June 7, 2024      —–     Chart #249

Hello Music Friends,

Summer is here my music loving friends, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Today we are going with a protest song from 1970. We have all just watched passionate demonstrations on college campuses nationwide this spring protesting for the causes of Israel and Palestine. This phenomenon reminds me of what we experienced in the 60’s with students and activists protesting the Vietnam war on college campuses everywhere.

No writer and no band captured the sentiment better than Neil Young (writer) and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with their anthem style, Ohio.  “Ohio” is a protest song and counterculture anthem written and composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970, and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It was released as a single, backed with Stephen Stills’s “Find the Cost of Freedom“, peaking at number 14 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 16 in Canada. Although live versions of “Ohio” and “Find the Cost of Freedom” were included on the group’s 1971 double album 4 Way Street, the studio versions of both songs did not appear on an LP until the group’s compilation So Far was released in 1974. The song also appeared on the Neil Young compilation albums Decade, released in 1977, and Greatest Hits, released in 2004.

The record was mastered with the participation of the four principals, rush-released by Atlantic and heard on the radio with only a few weeks’ delay (even though the group’s hit song “Teach Your Children” was already on the charts at the time). In his liner notes for the Decade retrospective, Young termed the Kent State incident as “probably the biggest lesson ever learned at an American place of learning” and reported that “David Crosby cried when we finished this take.” In the fade, Crosby’s voice—with a tone evocative of keening—can be heard with the words “Four!“, “Why?” and “How many more?”.

An article in The Guardian in 2010 describes the song as the “greatest protest record” and “the pinnacle of a very 1960s genre”, while also saying “The revolution never came.” President Richard Nixon, who is criticized in the song, won a landslide reelection in 1972, which included winning the 1972 United States presidential election in Ohio by a margin of over 21%. The lyrics help evoke the turbulent mood of horror, outrage, and shock in the wake of the shootings, especially the line “four dead in Ohio”, repeated throughout the song.

Neil Young, acoustic & Live:  https://youtu.be/YdVMGKOFIwY?si=9QetAHP9X1d6Ei8k 

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming” refers to the Kent State shootings, where Ohio National Guard officers shot and killed four students during a protest against the Vietnam War. Crosby once stated that Young keeping Nixon’s name in the lyrics was “the bravest thing I ever heard.” The American counterculture took the group as its own after this song, giving the four a status as leaders and spokesmen they would enjoy to a varying extent for the rest of the decade.

At the time of the shooting the American public was highly critical of the protestors and blamed them for the violence. This is what the line “What if you knew her? / And found her dead on the ground” was about. After the single’s release, it was banned from some AM radio stations including in the state of Ohio, because of the challenge to the Nixon Administration but received airplay on underground FM stations in larger cities and college towns. Today, the song receives regular airplay on classic rock stations. The song was selected as the 395th Greatest Song of All Time by Rolling Stone in 2010. In 2009, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Friends, this song is great when played on a single acoustic guitar and its great when you bang it out on your heavily distorted and loud Les Paul. Its great in standard tuning and great in the Neil Young original double drop D tuning. Make sure your firearms are secured safely away, then bang away on this song. It’s a great reminder of a pivotal time in American history.

Keep Rockin’,

Stan Bradshaw