[Mb-civic] Neil Young's 'Living With War' Shows He Doesn't Like ItBy JON PARELES

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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April 28, 2006
Critic's Notebook
Neil Young's 'Living With War' Shows He Doesn't Like It
By JON PARELES

Neil Young unleashes a digital broadside today. His new album, "Living With
War" (Reprise), was recorded and mostly written three to four weeks ago and
as of Friday can be heard in its entirety free on his Web site,
www.neilyoung.com, and on satellite radio networks.

Mr. Young half-jokingly describes "Living With War" as his "metal folk
protest" album. It's his blunt statement about the Iraq war; "History was a
cruel judge of overconfidence/back in the days of shock and awe," he sings,
strumming an electric guitar and leading a power trio with a sound that
harks back to Young albums like "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Ragged Glory."

Some songs add a trumpet or a 100-voice choir, hastily convened in Los
Angeles for one 12-hour session. During the nine new songs he sympathizes
with soldiers and war victims, insists "Don't need no more lies," longs for
a leader to reunite America and prays for peace.

In a song whose title alone has already brought him the fury of right-wing
blogs, he urges, "Let's Impeach the President." It ends with Mr. Young
shouting, "Flip, flop," amid contradictory sound bites of President Bush.
But Mr. Young insists the album is nonpartisan.

"If you impeach Bush, you're doing a huge favor for the Republicans," he
argued, speaking by telephone from California. "They can run again with some
pride."

Mr. Young is a Canadian citizen. But having lived in the United States since
the 1960's, he sings as if he were an American. The title song of "Living
With War" quotes "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the album ends with the
choir singing "America the Beautiful."

The album's release is a high-tech, globe-spanning update of a topical song
tradition that's much older than recordings: the broadside, a songwriter's
rapid response to events of the day. "They had these songs that everybody
knew the melodies to," Mr. Young said. "They'd just write new words, and the
minstrels would be traveling around spreading the word. Music spreads like
wildfire when you do it that way."

On Tuesday a higher-quality version will be for sale as a download from
online music stores, and a CD will be in stores next week as soon as it can
be manufactured and shipped. Eventually a DVD will be released with video of
the recording sessions, which took place March 29 to April 6. Many of the
songs on the album were first takes, recorded immediately after Mr. Young
taught them to the band. On March 31 he wrote three songs: "Let's Impeach
the President" before breakfast, "Looking for a Leader" after he recorded
"Let's Impeach the President" and "Roger and Out" the same evening.

Mr. Young's Web site will have a more elaborate presentation, available
free. It will include a page designed like a cable-news broadcast, complete
with visuals (including recording-session scenes), ticker and logo: LWW (for
"Living With War") rather than CNN. "Even if it turns out that we can't sell
it with the news in it, we won't sell it, we'll just stream it," he said.
"We don't have to sell it. We can still get it out there. This has nothing
to do with money as far as I'm concerned."

Mr. Young wants the album heard as a whole. The online streams play through
from beginning to end; until the CD is ready, the downloadable copies will
be available only as a bundle of the full album. "That first impression is
so important," he said. "Instead of just going to 'Let's Impeach the
President,' people will have to absorb the whole thing. To understand the
songs, you need to understand where the whole album's coming from. It
protects my right as an artist to have the work presented the way I created
it."

Mr. Young has always been impatient with the time lag between writing a song
and getting it to the world. When four student protesters were shot dead at
Kent State University in 1970, he wrote "Ohio," recorded it with Crosby,
Stills, Nash and Young and released it two and a half weeks later by sending
acetates ‹ preliminary pressings ‹ to radio stations. (He will be on tour
this summer as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in what's billed
as the Freedom of Speech Tour.)

After 9/11 Mr. Young wrote "Let's Roll," a song about the passengers who
brought down a hijacked plane in Pennsylvania, and released it free online.
"Now we have the Internet," he said. "It doesn't sound as good, but it's
much faster, and it gets around the world. That's huge, that's as big as we
get."

The songs on "Living With War" are straightforward and single-minded,
setting aside the allusive, enigmatic quality of Mr. Young's rock classics.
"These are all ideas we've heard before," he said. "There's nothing new in
there. I just connected the dots."

The protest song, rocked-up slightly from its folky 1960's form, has been
making a comeback during the Iraq war, from arena bands like Pearl Jam, the
Rolling Stones and Green Day to indie-rockers like Bright Eyes and
blues-rockers like Keb' Mo' and Robert Cray. Bruce Springsteen's latest
album is a tribute to the protest-song mentor Pete Seeger, although it
features old folk songs rather than Mr. Seeger's topical material.

"We are the silent majority now, and we haven't done a damn thing," Mr.
Young said. "We've stood by and watched this happen. But there's more of us
than there is of them, and we have to do something. When people start
talking and see they can get away with it, it's going to happen everywhere.
It's going to be a landslide, it's going to be a tidal wave. This is just
the tip of it."

Mr. Young said that he made "Living With War" not with a plan, but on an
impulse. "I don't know what actually did it," he said. "It happened really
fast, faster than I think I've ever experienced. There was just a kind of a
wave."

As in the 60's, protest songs risk self-righteousness and preaching only to
the converted. Only the most generalized ones outlast the interest in
whatever headlines inspired them. There's not a lot of mystery to the songs
on "Living With War"; they make their points as forthrightly as possible.
Yet in the Internet era information ‹ not just songs but blogs, videos,
photos, drawings, e-mail jottings ‹ is in the paradoxical position of being
published worldwide and perhaps archived forever, but also being impulsive
and ephemeral. A song for the Internet doesn't have to be one for the ages.
Like an old broadside, it just has to get around for its moment, for right
now. "Living With War" ‹ irate, passionate, tuneful, thoughtful and
obstinate ‹ is definitely worth a click.

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