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ROLLING STONE EXCLUSIVE
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."
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Young is but one of many artists who have recently felt compelled to confront the war and the Bush administration (see our list below). Pearl Jam's "World Wide Suicide" deals directly with Iraq and has topped rock radio playlists around the country, and the Dixie Chicks' new single "Not Ready to Make Nice" continues the Texas trio's 2003 feud with the Bush regime. But Young is the first rocker to create an entire album protesting the war, and his is the most explicit and incendiary. "I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer eighteen to twenty-two years old, to write these songs and stand up," Young told The Los Angeles Times. "I waited a long time. Then I decided that maybe the generation that has to do this is still the Sixties generation."
Predictably, Bush loyalists immediately lashed out at the singer: Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, author of In Defense of Internment, labeled Young a "moonbat musician." And Fox News host Mike Gallagher declared, "Neil Young is rich and famous because the country he's trashing made him so."
Retailers are optimistic about the disc's prospects. "The fact that Living With War was recorded so quickly and will be surrounded by controversy can only help in the promotion of the album," says Mike Jansta, vice president of marketing for Tower Records. "We anticipate that the timeliness and politically charged theme will result in quite a buzz among customers."
But Young is hoping for more than a hit record. On "Looking for a Leader," he suggests, "Maybe it's a woman/Or a black man after all," and then name-checks Barack Obama. Young met the junior senator from Illinois at Farm Aid this year. "A good feeling," Young says when asked about what he took away from his conversation with Obama. "But I didn't talk with him for long. The band was rehearsing 'Southern Man' with the Fisk Jubilee singers and Wayne Jackson, of the Memphis Horns. He [Obama] wanted to hear that. I did not get a good chance to feel him out about his views, so I can not give you any real feedback other than that."
Young is clear on one thing though. "We need a new leader," he says. "One we feel has been fairly elected and represents the wishes of the people instead of dividing the people. Register now. Vote in November. Look for a real leader."
Listen Now: Hear Neil Young's "Living With War" for free!
New protest tracks by other artists:
Pearl Jam, "World Wide Suicide"
The first single from Pearl Jam's new disc is a burst of anger about a world going to hell in a Humvee: Over a torrent of guitars, Eddie Vedder scans the morning paper and reads about a friend killed in Iraq.
Pink, "Dear Mr. President"
Pink drafts an open letter to the Prez, dissing his positions on gay rights and abortion before tossing in a sarcastic personal swipe: "You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine."
The Coup, "Head (of State)"
America's funkiest conspiracy theorist -- Bay Area rapper Boots Riley --lambastes a quarter-century of U.S. malfeasance in Iraq, beginning with the C.I.A.'s covert aid to Saddam Hussein.
Bruce Springsteen, "Mrs. McGrath"
Springsteen's big arrangement of this nineteenth-century Irish ballad, off his new tribute album to Pete Seeger, has a timeless sound but a timely message: "All foreign wars, I do proclaim/Live on blood and a mother's pain."
Paul Simon, "Wartime"
Simon never specifically refers to Bush, the war on terror or Iraq on this mournful tune, but the message couldn't be clearer: "Gone like a memory from the day before the fires," he sings, "People hungry for the voice of God hear lunatics and liars."