Neil Young's new album a far cry from old protests

BY JEFF SHAW
Night & Day

June 29, 2006 01:00 pm

— Neil, this is an intervention. You know I love you, but you need to stop writing protest songs.
Neil Young’s most recent album, “Living With War,” hurts me in so many ways I can’t even count them.
Young has written some of the greatest protest songs of all time, most during the Vietnam era. The new disc tries to take his style back to those days ... and falls flat on its face doing so.
There’s a stunning difference between his new tunes and a classic like “Southern Man.” The older tune finds a subtle, yet extremely powerful way to criticize the long history of racism in the south.
Meanwhile, “Let’s Impeach the President” sounds like a poem written by an angry seventh-grader who watches too much CNN.
An old song like “Ohio” may be musically simple and reference a specific incident — the death of four Kent State students at the hands of riot police — but Young does it with a different spirit than the new songs.
The tune was performed with a strong sense of anger at the police and reverence for the students, and you can hear it in the recording. It was also such an important song about such a tragic incident that the strength of the lyrics still strikes home today.
The new tunes not only fail to earn a sense of timelessness, but actually give themselves a shelf life.
“Shock and Awe” from the new album makes references to George W. Bush’s famous aircraft carrier landing in front of a sign declaring “Mission Accomplished.”
The only thing the tune awakens, though, is the image of an old hippie whining about the government. It sounds like “The Daily Show” without the jokes.
“Lookin’ For a Leader” is a call for someone new to step forward to right what Bush has done wrong as president. It’s a theme that, if performed properly, could’ve made the song last forever. After all, doesn’t every unpopular president arouse those feelings?
Young not only fails to capitalize on the opportunity, he actually calls out politicians by name. The song was destined to disappear into obscurity the second he wrote Barack Obama’s name on the paper.
Neil, your head is in the right place, but your skills have slipped so far that I barely recognize you anymore. I beg you to stop this madness before you damage your legacy more than you already have.
Contact Jeff Shaw at 693-1000, Ext. 157, or shawj@gnnewspaper.com.

LOSING HIS TOUCH
Take a look at a classic Neil Young protest song compared to one from “Living With War” and see if you can tell the difference:
“Southern Man”
“I saw cotton and I saw black/Tall white mansions and little shacks/Southern man when will you pay them back?/I heard screamin’ and bullwhips cracking/How long? How long?”

“Let’s Impeach the President”
“Let’s impeach the president for spying/On citizens inside their own homes/Breaking every law in the country/By tapping our computers and telephones.”

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