Hear Devo’s take on Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s anthem ‘Ohio’
While it may not be easy to draw a creative connection between Neil Young and Devo, they share some of their most powerful moments with one another. While you may be thinking of Devo’s electrifying performance in Young’s ramshackle foray into cinema, the 1982 film Human Highway, that is only half the tale. In truth, the two bands were joined forever in tragedy as they both experienced the tragic Kent State shootings. Young captured these sad events in his Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song ‘Ohio,’ a track that Devo covered three decades after the incident.
In the two years before Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released the iconic protest anthem ‘Ohio’, Vietnam tensions had reached a crescendo. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, and Fred Hampton, the leader of the Black Panther’s movement, had been killed by the Chicago Police Department. American home soil was torn apart by division, and its foreign policy was ruined. These divisions finally came to a head in 1970 when the counterculture movement met the brutality of American conservativism, with the police force opening fire on a group of unarmed students.
On May 4th, 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a group of unarmed protesters at the Kent State University in Ohio. Four people were killed, and a further nine were seriously injured. In total, 67 shots were fired at the anti-Vietnam War protesters. Shockingly, national polls conducted at the time showed that most Americans thought the protestors were in the wrong as opposed to the guards. Some 17 days later, CSNY were in the studio recording their soon-to-be iconic protest anthem.
The song’s message is simple: it asks for the blood of Americans to not be spilt in the face of their freedom and right to free speech. It was a poignant message taken most keenly to the heart of those who attended the university. It so happens that Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, Joe Walsh, as well as Mark Mothersbaugh, and Gerald and Bob Lewis of Devo were all students at Kent State University at the same time, meaning the impact of this song has since reverberated through the annals of music history. The minute-by-minute events of that tragic day are frightening enough to have scarred anyone who witnessed it.
As Casale would later famously note, that day would change his very outlook on life: “Until then, I was a hippie. I thought the world is essentially good.” At that moment, Devo were formed in earnest and their decision to reject the rock paradigms of old was rubber-stamped, as Casale once noted, they were now through with “fulfilling our genetic imperative of selling more product so that all the [record company] executives could go on vacation… We were chosen for it.” However, the band didn’t cover Young’s song until far later.
Fast forward to 2002, and the acclaimed members of electronic pioneers Devo finally see fit enough to give the song their utmost effort and cover Young’s composition. Released on the compilation album When Pigs Fly – Songs You Never Thought You’d Hear, which also featured covers from Billy Preston and Roy Clark, the song is naturally bonkers.
A band never afraid to challenge the architecture of society, let alone a pop song, Devo take the Young protest anthem into a new electrified space. Overflowing with glitching synths, chanting protesters and the kind of reverberating riffs that would define the band’s career, the repetitive chorus is drilled into your ears with ironic precision. It’s exactly the kind of cover you’d expect from Devo, the devolved band of the future and no matter whether it is released three decades on from the tragedy, the reality of those events ring as clear as a bell.
Listen below to Devo cover’s of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s song ‘Ohio’.
