Listen Now: Hear Neil Young's "Living With War" for free!

Neil Young's new album, a collection of anti-Bush anthems featuring the bluntly worded single "Let's Impeach the President," started in a hotel room. "I went down to the coffee machine and there was USA Today," Young tells Rolling Stone. "The cover showed a large military craft converted into a flying hospital. The caption said something about how we are making great strides in medicine as a result of the Iraq conflict. That just caught me off guard, and I went upstairs and wrote 'Families' for one of those soldiers who didn't get to come home. Then I cried in my wife's arms. That was the turning point for me."

Young -- a Canadian citizen but a longtime U.S. resident -- wrote and recorded Living With War in a two-week creative burst in April, without informing his label, Warner Music/ Reprise. He put it up online as a free stream on April 28th and will release the album to stores on May 6th. Young will debut the songs live this summer, when he tours with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young starting July 6th in Philadelphia.

Graham Nash is confident the new tunes will fit right in. "The people that love this band know that peace is better than war, that love is better than hate," he says. "There will be screens on either side of the stage with the lyrics playing. Neil wants people to be able to see the lyrics, to feel free to join in, so that our voices rise together."

"The guitar was playing itself," Young says of his Crazy Horse-style solos on Living With War's ten emotionally raw songs -- which are backed by a 100-voice choir. "The singers were all told there was a song called 'Let's Impeach the President,' and if they weren't comfortable with that, then please don't come," says Young. "More people came than we called."

Legendary backing singer Rosemary Butler, who sang on Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty," assembled the choir on an hour's notice. "I was calling people at 3:30 in the morning for a session at 10 a.m.," Butler says. "Everyone came. As the lyrics came up on the projection screen people were yelling and crying. We were in an exalted state. Neil knows Southern gospel. Neil gets down. He was having so much fun he was blushing from head to toe."

At the album's heart is the singer's empathy for American soldiers and their families. On "Flags of Freedom," Young observes, "Today's the day our younger son is going off to war . . . / Church bells are ringin'/The families stand and wave/ Some of them are cryin'/'Cause the soldiers look so brave." On "Let's Impeach," he details the president's impeachable offenses in a series of self-incriminating Bush sound bites, such as "War is my last choice."