{"id":804413,"date":"2020-02-20T11:42:13","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T18:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=955460"},"modified":"2020-02-20T11:42:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T18:42:13","slug":"flashback-csny-call-for-the-impeachment-of-president-george-w-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-csny-call-for-the-impeachment-of-president-george-w-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: CSNY Call for the Impeachment of President George W. Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Neil Young<\/a> posted a letter on his official website<\/a> yesterday ripping into President Trump. \u201cYou are a disgrace to my country,\u201d he wrote. \u201cYour mindless destruction of our shared natural resources, our environment, and our relationships with friends around the world is unforgivable.\u2026 Our first black president was a better man than you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not the first time that he took issue with a Republican administration. Back in 1970, Young responded to the Kent State massacre with the furious \u201cOhio,\u201d in which he called out President Nixon by name. (He found at least a small degree for sympathy for him once he left office on 1976\u2019s \u201cCampaigner.\u201d) President Ford wasn\u2019t in office long enough to draw Young\u2019s fire and he briefly supported Reagan in the early days of his administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cReagan, so what if he\u2019s a trigger-happy cowboy,\u201d he said. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t pulled the trigger. Don\u2019t you think it\u2019s better that Russia and these other countries think he\u2019s a trigger-happy cowboy than think it\u2019s Jimmy Carter, who wants to give back the Panama Canal?\u201d<\/p>\n

The brief flirtation with Reaganism horrified some of Young\u2019s liberal fans, but he won them back in 1989 when he tore President H.W. Bush to shreds with \u201cRockin\u2019 in the Free World.\u201d \u201cWe got a thousand points of light for the homeless man,\u201d he sang, inverting one of Bush\u2019s signature phrases before turning to his plea for a \u201ckinder, gentler\u201d America at the 1988 RNC. \u201cWe got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That was a mild rebuke compared to Young\u2019s reaction to the presidency of Bush\u2019s son the following decade. The war in Iraq revived Young\u2019s inner hippie and he recorded an entire album, 2006\u2019s Living With War<\/em>, calling it unjust and grounds for Bush\u2019s removal. Never one to mask his message, he called one of the songs \u201cLet\u2019s Impeach the President.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s impeach the president for hijacking,\u201d he sang. \u201cOur religion and using it to get elected\/Dividing our country into colors\/And still leaving black people neglected.\u201d<\/p>\n

To promote the album, he brought Crosby<\/a>, Stills<\/a>, Nash and Young<\/a> onto the road to deliver songs at arenas all over America. Many of the cities they hit were in in comfortably blue states, but on August 8th, 2006 the tour hit the Phillips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. Less than two years earlier, Bush carried the state by 16 points. A documentary camera crew was rolling all around the arena when they broke into \u201cLet\u2019s Impeach The President\u201d and it was used in the 2008 documentary CSNY\/D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu.<\/em> As you can see here, scores of fans that paid a decent amount of money for tickets stormed out in a fury during the song.<\/p>\n

CSNY haven\u2019t performed together since a 2013 appearance at the Bridge School Benefit. Since then, they have splintered hopelessly apart. Nash and Crosby haven\u2019t spoken in yeares and Young and Crosby are on equally bad terms. \u201cCrosby should write an introspective book: Why People Won\u2019t Talk to Me Anymore,\u201d Young told the AARP<\/em> last year.<\/a> \u201cHe made a lot of great music for a long time. I don\u2019t know what happened with David. I got nothing to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

But just this week, Young refused to rule out a CSNY reunion tour designed to battle Trump in this election year. \u201cFor the common good!\u201d he wrote to a fan. \u201cAnything is possible!\u201d That seemed like a pretty pat, non-committal answer, but the following day he named CSNY\u2019s 2009 release Looking Forward<\/em> the album of the week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis record was made with CSNY,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe have made some incredible music together and felt like giving it another round. There\u2019s nothing like the first time. There are a lot of beautiful parts to this record and I am glad we got to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It ends on an interesting note: \u201cMy favorite song from this is album is \u2018Stand and Be Counted,\u2019 one of Crosby\u2019s great songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this a sign he\u2019s finally softening his views on David Crosby<\/a> or just that he\u2019s able to look at their past work with pride? The latter seems a lot more likely, but far less likely things have happened in rock than CSNY getting back together at this stage. But if they want to get something together before the election, the clock is ticking very fast.<\/p>\n

\n

Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Young posted a letter on his official website yesterday ripping into President Trump. \u201cYou are a disgrace to my country,\u201d he wrote. \u201cYour mindless destruction of our shared natural resources, our environment, and our relationships with friends around the world is unforgivable.\u2026 Our first black president was a better man than you are.\u201d It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-22 03:46:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}