After almost four decades of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Neil Young, at 62, is still angry, still politically engaged, and still as fuelled by creative energy as he ever was. The CSNY band tour documentary pulls no punches, writes Michael Dwyer.
TWO YEARS ago, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young, who are collectively known as CSNY, went on the road with their Freedom of Speech concert tour, which they timed to coincide with the mid-term elections in the US.
The band became icons of the peace and love era when they first assembled in the late 1960s, and were at the forefront of performers opposed to the war in Vietnam. Reunited to address another war in 2006, they were determined not to leave their audience with "warm, fuzzy feelings".
Neil Young's fascinating documentary of that tour, CSNY Déja Vu pulls no punches in recording just how divisive the audience response was when the tour came to Atlanta, Georgia. There was nothing warm or fuzzy about the feedback when they launched into Let's Impeach the President with the lyrics displayed on a huge screen behind them, just in case anyone might miss the point.
The audience reaction became a cacophony of cheers and booing, with many storming out in disgust and making their views plain to Young's film crew.
"Well, they have their beliefs, and you've got to respect them for that," Young says when we talk at the Four Seasons in Dublin, a few days after his triumphant gigs in Dublin and Cork last week.
Wearing wraparound black shades, he is in relaxed and amiable form, and as outspoken as ever. He says he enjoyed seeing the maple leaf flag flying over Malahide Castle in Dublin when he played there last week. Born in Toronto, he remains proudly Canadian, and even though he has lived in the US for decades, he has never sought US citizenship.
Does that fuel the wrath of Americans who resent his criticisms of their country's government?
"I always ask those people what is the other name for the president of the United States," he says with a smile. "It's the leader of the free world. I'm in the free world, so he's wide open as far as I'm concerned. And no other country in the world but America has something called the World Series."
Nobody can accuse Young of producing an unbalanced movie in CSNY Déja Vu. He invited Mike Cerre, a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Vietnam and Iraq, as an "embedded" journalist to capture the opposing points of view during the Freedom of Speech tour.
"I thought that would make it interesting and that it would be illuminating to show both sides," Young says.
"There are all kinds of people in the country. Just because we've had this particular slant on our government in the last seven years doesn't mean that all Americans are that way. It may show how easily they can be manipulated, but it doesn't say that they're not good people."
It's clear from the Atlanta concert footage that many people came for the music, to hear the greatest hits, but not for the politics.
"But if they looked back at our music," Young says, "everything we played during the show was from when they first knew us or from now, and they were all about the same thing. Every song on the tour was about war, about politics."
Isn't there a certain irony about audiences paying to see a show titled Freedom of Speech and yet refusing to accept the band's freedom of speech? "Maybe they didn't read the ticket," Young laughs, "or maybe they didn't pay attention to what I had been putting out. You've got to give them the benefit of the doubt. They may have been corporate people, or they may have had corporate tickets.
"They may have regarded it as a date night because it was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, even though each one of the band has always been politically active, going right back to the heyday - Stills and I, particularly, back when we were in Buffalo Springfield and recorded For What It's Worth. Crosby has always been outspoken as a radical figure, and Nash has always articulated his feelings with songs like Military Madness, Southbound Train and Immigration Man."
Is it true that Young got death threats during the tour? "Well, I think it is true," he says. "I never saw one myself, but I saw a lot of action. From when the tour started, they were combing through all the seats with dogs while we were doing our sound check. We had our own security for the first time and these guys would stop me going into my hotel room and would check out the room first. We didn't make a big deal out of that in the movie."
I recall seeing CSNY on stage at Madison Square Garden in February 2002, and how different the audience reaction was that night. One ovation followed another as the band played a blistering three-hour set, and Young electrified the audience when he performed Let's Roll.
The title came from the last words said to have been spoken by one of the hijacked 9/11 passengers, and hearing it in downtown Manhattan so soon afterwards took on a shared emotional resonance. "I'm not sure if I should have written that song because it has been grossly misunderstood by a lot of people as a war cry," Young says. "It's a legend of a guy on an airplane. It's one man's struggle against insanity - and for freedom. It's nothing else. The story may or may not have happened. We don't know. We weren't there. All we got was a little bit of information on a cell-phone."
