Powderfinger

Young said he wrote the first line of Powderfinger in 1967 and did not finish the song until 1975, and that it was funny to pick up where he had left off. A studio attempt from the Zuma sessions in the summer of 1975 was held back and has since been released through his Archives series. A solo recording made at Indigo Ranch in Malibu on 11 August 1976, during the session later released as Hitchhiker, first appeared in 2017 and is included on Chrome Dreams. Young first played the song live at The Boarding House in San Francisco in May 1978, where he said he still did not know it well.

The version on Rust Never Sleeps is the electric performance from the October 1978 tour, with Poncho Sampedro, Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote in Pitchfork that, delivered by Crazy Horse in full roar, Powderfinger provided Rust Never Sleeps with a clarifying blast of purpose. Cameron Crowe recalled that Young had a tape of Captain Kennedy, Sedan Delivery and Powderfinger delivered to him through Joel Bernstein, and that he passed it to Ronnie Van Zant, because Young wanted Lynyrd Skynyrd to record one of his songs. Van Zant died in a plane crash in October 1977, and Lynyrd Skynyrd never recorded it. When Young and Crazy Horse toured in 1991 with the Gulf War under way, Powderfinger and Cortez the Killer were added to the sets, and a Powderfinger of 5:36 is on Weld.