The tour that David Crosby wanted to piss people off
Rock and roll is not meant to be the most comfortable genre in the world. There are many people who are more than happy to make the best music that they can and pray that there’s an audience for it, but there are others who are more than happy to take an axe to anyone’s preconceptions of what they’re supposed to be the minute they step out onstage.
And while David Crosby is known for some of the most breathtaking harmonies, he knew that sometimes it was better to give the audience his take on life rather than worry about pleasing everyone around them.
After all, that was the direction that the Byrds had been going in for a long time, and while Crosby did everything he could to satisfy what Roger McGuinn needed, but when he started working with Graham Nash, there was something else at work there. This was music that could go in different directions, and he wasn’t about to roll over when he had another songwriting genius to bounce off of.
But when breaking in the new band on their self-titled album, the idea of bringing Neil Young into the fold was always going to be a gamble. Young was always an extremely fickle artist to work with, and even if they saw eye-to-eye in many respects, it wasn’t going to be the easiest fit when they started making songs like ‘Teach Your Children’ and ‘Our House’. But Young came to play music, and that meant quoting what was in his heart.
There was a lot of heavy subject matter on CSN songs before, but ‘Ohio’ was one of the biggest lines in the sand that could have been taken. The Kent State massacre had been one of the most harrowing looks at what the youth were experiencing at the time, and instead of using their time to process everything, Young figured that the time was right for him to comment on the events and show the world what horrors were going on.
And that kind of mentality didn’t exactly stop when the band reformed again. All of them had been through recovery of some sort, but if there was one thing that would bring them together, it was their disdain for politicians, and with President George Bush starting a war in Iraq in the 2000s, Crosby was more than happy to stand alongside Young and his fellow bandmates singing songs like ‘Let’s Impeach the President’.
Not everyone saw their point of view, but as far as Crosby was concerned, airing their opinions was the only thing they could hope to do, saying, “That was the strength of that tour, songs which say ‘let’s impeach the president for lying‘. They were wonderful and putting those in the context of ‘Ohio’, ‘Long Time Gone’ and ‘For What It’s Worth’ just really worked. That tour was fun, we pissed off Republicans a lot. There were people who stomped out saying, ‘You can’t say that about George’. But the point is, we can.”
And to their credit, this move was incredibly gutsy on their part as well. No one was looking to challenge the President at the time in the era of blind patriotism, but it’s tours like this that remind everyone that just because someone is in power doesn’t mean that they always have everyone’s best interests at heart. Some people are legitimately looking to serve themselves before anyone else, and sometimes it’s up to artists to give a voice to the marginalised.
While certain politically active fans may have been turned off, this was simply Young following the tradition of his writing that started all the way back in the 1960s, when he reminded everyone to look at what was going down. And looking at where America has come since that tour, one can only imagine the kind of music that Young could come up with regarding the state of the nation today.
