{"id":429690,"date":"2025-09-16T20:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T20:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/429690\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T20:46:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T20:46:18","slug":"the-neil-young-song-that-david-crosby-absolutely-hated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/429690\/","title":{"rendered":"The Neil Young song that David Crosby absolutely hated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neil<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Analog Originals \/ David Gans)<\/p>\n

Tue 16 September 2025 19:30, UK <\/p>\n

We\u2019re at a point in culture where people are often judged by who they\u2019re closest to. It doesn\u2019t matter if someone seems politically neutral if they\u2019re friends with someone outspoken. But most of the time, these are relatively harmless. Not like Neil Young<\/a>\u2019s close encounters with Charles Manson.<\/p>\n

Finding inspiration through the company they keep is common for musicians. Countless across history have written songs about their closest comrades, from Joni Mitchell to Bob Dylan. But when this ventures into cultural or political figures, it\u2019s usually from a distance. Or in a way that takes stories and rewires them into something personal. Not from a place of overt admiration when the person in question is, well, questionable.<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s links to Manson led him to write a song his band felt so icky about they refused to play it for three decades. And while we all know Manson as the infamous cult leader who led his family into a string of heinous killings in 1969, Young only ever saw him as a musical genius. He initially met Manson through The Beach Boys\u2019 Dennis Wilson, which is an interesting connection in and of itself.<\/p>\n

He only met him a few times, but with each meeting came a towering feeling that he was in the presence of someone great, someone creatively out of this league. According to Young, Manson\u2019s music was the kind that \u201cno one was doing\u201d. And he\u2019d sit down, churning out music that just \u201ckept comin\u2019 out, comin\u2019 out, comin\u2019 out\u201d. His music, from Young\u2019s vantage point, was \u201cunique\u201d. And Manson has \u201csomething crazy, something great.\u201d He was \u201ca living poet\u201d. <\/p>\n

Young wrote 1974\u2019s \u2018Revolution Blues\u2019 about his experiences with Manson<\/a>. And his lyrics were so intense that they freaked out David Crosby. You can understand why, looking at some of them: \u201cWe live in a trailer at the edge of town \/ You never see us \u2019cause we don\u2019t come around \/ We got 25 rifles just to keep the population down.\u201d Apparently, although Crosby played on the track, he had warned Young against doing it, saying, \u201cDon\u2019t sing about that. It\u2019s not funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

But from Young\u2019s perspective, it was important because it was real. It was about culture, and what happened. All from the perspective of someone who once saw him as \u201csomething great\u201d. As he explained to NME, \u201cThey didn\u2019t know if they wanted to stand on the same stage as me when I was doin\u2019 it.\u201d He added, \u201cI was goin\u2019, \u2018It\u2019s just a fuckin\u2019 song. What\u2019s the big deal? It\u2019s about culture. It\u2019s about what\u2019s really happening.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Young also told NME about playing it during the CSNY reunion tour, and how there was a clashing of opinions when it came to the song \u2013 the others feeling like it ruined the feeling they were going for: \u201cDavid Crosby especially was very uncomfortable, because it was so much the darker side,\u201d said Young. \u201cThey all wanted to put out the light, y\u2019know, make people feel good and happy and everything, and that song was like a wart or something on the perfect beast.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song was effectively removed from Young\u2019s sets from the late 1980s onwards. It\u2019s easy to see why. Any song about the Manson family is going to settle unease in anybody listening. But worse, Young actually crossed paths with the monster himself. Which gives his song an added sinister feel, like the chronicles of someone who actually faced up to evil, before he even knew the sheer force of it all.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Analog Originals \/ David Gans) Tue 16 September 2025 19:30, UK We\u2019re at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[146407,40356,133823,77,269,20920,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-429690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-charles-manson","9":"tag-csny","10":"tag-david-crosby","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-neil-young","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115215937360673844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}