Neil Young won my heart. Twice. The first time was 52 years ago when, only 17 days after the Kent State shootings, he composed Ohio which became an anthem for my generation.
The second time was this year when he pulled a Lady Macbeth (“Out damned spot! out, I say!”) in demanding Joe Rogan be removed from Spotify or Young would remove his own music from that platform
That first time was May 21, 1970, when he composed Ohio and the injustice he immortalized in that song’s refrain “four dead in Ohio” became known later as the Kent State massacre.
Ohio National guardsmen shot their rifles into a crowd of student protestors, killing four and wounding nine, one of whom has been paralyzed from the waist-down ever since.
I was a 25 year old graduate student at Kent State on May 4, 1970, and I witnessed the carnage.
Neil Youngwent on in his lyrics to warn our generation that “we’re on our own.”
The strategy of ‘muddying the waters’ began immediately: “There was a ‘sniper’ who began the shootings (no evidence); Students posed a threat by “charging” at the moment of the gunfire and “continuing to charge” even afterward. (A student film proves the opposite: Students had turned, running away); There were “agents provocateur” who provoked the guardsmen (no evidence).
And then there was the despicable lie: The bodies of the dead students which arrived at the hospital were “covered in lice.”
Guardsmen seemed not to be sure, under oath in 1974, why they shot into the crowd.
The closest fatality was 265 feet away. The farthest 390 feet. Get the picture? A football field is 360 feet.
Four long muddy-the-water years later, on Nov. 9, 1974, federal judge Frank Battisti acquitted the guardsmen in a trial that had begun only 10 days before.
He ended the trial unexpectedly and suddenly with these words:
“There is no evidence from which the jury could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants acted with premeditation, prior consultation with each other, or any actively formulated intention to punish or otherwise deprive any students of their constitutional rights.”
As Peter Davies, author of The Truth About Kent State: A Challenge to the American Conscience observed: “Apparently Judge Battisti thinks that Ohio National Guardsmen can shoot into a crowd of students and those students can be dead after that shooting and their civil rights will remain intact.”
But Neil Young saw clearly: “Four dead in Ohio.”
Fifty two years later Neil Young has won my heart again.
This time there aren’t four dead in Ohio, but 900,000 dead in America.
This time Neil Young took-on a radio host, Joe Rogan, whose media platform, Spotify, makes him the most listened to podcaster in the nation with a daily audience of 11 million people.
Young notes Rogan’s show is full of pandemic disinformation and he issued an ultimatum: either remove Rogan’s podcast from Spotify or I will remove my entire collection of music.
Young wasn’t bluffing.
“I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the frontline health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others” Young says in the final line of his statement as he pulled out of Spotify.
Neil Young won’t have to ask himself Lady Macbeth’s final guilt ridden question: “… will these hands never be clean?”
For 52 years, from Kent State to COVID nation, Neil Young , like Shakespeare, has pointed us to hands with blood on them.
Tin lies and Rogan’s comin’
Messed up and on our own
Covid keeps its hummin’
More dead with omicron
Gotta get down to it
Lies are layin’ us down.
Truth shoulda been told
long ago:
900,000 now under ground
How can you run
when you know
Tin lies and Rogan’s comin’
Lies are layin’ us down
More dead with omicron
More dead with omicron
More dead with omicron
More dead with omicron
By Paul Keane,
with apologies
to Neil Young