Interesting Neil Young Fact of the Day: Kent State Massacre
On May 4th, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students at Kent State University who were protesting the US invasion of Cambodia. In just 13 seconds, the National Guard troops wounded nine and killed four.
Soon after seeing photos of the massacre in Life magazine Neil Young sat down and wrote the CSNY song Ohio. David Crosby has said many times how he watched Neil write the song - “he was pissed man”. The same night CSNY went into the studio and recorded the song live (something they rarely did).
Jerry Casale of Devo was a student Kent State in 1970, he witnessed the shooting and knew two of the victims. Casale was not impressed by with the song at the time, he saw it as an opportunist song by “rich hippies…making money off of something horrible…that they didn’t get.”
Neil himself in the liner notes for Decade in 1976 reflected: “It was probably the biggest lesson ever learned at an American place of learning. It’s ironic that I capitalized on the death of those American students.”
the song was rush-released by Atlantic Records and it reached No. 14 in the charts. The song has been covered many times by artists including Devo, the Isley Brothers, Ben Harper and Paul Weller.
It was poignantly resurrected during CSNY 2006 Freedom of Speech tour - in support of Neil’s anti-war record Living With War.
