On May 20, the day after Young had written “Ohio,” he, Crosby, and Barbata were all back in Los Angeles, with orders to meet at a massive soundstage at the Warner Brothers studio lot to begin rehearsing with the new rhythm section of Barbata and Samuels. Business obligations were pulling them inexorably back together, but so were the times. The fact that Young had written a topical song - an extremely rare occurrence, especially next to Crosby’s and Stills’ work - was doubly shocking. “You won’t believe this fucking song Neil’s written,” he told Nash, before ordering him to book time in the studio as soon as possible.
Crosby rarely wavered in his role as the most excitable member the band, but this time he was noticeably charged. Since Crosby and Young were due back in Los Angeles soon to begin rehearsals for the resuscitated tour, Crosby called Nash at home that night. In fifteen minutes, out came an irate chant he simply called “Ohio“ Crosby worked on a harmony part while Young was writing.
As Crosby watched, he walked over, grabbed a nearby guitar, and began writing a song. The eleven pages that followed constituted the first, most extensive, and most unnerving look the public received of the shootings: gas-masked Guardsmen aiming to fire, a distraught girl kneeling beside Jeffrey Miller’s lifeless, jacketed body. “Tragedy at Kent,” announced the cover line, over a photo of students leaning over the body of another. The new issue of Life magazine, dated May 15, spilled out onto the breakfast table along with the food. “Neil and I stayed friends the whole time.” “The falling-apart stuff always involved Stills,” Crosby said. Young was also having difficulties with his wife Susan, with whom he was living at their home in Topanga. Surrounded by trees, the house on that May 19 morning couldn’t have been a more ideal retreat from the craziness of the L.A. and took the drive to their road manager Leo Makota’s home in Pescadero, south of San Francisco. After stopping at Crosby’s home, they piled into Young’s car, toked up. Shortly after the band meeting in Los Angeles, Crosby and Young, whose bond was becoming especially unbreakable, left town for Northern California.
The sun was breaking through the clouds and drenching the redwoods when the groceries arrived. In this excerpt from Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970 (Hachette), Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne chronicles one of the things that helped bring Young, Stills, David Crosby and Graham Nash together again - that new and very timely song from Neil Young. In the days after, the group returned to Los Angeles and their entire tour was cancelled.įaced with possible lawsuits from concert promoters, the group was eventually forced to reunite and resume the tour. Hampered by sound system problems and internal group tension, the show would prove calamitous, culminating in Young throwing down his guitar and walking offstage before the last song. “If the Army guys show up, just get outta the way,” Stephen Stills told the audience, half serious and half-joking. On the heels of the release of their Déjà vu album in March 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young launched an eagerly anticipated tour to promote the album the first show, at an arena in Denver, took place on May 12th, eight days after four students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio were killed (and nine injured) when members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd that had gathered on campus to protest the Vietnam War. But at the time it served a dual purpose- expressing rage over what had taken place on the campus of Kent State on May 4, 1970, and helping reunite one of rock’s most formidable but volatile supergroups. Over the decades, it’s been covered and resurrected by the Isley Brothers, Devo, Paul Weller, and, three years ago, the combo of Jon Batiste, Leon Bridges, and Gary Clark, Jr. Nearly 50 years after it was written and recorded, Neil Young’s “ Ohio” remains one of rock’s greatest protest songs.
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