7 Should Have Been Done Long Ago

“The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.”

 – John Lennon

Graham Nash still has plenty to say about the quintessential protest song, “Ohio.” Originally released May of 1970, Nash and the band quickly decided to push their current song “Teach Your Children” aside although it was steadily climbing the charts, in order to let “Ohio” shine. He explained, “We wanted it [‘Ohio’] out as a single, so we recorded the B side ‘Find the Cost of Freedom’ and in a couple of hours, we mixed both songs.”

“Find the Cost of Freedom” is essentially “Ohio’s” companion song. The harrowing lyrics quake with, “Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground. Mother Earth will swallow you. Lay your body down.” The band quickly gave Neil Young’s “Ohio” to Ahmet Ertegun, who was the owner of Atlantic Records at the time. Ertegun was hesitant, however, when he realized that releasing the track would put “Teach Your Children” in jeopardy.

“We said, ‘Kill it. It’s much more important for America to know that we are killing our children over their God-given right to protest what the government is doing in their name rather than me having another hit single,’” Nash said. The band made sure that the graphics for the cover of the 45 was a copy of the U.S. Constitution with four bullet holes in it, to represent the four young lives taken that day.

How bizarre it must feel for an artist to find a that a political song he wrote 50 years ago fits so seamlessly into today’s American atmosphere. He said, “I feel two ways about it. First of all, I’m really pleased that my music has lasted all this long, but secondly, it’s a pain in the ass to have to keep singing ‘Immigration Man’ for instance – which I wrote 50 years ago. Is immigration not relevant today? Is ‘Military Madness’ not relevant today? I wrote that song about my father going off to World War II for God’s sake. We don’t seem to have learned much.”

With the reminder of May 4’s 50th anniversary, Nash brought up his concern over the many unanswered questions that still loom over that day. “I think I’ve never understood why the name of the person that ordered for live ammunition in their rifles – we have no idea who that was,” he said. “You know, no one has apologized to the families. No one to this day. Someone gave the order to not only load live ammunition into their rifles, but they ordered to fire.”

Just like Crosby, Nash was asked why we don’t see as many musical responses to tragedies like we did during the defining era of protest. Whereas Crosby felt it’s largely fueled by the artists drive for money, Nash felt it’s likely due to the limited media ownership. “Because the people that own the world’s media you can probably count on two hands. The first thing they want to do is turn you into sheep. They want you to lie down… shut up while we sell you another pair of sneakers and another cola. They learned with the Vietnam War that you can’t let the people know too much.”

“When we were watching the 6:00 evening news with Walter Cronkite and he tells us how many Americans are being killed that day, eventually, the public got pissed off and they put pressure on their congressmen and senators and presidents to stop this madness. But the world’s media learned that. You never saw anything about Panama. You never saw anything about Grenada. You couldn’t even photograph the flag-covered coffins of the people that have died in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But if you go to somewhere like the ‘Living with War’ website of Neil Young’s, you’ll find 3,000 protest songs on there. Will you hear them on the radio? Of course not.”

Perhaps what’s most striking about the individual careers that the members of CSNY are leading today is how they seem to collectively identify as “town criers.” Both Crosby and Nash used that term specifically in their interviews, just months apart, and even after not having spoken to each other in quite some number of years. Then, when Young wrote on his website to recruit artists to use the words of immigrant children in their songs he urged, “We also believe that the songs will keep the accounts and atrocities being perpetrated against these children in the minds of the public and will be a call to action.” A call to action is what seems to distinguish the defining era of protest music from today’s politically charged music. It’s one thing to say “hey, look at this, this is messed up.” But it’s another to say, “Here is what we do about it.”

More than that, seeing their catalog of music as a time capsule seems to be what makes the defining era of protest music so distinct. Protest music wasn’t just around to unite and comfort, it was there to keep record. CSNY and the enduring solo careers of the members that continue to today aren’t just huge catalogs of music; they’re practically serving as history books. Even the line “Four dead in Ohio” eerily rings as the unforgettable headline from May 4. While journalists report the times with facts through the written word –sometimes with a microphone in their hand or from behind a desk – politically conscious musicians, whether rock, folk, or hip-hop, report history sonically. While the genres and landscape shifts, the influence of their dissent only seems to grow thanks to the many outlets they can voice their calls to action through with today’s emerging communication technology. However, there are still some who are hesitant to embrace both new music and its purpose.