‘Ohio’: How CSNY turned the National Guard opening fire on civilians into a protest classic
The world might seem like it is docked in a tempestuous bay right now, but as any student of history will tell you, turmoil is nothing new. In the two years prior to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young releasing 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 Panthers’ movement, had been killed by the Chicago Police Department.
American home soil was being torn apart by delirious division, and its foreign policy was in wreck and ruin. Something had to change. Nothing has.
At the precipice of this fevered fraction was an incident that has, and will continue to go down, as one of the most pivotal events in post-industrial American history. In retrospect, it would seem America was a boiling pot with the lid left on, and something was inevitably going to spill over: The Kent State Shooting was the grisly moment, brutally imbued with an air of inevitability, that crystallised a cataclysmic diegesis in the discourse of history.
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. None of the victims were found to be carrying weapons of any description, and many were found to be 40-130 yards from the Guardsmen when they opened fire. In fact, the only armed person among the protestors was Terry Norman, who was later revealed to be an FBI informant.
The headline in the New York Times the next day read, “4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops,” alongside an image of Mary Ann Vecchio screaming in anguish alongside the lifeless body of Jeffrey Miller. However, the same image, taken by the 21-year-old photography student, John Paul Filo, adorned the front page of the Georgia Straight, beneath a headline that read: “4 ‘Bums’ Killed at Kent”.
This headline was daring satire that invoked the fact Richard Nixon, only days before the fatal tragedy, had referred to college protestors as “campus bums”. Sadly, while it might have been satire, it did reflect the genuine thoughts of many. National polls conducted at the time showed that most Americans thought the unarmed protestors were in the wrong as opposed to the Guards, recklessly firing into a distant crowd of citizens.
It was a horrific incident that would have been indelibly etched into the annals of history regardless, meaning that the token epithet of ‘immortalised in song’ doesn’t quite apply here. However, the fact that the song in question came only a matter of weeks after the actual incident, kept it in the public eye with a visceral edge. And it showcased to future generations how swift artistic protest can have a pivotal impact.
The Kent State Shooting occurred on May 4th. Newi Young wrote his response two days later, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded their defining retort, ‘Ohio’ on May 21st, and it was released in early June. Plenty of radio stations refused to play it, but it reached 14th in the charts and galvanised and otherwise fearful college movement into further action.
The song’s message was simple. It should be incredible that five decades on that an act of State terrorism, would be viewed among the American public as the fault of the protesters, but this was clearly a notion that came from a stubborn political position. Neil Young’s lyrics ask those holding this opinion to reassess their position with an ounce of empathy in mind: “What if you knew her? / And found her dead on the ground,” he asks in an attempt to usurp uncaring nationalism with a more emotive response.
“What was so important about that song was that it didn’t let the moment die,” David Karen, a sociology professor at Bryn Mawr College told Esquire on the 50th anniversary of the incident, “Neil Young underlined just how corrupt and awful the government was, not only about Vietnam.”
What’s more, the boldness of the singer’s stance stood out most of all. Young and his folk quartet stepped into the studio and set out to tackle an incident with a protest song that history shows ran counter to the majority of public opinion.
This earmarked CSNY as a collective willing to brave the slings and arrows that would inevitably follow, to lend an important voice at a pivotal time. This illuminating effect and the maelstrom of defiant support that they gathered up in the wake of the release would prove pivotal in motivating publications to pursue huge anti-government stories exposing the corruption that they sang of. Ultimately, it fed into the thinking behind the Watergate campaign, and brought down a crooked presidency.
Speaking to Howard Stern in 2013, Graham Nash recalls receiving a phone call from David Crosby in which he yelled, “Book the studio right now! I’m coming down tomorrow. Wait until you hear this song!”
This impassioned energy is what makes the track one of the most essential in protest music history. Lyrically, it is a tour de force of simple songwriting, leaving the stark catastrophe that spawned it to sit, unflinchingly front and centre, as the message rides home in a boom of fuzz-pedalled defiance. “Four dead in Ohio” is unapologetically the blunt topline.
The song shunned the old folk stylings associated with CSNY for the visceral power of rock ‘n’ roll, underlining the importance of dealing with the incident in that very moment and tackling the times head-on. This was no pussyfooting retrospective obfuscated by analogy, but rather a rapid rally cry issued mere weeks after the event.
In 2006, four decades after retiring the song, Neil Young joined CSN on the Freedom of Speech tour and declared, “For years I couldn’t sing it because I felt it was kinda taking advantage of something that happened and we were trading on somebody’s misfortunes to give the audience a rush of nostalgia.”
But he presciently continued, “In this period of time, that doesn’t apply. What it is now is its history. We’re bringing history back.”
That’s a notion that seems just as pertinent today as ever. Tragically so, in fact
