Rock icon Neil Young has joined the ranks of musicians ranged against the current US administration with a new anti-war protest album that includes a track called Impeach the President.
In a message posted on his website on Monday, the veteran singer-songwriter said the substance of the album Living with War harked back to the protest music of the 1960s.
”I think it’s a metal version of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan … metal folk protest?” Young wrote.
The title track includes the lyrics: ”On the flat-screen we kill and we are killed again/ And when the night falls, I pray for peace.”
Young (60) said the 10-track album was recorded earlier this month and featured a 100-voice choir.
Details of other songs on the album remained sketchy, but Impeach the President reportedly includes a rap with George Bush’s voice set to the choir chanting ”flip/flop”.
”It is a brilliant electric assault … on Bush and the war in Iraq. Truly mind blowing,” film director Jonathan Demme, who filmed the award-winning documentary Neil Young: Heart of Gold told the music magazine Harp.
Over a long career, Young’s work has often touched on political themes — notably the album Ohio, released by the group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in response to the deaths of four college students during a Vietnam war protest at Kent State University in 1970.
His political affiliations, however, have shown a significant degree of flexibility with his generally anti-Republican stance broken by a period of support for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Young surprised and shocked many fans by speaking out in support of Bush’s controversial Patriot Act, which gave sweeping new powers to law-enforcement bodies and has been criticised as an assault on civil liberties.
”To protect our freedoms, it seems like we’re going to relinquish some of our freedoms for a short period of time,” Young said in December, 2001.
The unequivocal anti-Bush stance of his latest musical offering sees Young join a growing group of — largely younger — musical acts who have berated the Bush administration in their lyrics. – AFP
