Music Preview: Crosy, Stills, Nash & Young are on the road with songs of protest
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By Graham Nash's estimation, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is losing about 1 percent to 2 percent of its audience each night on the Songs of Freedom '06 Tour.
Where: Post-Gazette Pavilion.When: 8 p.m. Sunday.Tickets: $36-$151; 412-323-1919.Related article: Young(er) voices of dissent
These aren't people who are due back at the retirement home or getting text mail from the baby sitter. They're folks who apparently come to see the legendary hippie quartet on the basis of nice songs like "Teach Your Children" and "Our House," perhaps unaware of the more scathing protest songs like "Ohio" and "Military Madness."
This time around, Neil Young has raised the stakes even further. His latest solo record, the hastily recorded "Living With War," is a broadside against the Bush administration with the remarkably unsubtle sing-along "Let's Impeach the President."
The song is being played on tour to a photo montage of dead soldiers, flag-draped caskets and images of President George W. Bush. Reviews of the tour indicate a smattering of boos, early exits and the occasional shout of "Support the troops!"
Nash, 64, acknowledges some backlash from the fans, saying "mainly in Atlanta -- it's to be expected, it's the South."
With regard to the booing, there is a degree of ambiguity. "They started booing only when the image of George Bush came on the video screen behind us," Nash says. "There's a certain case to be made they were booing the image of George Bush. They weren't booing at the beginning of the song. We know this is America and not everybody has to agree with us."
From the beginning, there was an air of free-spirited defiance to CSN that was as noticeable as the harmonies. The trio's self-titled debut in 1969 was largely built around love songs like "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and "Guinnevere," but it also included the harmonious anti-war song "Wooden Ships" and "Long Time Gone," an impassioned song of frustration that David Crosby wrote on the night of Robert Kennedy's assassination that has him pleading "speak out against the madness."
Looking for some extra punch, Crosby, Nash and Stephen Stills recruited Young for the second album, "Deja Vu," in 1970, but his biggest contribution would come just after that release. Upon Crosby's urging, Young wrote "Ohio" in response to the National Guard shootings at Kent State in May of 1970, and the foursome had the single ready for the airwaves a week later.
It was the last song they would work on together until 1988, when they reunited for the coolly received second album, "American Dream," followed by 2000's "Looking Forward."
All along, Young has remained a mercurial figure in the political arena. In the '80s, he surprised everyone by throwing his support behind Reagan, hardly a popular figure among his rock peers. Then, in 1989, he turned around and attacked Bush Sr. with "Rockin' in the Free World," throwing the president's slogans back at him: "We got a thousand points of light, for the homeless man/We got a kinder, gentler machine-gun head."
Shortly after 9/11, Young banged out "Let's Roll," a song honoring the brave souls aboard Flight 93 that some perceived as being a battle cry a la Toby Keith.
Young didn't leave any gray area on "Living With War," which has him singing, "Let's impeach the president for lying/And misleading our country into war/Abusing all the power that we gave him/And shipping all our money out the door."
The 60-year-old Young told the Los Angeles Times that he didn't think he would have to be the one to step forward. "I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer 18 to 22 years old, to write these songs and stand up," said Young, who must not have heard Anti-Flag or NOFX. "I waited a long time. Then, I decided that maybe the generation that has to do this is still the '60s generation. We're still here."
And that goes for CSN as well. Nash acknowledged in a previous interview that Young, who has had the most successful solo career by far, can pretty much pick up the phone and get the other three out onto the road. This time, it was all centered around Young's new record, which is played almost in its entirety during the three-plus hour set.
"We always wanted to go out and play and we always wanted to have a focus, something to say, not sing a bunch of hits," Nash says. "So we were talking about it and then Neil, within two weeks of starting a creative process and handing in a tape to the record company, wrote this great record, 'Living With War.' He played for it for me, David and Stephen, and we wanted to sing those songs with him and help him communicate what he wanted to do."
Although it's not a Crazy Horse production, "Living With War" has the sludgy feel of Young's famed garage band. Why was he thinking CSN?
"I think he's smart enough to realize," Nash says, "that the power of the four of us speaking with one voice is louder than one of us."
When he heard it, Nash says, "I loved Neil's record. It's pure Neil Young. Very poignant. Very melodic. I can't get the songs out of my head myself."
The quartet decided that the show would be built around its more politically charged material. There are several departures at the beginning of the second set, like "Helplessly Hoping" and "Our House," but the bulk of it deals with war and peace.
"A lot of people are saying, 'Aren't you just preaching to the choir?' And it's possible we are preaching to the choir. But what we want is the choir to get off their [behind] and do something. It's one thing to know what's going on and another to do something about it.
"If they're not getting it from the music, they can get it from the tables of information. We have 20 tables of information of things the public can do, everything from political -- call your senators, call your congressmen, here's all the numbers, la la la -- to environmental concerns, to Vietnam Vets Against Iraq."
CSNY is carrying out this campaign against the current administration in an atmosphere that's very different than the one in the late '60s. In recent years, we've seen the Dixie Chicks banished by the country sector for speaking out against the president. Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, rapper Kanye West and even Bruce Springsteen come under fire for jumping into the political arena.
In the days after 9/11, there were reports that Clear Channel was cleansing its playlists of anything that smacked of being anti-patriotic, and, although Green Day eventually slipped through with "American Idiot," the airwaves these days aren't brimming with protest music.
Nash regrets that protest songs are not delivered to the people like they were when the hippies were speaking out against Nixon and Vietnam.
"What's happened is the world's media is owned by a handful of people and they're all right-wing and they're very conservative and they don't want protest music on their radio stations and their television stations and their billboards. It's out there. Look at Pink, look at the Dixie Chicks. It's out there and it's not being played and it's deliberately not being played. They don't want to wake up the sheep. We're out here with large bells and gongs trying to wake up the sheep. The most patriotic thing you can do is criticize the government when you don't believe it's acting correctly. It's what this country is built on."
During the conversation, he bristles at the term "political" to describe the music.
"It all depends on what you call political. When you shoot four students down at Kent State, was that political or was that human? When you bind and chain and gag a man like they did with Bobby Seale in the Chicago Seven trial, was that political or was that human? When I'm screaming about 'military madness is killing my country,' is it political or human? We're not a political band, man, we're [expletive] human beings. It's all our life. It's all which way are we pointing today, what's making us laugh, what's making us cry."
First Published September 7, 2006 12:00 am