One cultural commentator quoted on the soundtrack of CSNY Déja Vu notes that there was a time when topical, political songs routinely figured on mainstream radio playlists, whereas more recently, acts such as the Dixie Chicks have been ostracised for stating their views.
"According to George Bush, you're either with us or against us," Young says. "All that kind of thinking is barbaric. The United States of America was founded on dissent. Freedom is founded on dissent, and to say it is unpatriotic shows how far from the truth the country has swayed. But I think that what we started to chronicle in 2006 was a turning point, when America realised it had been led too far down a garden path and that it was a weed path, a path to the outhouse. That was their journey."
Isn't it also a factor that young people today are far less politically engaged than earlier generations? "I think the minds of people under 25 are still open," Young says. "They're not as engaged because they're not on the front lines of the war and there's no draft. If John McCain gets elected, there will be a draft and all hell will break loose.
"What age is he? 70 years old? How does he know how long he's going to live? He's going to do everything as soon as he gets the power. If he gets voted out in four years, it doesn't matter to him, so he can bring in the draft. But I think the country is swinging the other way now. I am predicting a landslide victory for Obama. I think that's going to happen."
Yet another factor, Young believes, is that rock music has become such a lucrative, cynical business.
"When we started out, the music was resonating with people because we were directly communicating with the audience. It wasn't a business then. I could see the change coming at Woodstock with all the cameras there. I could see how things were getting out of control and that what we had between the audience and us was changing.
"It was being hijacked and used for corporate greed. They were using our songs, or what sounded like our songs, as commercials. Then they started buying us, and pretty soon, we lost our contact with our audience. Then, as time went on, the digital age came along and we lost the quality of being able to communicate with sound that had depth and could get inside people's souls. Even though people still feel music in their hearts, the only way to hear it now is to go to a concert."
One clip in CSNY Déja Vu features the band performing Chicago and singing the chorus line, "We can change the world". Can art - be it music or movies - change the world?
"A song certainly isn't going to change the world, but it can change a person's emotions," Young says. "It can get a seed going. Changing the world is something that has to be done by action. Today's challenge is energy. That's the cause of the war in Iraq. That's the cause of the environmental problems. That's the cause of climate change. And the war causes starvation because all the money spent on war could be spent on other things.
"What's the difference between Darfur and Iraq? No oil. So all the human suffering in Darfur or in Zimbabwe is ignored because they have no oil. Where's Bush, the white crusader? That's why I'm focused on energy now. I'll write new songs about whatever I feel, and I'll continue performing them and doing what I do, but my main focus for the rest of my life is energy."
YOUNG FIRMLY EXPRESSED HIS environmental concerns in his idealistic, heartfelt song-driven 2003 movie, Greendale. "Well, the things I feel strongly about now, I am extremely passionate about," he says. "I am putting all of my energy, or a great deal of the energy I have left after performing, into developing alternative energy sources. I'm working on a car project and I'm making a movie, Lincvolt.
"It's the story of the evolution of a giant, gas-guzzling 1959 Lincoln Continental into a car that can travel across the country and doesn't have to stop to get refuelled. Our goal is to eliminate roadside refuelling and to cut off the tentacles of the oil industry to the people. I hope we will be finished filming by the end of the year. You can read about it at lincvolt.com."
At 62, Young is clearly as fuelled by creative energy as he ever was, and he's fully recovered after being hospitalised with a brain aneurism three years ago.
Stephen Stills has had successful prostate cancer surgery. David Crosby has survived decades of excess. And they continue to thrive musically, along with the Englishman in the band, Graham Nash, who hasn't lost his Lancashire accent since he left The Hollies and moved to California 40 years ago.
"We're brothers, you know," Young smiles. "We've been through a lot of things together, a lot of heavy drug use together, and we've had our problems. But we still have four strong voices."
CSNY Déjà Vu is available to Virgin Media subscribers through the FilmFlex VOD (video on demand) service from Friday next. It will be released here on DVD next month.