song to the Nirvana leader, whose death in April shook the rock world.

“Sleeps With Angels,” the title song of the Young album that will come out on Aug. 3, was written shortly after Cobain’s death in April. A sonically dark, disjointed descendant of Young’s “Tonight’s the Night”--his 1974 classic that also deals with death and loss--the song addresses the confusion and restlessness often associated with the music and lives of Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love.

She was a teen queen

She saw the dark side of life

He made things happen

But when he did it that night

He ran up the phone bill

She moved around town to town

He sleeps with angels

He’s always on someone’s mind

He sleeps with angels tonight

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The death at 27 of Cobain--who attended one of Young’s Greek Theatre concerts in 1992 with Love--touched Young deeply, says Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts.

“There’s definitely an influence on at least the one song and maybe others (on the album),” says Roberts.

There is certainly a sense that in places on the new album Young is speaking to a younger audience. The song “Prime of Life” makes a case for youthful optimism, while “Driveby,” in contrast, raises the specter of random, unexplainable tragedy that punctures that very sense of hope.

It’s fitting that Young identify with this troubled, restless generation.

The mercurial Young, at 48, is old enough to have been Cobain’s father, and has in fact been a musical father figure for some younger rockers. As a consistently independent, vital performer, he’s been accorded the status of “godfather of alternative rock” and has relished chances to work with some of those he has inspired.

He handpicked Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam as opening acts on recent concert tours, and it was the prospect of jamming with Young that lured a reluctant Eddie Vedder to the MTV Video Music Awards last fall.

Young had apparently even tried to get in touch with Cobain in the wake of his near-fatal overdose in Rome in March, according to Roberts.

“He called me to see if we could get ahold of Kurt,” he says. “I spoke with (Cobain’s manager), tried to get a current phone number for him. But this all turned out to be the day before he died and Neil never got in touch with him.”