Ya can’t make it up. Rocker Neil Young, the iconic rocker of 60’s-70’s bands Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young has issued a demand to Spotify.
The demand? Either Spotify dumps the seriously popular podcaster Joe Rogan – or else he will have his own catalogue removed. According to news accounts like this one in USA Today Young’s demand was phrased this way in an “open letter” to “his manager Frank Gironda and Tom Corson, co-chairman and chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Records.”
“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” Young continued. “They can have (Joe) Rogan or Young. Not both.”
As someone who came of age listening and loving Neil Young’s music, the hypocrisy about his sudden concern for “fake information about vaccines- potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them” is nothing short of hilarious hypocrisy.
For those who came in late, Neil Young came into this world in Canada, making him a Canadian citizen. By 2019 he was trying to become an American citizen, something he finally accomplished in 2020. But he had a problem in the beginning of his application. His problem? Wait for it.
Here was a 2019 headline in the New York Times about one of the most famous rock and roll stars of the day:
Will Neil Young’s Marijuana Use Keep Him From Becoming a U.S. Citizen?
The famous rocker, a Canadian citizen, wants to vote in America’s 2020 elections. But his naturalization hasn’t gone as planned.
The Times story reported this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
“Young has freely discussed his marijuana use in interviews and books. In his 2012 memoir, he wrote of being arrested in a drug bust with other members of Buffalo Springfield, his 1960s band. And in his 2014 memoir, he wrote that the August 1976 all-nighter he spent writing his album ‘Hitchhiker’ was interrupted ‘only for weed, beer, or cocaine.’ Though he had said he stopped smoking marijuana in 2011, he has since begun again, he told The Los Angeles Times.”
Got that? There is one of the more famous humans on the planet, a rock and roll role model, freely admitting that he was into illegal drugs….and in the case of cocaine, a drug that is decidedly unhealthy, not to mention addictive.
Which is to say, here is Young saying of his demand to Spotify that “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”
All the while Young himself has spent a career in the public eye personally admitting by his behavior that he was “spreading fake information” that drug use was just no big deal. And heaven knows how many kids and young adults took to snorting cocaine and smoking dope because – hey! – it was cool with Neil Young!
And there is one more interesting tidbit in that Times story. The reason Young was so intent on becoming an American citizen in 2020 was so he he could vote in the presidential election – against Donald Trump.
But curiously? Get this.
Back there in the wilds of the ancient year 2014 I personally was in New York to interview private citizen and prospective 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump. The interview took place in his Trump Tower office, where I had met him a year earlier before we jetted off on a Trump plane to Washington for an American Spectator dinner.
This time around I had 45 minutes or so with Trump speaking into my ancient tape recorder. Interview concluded, I thanked Trump and started to walk out. But I was stopped by a Trump staffer who pulled me back a few paces from the office door and whispered to me to stay a minute, saying: “Watch this.”
I did. And who appeared in a matter of seconds? That would be…Neil Young. Himself. In the flesh. And in he walked to Trump’s inner lair, happily shaking hands and chatting away. Later, I learned this, as reported by Rolling Stone in 2020:
“Trump is a big fan of Young’s music. In 2008, Rolling Stone phoned up Trump after noticing him at three of Young’s concerts over the past couple of years. At one of them, a CSNY show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, he sat next to Patti Smith and Salman Rushdie, and stayed for the entire show.”
By the time Trump was running for president in 2015-2016, Young was suddenly apoplectic that his hit song Rockin’ in the Free World was being used at Trump rallies. So he wrote a blistering open letter to Trump. But in 2014? There he was, right in my line of sight, having a swell time with Trump in Trump’s office.
Sad to say, as this latest gambit to silence Joe Rogan illustrates vividly, Neil Young has now morphed into a would be censor.
And a hypocritical one at that.
