He changed his tune pretty quickly:
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...960988,00.html
"Will I Be Deported?"
Neil Young, one-time counter-culture idol turned Reaganite, is fed up with George Bush. And his outspoken views might just get him in trouble, he tells Adam Sweeting
Thursday May 22, 2003
The Guardian
Political rebirth: Neil Young
It is difficult to find supportive things to say about George Bush unless your construction company is rebuilding Iraq, but it would be a droll irony if it was him we have to thank for Neil Young's latest creative renaissance.
"The US is like a baby with a bomb," he barks, his eyes blazing with the famous stare. "The reaction to France that the administration allowed to happen is so immature. These people have their own opinion - they're French! They're not fuckin' Americans, they're French ! Vive la difference, hello? And this big deal about Bush landing on an aircraft carrier? Talk about a six-year-old kid with a Tonka toy - we got it here."
After a string of less-than-awesome albums, it is excellent news that Young has found himself a new itch to scratch. He has never been a political songwriter, unless you count his 1970 hit single Ohio, but the songs from his new album, Greendale, take a critical squint at Bush's America through a small-town keyhole.
He tells his story about the fictional town of Greendale through a variety of characters, including three generations of the Green family, but the dominant themes reflect Young's personal concerns. He seems especially fired up by issues of media intrusion, ecological conservation and illegal surveillance by government agencies.
"I think the world today, at least the US and to some extent Britain now, is experiencing this kind of Big Brother thing," he ruminates, the day after completing his string of solo performances at London's Hammersmith Apollo. Close up, the Toronto-born Young looks lined and weatherbeaten, but his mental focus is sharp.
"It's not what we thought we were gonna be doing, a lot of the people's civil rights have been compromised, and we don't know what's going on. If I keep speaking my mind, will I be deported? I'm not very happy with the state of things. Music is being banned, and we have people in control of the radio stations who are the same people in control of the concert halls. They're also tied into the [US] administration and are sponsoring pro-war rallies. It's not good. It's interesting ."
He is referring to the recent Dixie Chicks furore, sparked by singer Natalie Maines's comment that the band was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas". The Chicks suddenly found that their records weren't being played on chains of radio stations.
"The real point was, somebody asked the president what he thought and he said, 'It's America, it's a free country, they can have their opinion, but there's nothing we can do about it if nobody goes to their shows or plays their songs,'" Young growls. "But he's so out of touch that his advisers haven't told him that their record sales spiked upwards when that happened, and while the airplay went down the sales went up and their concerts all sold out."
In the mid-1980s, Young, the professional contrarian, endorsed Ronald Reagan. Today, he sounds more like the songwriter who exploded to stardom with counter-culture darlings Crosby, Stills and Nash. "It's a robust time, probably the most fertile time for the underground and for revolution since Nixon. I'm not talking about political overthrow; I'm talking about just general cultural revolution. Bush has polarised the country and is creating this breeding ground for an opposition. In the next couple of months, they'll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It's pretty crazy."
The Greendale songs don't confront particular issues as specifically as Young does in conversation, but they are steeped in the contrast between a society falling apart and a time when communities were built on neighbourliness and responsible citizenship. That wasn't quite the kind of upbringing Young experienced, since his parents separated when he was 13, but albums such as Old Ways and Harvest Moon espoused similar old-homestead values.
During his live performances this week, Young used only acoustic guitar and a wheezy old organ, and filled in some background with a running narrative between songs. On disc, the music is played by Young and Crazy Horse, and is accompanied by a home-made movie. This will be bundled in with the album on DVD when it is released in August.
Under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey, Young has dabbled in film-making for decades - but even his keenest fans found his previous movies, Journey Through the Past and Human Highway, hard going. The film he has made to accompany Greendale is primitive and idiosyncratic, but when it is matched with the soundtrack it acquires a curious resonance. Though Young has developed an array of sophisticated electronic gadgets that he uses in live performance, he adopted a metaphorical back-to-mono approach for the movie.
"I got this little $500 camera, it's a Eumig Nautica underwater Super 8 film camera, made in Germany. It's pretty old. It uses little Super 8 cassettes that last two and a half minutes, no sound. I thought it looked pretty cool so I just keptusing it. There wasn't much thought went into it."
Whether the Young who has made Greendale is the real Neil or just another aspect of a complicated personality, no one can say. Jimmy McDonough came as close to penetrating Young's defences as anybody ever will in his superb biography, Shakey, but Young has distanced himself from the book.
"I think Jimmy McDonough is a great writer and that's why I asked him to do it," he says. "I didn't want some watered-down flowery version of who I am - that's nothing but a self-serving piece of shit. But rather than let anything happen officially, I should have just let people do whatever they wanted to do. That was a mistake, but I'll live with it. I fought it coming out because I wanted it delayed until after my daughter turned 18, and I managed to delay it for a couple of years, so I did OK."
Linear Mode
