Founding member of Poco wrote band’s hit ‘Crazy Love’
Rusty Young, a founding member of the country rock band Poco who wrote its hit song “Crazy Love,” has died at 75.
Young’s management confirmed Thursday that Young, born Norman Russell Young, died of a heart attack Wednesday at his home in Davisville, Missouri.
Young formed Poco in 1967 with former Buffalo Springfield members Richie Furay and Jim Messina after Young was invited to play the steel guitar on Buffalo Springfield’s third and final album. George Grantham also joined Poco.
Over the next five decades, Young remained the only constant member of the band, which also included a rotation over the years that included Randy Meisner, Timothy B. Schmit and guitarist Paul Cotton.
The group’s biggest hit was the Adult
Contemporary No. 1 single ”Crazy Love,” which Young wrote in less than 30 minutes while working on his house.
In a 2008 interview with MetroActive, Young said the hit song “was our first hit single. It’s a classic, and it still pays the mortgage.”
“I was paneling a wall and looking out over the valley in L.A., and the chorus came into my head,” Young told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2012. “I told [the other band members], ‘Don’t worry about the Ooh, ooh, Ahhhh haaa part, I can find words for that.’ And they said, ‘Don’t do that, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.’ ”
Young is survived by Mary, their two children Sara and Will, his stepchildren Joe, Marci and Hallie and grandchildren Chandler, Ryan, Graham, Quentin and Emma.