"I've Got The Revolution Blues": Neil Young on Social Revolution

It seems that just about everyone has "The Revolution Blues" these days.

As the "Big Shift" inexorably approaches, a look back at some very significant comments by Neil Young on social revolution.

Also, some of the most eloquent and articulate speaking that we've ever seen by Neil in an interview.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff interviews Neil Young at the Cloudforce Conference 2011 in Japan. Young compares the youth movements of the 60s and 70s with the social movements (Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street) of today, noting how social media technology is enabling people around the world to effect change in ways never imagined.

Recorded live in Tokyo, Japan, December 14, 2011.

We must say that we were quite pleased to hear Neil discuss Kent State and Occupy, especially after the attacks we saw on our post #OccupyWallStreet 2011 and Kent State Ohio 1970: Is This Really Deja Vu? back in November 2011.

When we posted this back in 2012 , there were a number of comments on the subject and here's one by Mother Nature on the Run who said...

I think television helped shape a lot of what happened on the campuses in the 60s, too. We saw injustices like images of little girls down South getting hosed during demonstrations and protests. We were watching their brave and courageous mothers and fathers being beaten and treated like animals. We saw people grieving for their murdered relatives and friends afterwards.

Getting high helped many of us escape once in awhile from the inhumanity of our own people. Unfortunately, some of our friends and family started developing an addiction for the high and couldn't find their way back to reality.

So here we are, 40, 50 years later and wondering if the social revolution ever ended. Nope, it still raves on in so many ways through musicians and artists work.

I would disagree with Neil by saying some of the music, most notably RAP, is very much social protest music against social injustices of the people who listen to it.

I very much agree with Neil that if we are open to it, we can learn a lot from the Japanese and their survival, their reverence and respect for social order and reconciliation, and overall mutual collectivism. Unlike here in America, the head of the nail sticking out gets hammered in.

Is Neil is referring to mainstream-pop culture music today that appears to void of social consciousness raising? He forgot the sidebar note about there ALWAYS being an undercurrent in art & music & literature directed at those guilty of social injustice. Only until it becomes part of our collective social conscience can we make a difference or bring about change that will improve upon the condition for all life on our planet.

Neil continues to give an honest-to-God account of the human condition which is why his work is still so relevant today. He writes how most of us are feeling on any given day or any day of major significance.

Remember? That one song he pulls out of our collective consciousness? "Imagine?" It's the one song that said it all after the tragedy of September 11.

Remember when he did Hank's "Alone and Forsaken" that one time, too? The songs he doesn't write, he pulls out of obscurity. He pulls it right out from our hearts:

"We met in the springtime when blossoms unfold. The pastures were green and the meadows were gold. Our love was in flower as summer grew on; her love like the leaves now has withered and gone.

The roses have faded, there's frost at my door. The birds in the morning don't sing anymore.

The grass in the valley is starting to die & out in the darkness the whippoorwills cry.

Alone and forsaken by fate and by man. Oh, Lord, if you hear me please hold to my hand. Oh please understand.

Oh, where has she gone to, oh, where can she be? She may have forsaken some other like me.
She promised to honor, to love and obey; each vow was a plaything that she threw away.

The darkness is falling, the sky has turned gray; a hound in the distance is starting to bey
I wonder, I wonder - what she's thinking of?

Forsaken, forgotten - without any love."

And speaking of deja vu all over again, fast forward to today and unbelievably, Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Coming, yet again.

So just occupy the music, how about it, OK?

Thanks Denis & MNOTR!


"Try To Remember Peace"

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