CSNY: Exercising Freedom

Sunday News
Published:
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

When was the last time you saw an audience member flash their middle finger at a performer they paid good money to see? Probably not very recently, if at all. Reviews so far of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's current tour, dubbed "Freedom of Speech 06," have lauded the still exceptional vocal and musical abilities of the quartet of sixty-somethings. That's pretty much what we've come to expect of CSNY, which plays Hersheypark Stadium Aug. 25.

But this has been no ordinary summer outing for the group. While most fans have been cheering and singing along to the recontextualized songs of the group's peace-and-love loaded catalogue, numerous press accounts-from the Washington Times to the Orange County Register-have also noted the thousand or so fans walking out in disgust, sitting sternly with their arms crossed, or making their opinions known through the aforementioned gesture.

It's hard to image anyone at the group's early 1970s shows were supportive of Nixon's dragging out of the Vietnam War, but it's not out of the question to think there may have been a handful. It's even harder to imagine someone who is pro-war expecting a concert by unrepentant hippies to not insult their opinions. The real question is, what happened between then and now (and don't say Sept. 11, that's too easy) to sway even some part of their audience to the pro-war side of the fence.

To paraphrase Einstein, how does one support a war and sing along to songs about peace? For three years, Neil Young had been hoping some young rock artist or group would make a definitive stand against the war in Iraq on record, and rally the growing number of people who have turned against the current administration. But who wants a crusty old relic from the Sixties speaking out on today's troubles, he thought. Problem was, no one else had, though a few had come close.

Yet at a Q&A discussion at the South by Southwest Music Conference in March of this year, festival director Roland Swenson told Young frankly "...we need another Ohio.'" Swenson was of course referring to the incendiary song Young wrote and CSNY recorded just days after four students were shot dead by National Guardsmen at a peace rally at Kent State University in May of 1970. It has since become one Young's most famous songs, and one he has performed only sporadically.

He resurrected it most notably while on a solo acoustic tour just after thousands of students and workers were killed in the Tianamen Square massacre in 1989, very nearly the same place where the Olympic torch, perhaps the world's most recognized symbol of peace, will stand in 2008. But this time Young wanted to say something new and specific. So in a matter of a few weeks after the conference he wrote, rehearsed, and recorded twelve new songs that became the album "Living With War."

Without reservation, it's a hold nothing back indictment of the Bush administration's war and what Young perceives as its arrogance, given the fact that we are not allowed to see flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base on television, and that the president himself has yet to attend a funeral for a soldier killed in Iraq. Young echoes (and even references) vintage Bob Dylan on "Flags of Freedom," honors the memories of soldiers who have died on the pained "Families," and reserves his most direct criticism for the sing- along "Let's Impeach the President."

He reaches back to the Vietnam era with "Roger and Out," wherein the current war reminds an aging trucker of a friend lost in a different conflict and the roads they traveled in their youth, and updates a well-known CSNY refrain in the ironically triumphant sounding "After the Garden." To move the new songs out as soon as possible, Young allowed the public to download or stream the entire album from his website while the tape machine was still warm, and had the CD version on record store shelves two weeks later. It was one of the most downloaded albums in Internet history.

Since then an offshoot of Young's official website has become a clearinghouse for people to post protest songs of their own and to discuss (pro and con alike) the war and other current events. And while it had been booked before Young recorded the album, this current summer tour allowed "LivingWith War" to become the centerpiece of what otherwise would have been just another greatest hits show.

Recent tours by the supergroup (the last one was in 2002) have been marked by a comforting musical democracy, this time it's largely Young's band. And the songs performed from his new opus are all the better for it. The combined voices of the foursome onstage bring more harmonic focus than the 100 voices-strong choir Young used on most of the album's tracks.

In addition, the wider sound of a full seven-piece band adds muscle to songs that were recorded quickly with just Young's fuzzed- out guitar, bass and drums. Playing in front of backdrops that include the American flag, a giant peace symbol, the faces of soldiers killed in Iraq, a ticker counting the dead, as well as lyrics to Young's new songs, these aging relics have for the second time in their almost forty year history have found themselves at the flashpoint of a nation's discontent.