August 7, 2026 —– Chart #362
Hello Music Friends,
Rusty Young was hired to be the guy in Poco who didn’t sing. That was the deal. He played the pedal steel, the banjo, the dobro — all the instruments that make a country-rock band sound like a country-rock band and none of the ones that get you on the radio. So naturally, the only monster hit Poco ever had is a song Rusty Young wrote and sang all by himself. Rusty called that ironic. I call it the music business.
Here’s how it happened, and I want you to picture this. Late seventies, Los Angeles. Rusty is home paneling a wall — actual wood paneling, this being the seventies — looking out over the valley, when the chorus of “Crazy Love” floats into his head uninvited. He kept a guitar within arm’s reach at all times (a policy I have followed my whole life, and it has never once let me down), and thirty minutes later the song was finished. “It was all there,” he said. “It was kind of a gift.” Thirty minutes. I’ve spent longer than that deciding where to put the capo.
And here’s my favorite part. That “ooh, ooh, ahhh haaa” in the chorus — the part you’re humming right now — was a placeholder. Rusty fully intended to go back and write real words there, the way a responsible songwriter would. The boys backing him on the demo told him don’t you touch it. They were right, and every songwriter should be lucky enough to have friends who will stop him from improving something.
Now, you can’t tell the “Crazy Love” story without telling the Poco story, and the Poco story is one of the great hard-luck tales in rock and roll. The band rose out of the ashes of Buffalo Springfield in 1968, and for the next ten years Poco ran the finest farm system in the music business. Randy Meisner left and founded the Eagles. Timothy B. Schmit replaced Meisner in Poco, then left and replaced Meisner in the Eagles. (If you wanted a career in seventies rock, the smart move was apparently to just stand behind Randy Meisner and wait.) Jim Messina left and hooked up with Kenny Loggins. Everybody who left Poco got rich. Poco got critical acclaim, which pays about what you think it does.
By 1978 the band was down to Rusty and Paul Cotton, and they’d made peace with the end. They booked a rehearsal hall, hired a rhythm section, and auditioned for ABC Records as a brand-new act called the Cotton-Young Band. They played two songs: “Crazy Love” and Cotton’s “Heart of the Night.” The suits said go make a record — one condition. Keep calling yourselves Poco. Ten years without a hit, and the label still liked the name better than the men.
The album was Legend, and in January 1979 “Crazy Love” did what nine years of better-reviewed Poco records never could: cracked the Top 40, climbing to No. 17. But the pop chart is the wrong scoreboard. “Crazy Love” parked at No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart for seven straight weeks and finished as the No. 1 AC song of the entire year. The album went Gold. It would’ve gone further, but MCA swallowed ABC Records that spring and had no use for Poco. Even the year Poco finally won, somebody repossessed the trophy.
Two things you can use at your next trivia night. That elegant little line drawing of a horse on the Legend cover? Drawn by Phil Hartman. Yes, that Phil Hartman — he was a graphic designer before Saturday Night Live, and he said the Poco horse was the work he was proudest of. And Rusty, asked about the song decades later, gave the most honest quote in rock history: “It’s a classic, and it still pays the mortgage.”
What’s it about? The oldest lie in the songbook. Our man swears tonight’s the night he breaks away, that he’ll never be imprisoned by a faded memory. Then somebody says her name and the tears come down again. The chorus confesses what the verses deny: this crazy love wraps around my heart, refuses to unwind. He’s not over her. He’s not even in the neighborhood of over her.
Playing it is pure pleasure. The record sits in a key no guitar player would choose on purpose, so do what I do: capo the first fret and play the friendly shapes — G, C, D, Em, with a pretty Fmaj7-flavored chord for the soft landings. Nothing here will hurt your hands. The strum is easy and even; this is a song that runs 2:55 and never breaks a sweat, and neither should you. The work is in the singing. The verses lie low and conversational, then the chorus floats up into that high Poco air. If you’ve got a harmony partner, this one’s a gem. If you don’t, the “ooh ooh, ahh haa” carries the whole thing by itself. Rusty’s friends knew what they were doing.
Keep Rockin’,
Stan Bradshaw