Voicing their opposition - Just think of them as `old, male, ugly' Dixie Chicks, Stills says

VIT WAGNER
POP MUSIC CRITIC
July 8, 2006

CSNY's anti-Bush `Freedom of Speech' tour stops at ACC
 

In their own way, the members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young have been just as vocal in their opposition to U.S. President George W. Bush as the Dixie Chicks. But so far the '70s icons haven't engendered quite the same level of hostility as their female counterparts.

Stephen Stills figures this partly has to do with the Dixie Chicks's conservative country music fan base. But he jokingly offers another distinction between the two groups.

"We're old," he says. "We're male. And we're ugly."

If Stills and craggy cohorts David Crosby, Graham Nash and Neil Young, all now in their 60s, fail to raise the hackles of Bush supporters in the coming months, it won't be for want of trying. The quartet has returned to the road with "Freedom of Speech '06," an unabashedly political concert tour that stops at the Air Canada Centre for shows Monday and Tuesday. The U.S. dates will include a booth to encourage fans to register to vote in November's U.S. Congressional midterm elections.

The free speech emphasis couldn't be more timely. The tour's kickoff, Thursday night in Philadelphia, came a week or so after the U.S. Senate barely voted down a constitutional amendment that would have made it illegal to burn or otherwise desecrate the American flag. It also came at a time when the New York Times was continuing to be vilified, including by other media outlets, for publishing classified information about an anti-terrorist program aimed at monitoring bank transactions.

It is shades of 1971, when the antiwar protest was mounting and when the New York Times was defending its decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of the U.S. government's involvement in Vietnam.

"The big difference this time is that everybody, including people on the left, realizes that anybody who puts on a uniform and steps up to serve their country is performing an immensely noble act," says Stills, on the line from California. "No soldiers are going to get rocks thrown at them this time. We should honour those people. But we should honour them by not wasting their lives on specious causes."

In some respects, a CSNY reunion isn't quite the event it might have been a decade ago. The foursome visited the ACC as recently as four years ago. But the emphasis is different this time.

"We doing every protest song we've ever done that we can remember," says Stills. "That's the whole focus. We're turning and fighting."

In addition to old favourites "Ohio" and the Joni Mitchell-penned "Woodstock," the set list will include a heavy dose of Living with War, the hastily written and recorded protest album Young released in May.

The disc, including a song calling for Bush's impeachment, provoked conservative pundits to challenge the right of the Toronto-born Young, who has retained Canadian citizenship through decades of living in California, to even dare utter an opinion. The objection has been raised with Stills during pre-tour interviews.

"I was just asked in a snippy tone, `Is Neil Young even an American citizen?' And I said, `Well, he certainly pays taxes like one.' It's very much like the right wing to go braying off about something like that. There's just no excuse for it as far as I'm concerned," Stills said.

It isn't only Young, however, whose right to speak out has been challenged. For as long as musicians have been writing protest songs, critics have questioned their authority to do so. Last month on CNN, Bruce Springsteen defended musical activism by insisting he had just as much right to a public political opinion as, say, outspoken conservative pundit Ann Coulter — a view shared by Stills.

"I take more and more sh-t from reporters as I get interviewed," he says. "You hear this adversarial tone in their voices. And I finally say, `We've had enough. We're digging in our heels because celebrating propaganda is just not the American way,'" Springsteen told the CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

"Of course, we have a right to speak up, especially when things get this FUBAR. We've had a dearth of leadership in this country. It's starting to resemble the '60s, in that you watch something on TV and then you go outside and check other sources and the disconnect with reality is really vast.

"So we're trying to do our job here. It's been the traditional place for troubadours and musicians since Elizabethan times to spread the news and offer a little social commentary. You don't have to take it to heart. You can disagree. We can agree to disagree. But for pity's sake, let's be civil. And these are pretty uncivil times, which is a reflection of our current president, who isn't a very civil type."

Stills admits to having reservations about touring with a political agenda. The plan was hatched by the other three band members while he was on the road promoting his current solo disc, Man Alive!.

"They had this meeting and made all this stuff up," he says. "I came back and said, `What? That could be enormously counter-productive.' I'm sure Neil's going to squander a little bit of the middle-of-the-road support he got from (the recent concert documentary) Prairie Wind."

Stills, who also performed with Young in the pre-CSNY group Buffalo Springfield, says his old pal didn't give him much notice about the idea of supporting Living with War by touring with Crosby, Stills and Nash, none of whom actually performed on the album.

"Neil's not that polite," says Stills, with a mischievous chortle. "I guess he's lost that part of being a Canadian."

In any case, Stills is frustrated enough to set aside any second thoughts he might have.

"We are taking it over the top," he concedes. "It's almost to the point of what I call, `Everything you hate about liberals.'

"But at the same time, we've got to turn around and fight for ourselves because they keep making up shit about us. They call us traitors for having a different point of view. They turn everything we say inside out and say, `You can't say that. You can't criticize the president.'

"Well, yes we can."