I believe it was in the summer of 1983 wherein I “appropriated” my older sister’s copy of So Far by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. That collection of said foursome’s biggest hits sat uncomfortably between my other favorite albums of that summer, those being Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind and the live hardcore punk compliation Rat Music For Rat People. But, sure enough, in between repeated spins of “Fucked Up Ronnie” by D.O.A. and “Live Fast, Die Young” by the Circle Jerks from the latter and “Die With Your Boots On” from the former, I’d routinely squeeze in incongruous airings of songs like “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” “Wooden Ships” and “Helpless.” It was something of a schizophrenic summer.
In all candor, I really needen’t have unsolicitedly helped myself to that album of my sister’s, as if I ever really needed to hear any CSNY … or simply CSN, for that matter … all I really would’ve had to do is flick on the radio. Then as now, the canonical highlights of the band’s ouevre are deeply cemented in the firmament of so-called “classic rock” radio. That’s really no accident.
While arguably the consummate ensemble of hirsute hippies, CSNY’s music largely transcends all calendar-imposed parameters, and sounds as good in 2020 as it did in 1968, inimitably marked by those singature harmonies and flecked by telling bursts of Neil Young’s guitar (without question the hardest rocking aspect of the band’s output). My main reason for swiping my sister’s copy of So Far was primarily the inclusion of “Ohio,” the band’s atypically incendiary protest song, penned and rush-released in the immediate wake of the Kent State shootings in 1970. Ushered in by Neil’s barbed guitar, “Ohio” provided a plangent rallying cry to a generation fed up with the conflict in Vietnam and made incredulous by the callousness of the Nixon Administration.
The only reason I’m bringing this up is that I watched Cameron Crowe’s documentary on David Crosby, “Remember My Name,” last night, and there was one revelation that kinda blew apart my perception of “Ohio.”
The opening lyrics are “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’/We’re finally on our own…,” a scene-setting that establishes the context, and asserts the band’s position that a formal, generational schism has taken place. Since first hearing it, I always assumed the next line was …
“His samurai hear the drumming/Four dead in Ohio…”
I took this as a metaphor that painted Richard Nixon as a war-mongering shogun, and that his legions of armor-clad soldiers were hearing the backlash from their actions. It seemed both apt and poetically illustrative.
Yeah, well, as it turns out, I was wrong. The actual Neil Young lyric is ”THIS SUMMER I hear the drumming…”
I kinda liked my version better.
Anyway, it’s a great documentary. Seek it out.
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