On “Let’s Impeach The President” Neil young can be heard singing the words “flip-flop” with regards to presidential policy. It’s an inspired lyric and the point was gleefully rammed home on the subsequent tour with old friends Crosby, Stills and Nash who risked the ire of Americans everywhere by performing Living With War (2006) more or less in full. And yet “flip-flop” doesn’t just describe Bush and his inane policies, but also the history of Neil and his love/hate relationship with politics and protest.
From his earliest days Neil evoked the image of a hippie warrior. At a time when the country was already embroiled in the Vietnam War he played in Buffalo Springfield, a folk-rock act with more than its fair share of socially-motivated songs. 1970 saw him take a greater step with CSNY and the haunting and powerful “Ohio” – a song motivated by the senseless deaths of four students at Kent State University that struck a chord with a generation.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – “Ohio”
And yet Neil is no grizzled leftie fighting for freedom and liberal values. For all his ire directed at both Bush’s (Bush senior found himself the subject of “Rockin’ in the free world”) and Nixon, he openly supported Ronald Reagan; a move that attracted a great deal of opprobrium from previous supporters and marked Neil out as an artist who was politically, if not morally, flexible. The truth is that Neil is like the proverbial critic who “may not know art but he knows what he likes” – Neil does not know politics, but he knows the difference between right and wrong, and while there may be many that would argue the point, Neil found nothing morally repugnant about Reagan. In contrast under Bush and Nixon, he saw liberties being taken with the youth of a country who should, instead of playing soldiers, have been gaining an education and moving out into the free world.
Bush Jnr clearly really pissed old Neil off, because where Bush senior only got one song, he got a whole album dedicated to him in the form of “Living With War”.
The album marked an abrupt U-turn on the musical path being trodden by Prairie Wind (2005) and howled back into action with a blast of subversive rock ‘n’ roll that many felt Neil had had beaten out of him during his years as the “Godfather of grunge”. Indeed, not since Broken Arrow had Neil sounded so angry. That buzz-saw guitar tone returned with a vengeance as Neil plugged in, turned on and rocked out over the three days it took to record the album.
“After the garden” nicely sets the scene with its chiming guitars, poppy chorus and sloganeering lead vocal “won’t need no shadow man / running the government / won’t need no stinking war / won’t need no haircut / won’t need no shoe shine…” Subtle it most certainly isn’t, but then subtlety was never really a weapon Neil wielded too well, and his righteous anger certainly has a suitable target.
However the impact of Living With War was remarkably muted. Musically the album was lauded for its direct and vital approach, but the reason that you can hear as many boos as cheers during the CSNY Déjà vu performance of “Let’s Impeach The President” is simple: in 1970 Young attacked a government that was already critically unpopular. Vietnam never had the widespread support Iraq and Afghanistan did because there was no 9/11 catalyst. The widespread anger felt over that tragic attack in September 2001 led to a wave of patriotic fervour that remains raw to this day. While many did oppose the war it was inevitable that Neil’s anger would find a smaller audience.
Neil Young – “Let’s Impeach The President”
In this context it is arguable that Living With War is a braver, riskier move than “Ohio” ever was because it questions something that many Americans saw as revenge for a monumental and brutal attack on their own soil. Neil’s direct criticism of a military endeavour that was controversial rather than widely reviled led to parts of his fan-base deserting him in droves.
For all its fire and fury Living With War was let down, not by the passion of its creator, but by the social context into which it was released. With the rise of the internet and a greater liberalism in the press, protest music had lost the power it had during the heady days of the late sixties when one song could become a generational anthem. Today a war is more likely to spark a debate in a chat-room than a mass rally at a University campus and protest songs have been replaced with facebook pages. Thus, far from being heralded as an artist for disaffected youths to sing along to, Neil found himself on the sidelines alongside left-wing filmmakers such as Michael Moore and treated as an anachronism.
The result relegates Living With War to the position of a curio in Neil’s extensive back catalogue – a treat for fans who yearned for his grizzled alt rock of the nineties – rather than a rallying cry for the anti-war protesters.
It’s a shame because the concept is executed boldly. There is no clothing of the war in metaphor and analogy – Living with War has to be one of the most direct political attacks on record. The music is Neil Young at his most vital and energised, letting rip on songs such as “Shock And Awe” and “Roger And Out”. Only the title track falls slightly flat with its laboured chorus aiming for grandeur but achieving, at best, the sort of simple melody beloved of primary school teachers.
Neil Young – “Shock And Awe”
That aside, Living With War is an eccentric ride through the sort of dirty garage rock that made Weld such a memorable set and the decision to package the whole thing in a plain brown sleeve means that nothing can detract from the serious purpose of the music contained within. For sure Living With War is flawed, but one can’t argue with its heartfelt intent and if it failed to set the world alight with its polemic at least it gave us a searing rock record with passion and balls the like of which so few modern artists are capable of matching.
If, by delving deep into his soul to craft such a grizzled record, Neil has managed to reach even a small percentage of his fanbase in these cynical times, then he should consider it ‘mission accomplished’.
