True love ways: A glimpse inside the tangled web of Rick Nelson’s final album

Get the scoop on the complete album of unreleased Rick Nelson songs recorded in the days preceding the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s death in a fiery plane landing on New Year’s Eve 1985. Seen above is the front jacket of Nelson’s wordplay-laden “Four You,” a rare four-song EP culled from the “Memphis Sessions” and dropped by Epic Records in February 1981 without their former artist’s consent. Image Credit: Junque Unique / Sony Music Entertainment

Did you know there is a complete album of unreleased Rick Nelson songs? The posthumous Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was putting the finishing touches on a rockabilly-tinged comeback album for Curb Records at the time of his fateful collision with destiny on December 31, 1985.

The “You Just Can’t Quit” songwriter had been uncomfortable performing many of his greatest hits onstage since the flower power generation seized AM pop airwaves in the late ’60s. His personal mantra — “If memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck” as immortalized in the 1972 Stone Canyon Band-assisted “Garden Party” — haunted him, not unlike Pete Townshend’s declaration that “I hope I die before I get old” in the Who’s anthemic “My Generation.”

But fans never stopped yearning to hear Nelson tackle the tunes that made him a household name. When rockabilly experienced an unexpected revival in the early ’80s as the Stray Cats landed career-making hits with “Stray Cat Strut” and “[She’s] Sexy + 17”, Nelson understood that his legacy was worth celebrating. Vintage ‘50s artists such as Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, and Nelson himself began to command better-paying gigs in front of screaming, appreciative fans.