What If You Knew Her

A few years ago, I wrote an essay titled, “Guernica to Woodstock – A Short Digression” that touched on the delicate balance that socially aware and committed artists are often required to navigate when expressing themselves amid the events that scream out for their voices, while also not alienating the public at large with belligerent, half-baked opinions. It’s one thing to voice a raw opinion to one’s fan base, but quite another to voice it to a mass audience. Given that a miscalculation can occasionally lead to widespread condemnation, it can be a tenuous spot for artists to occupy, such as what happened to the Beatles in 1965, when a frenzy of record burning bonfires were organized by Christians because John Lennon had suggested the Beatles were more popular among young people than Jesus. Retribution came quick from all across America. It didn’t matter to the public that he was actually pointing out the absurdity of it, or that at the time he was speaking casually with a friend who happened to be a journalist, and had no idea that his casual comment would be spread across the four corners of the earth. For Bible-thumping Americans, the only resolution short of a public lynching was a public humiliation, complete with a news camera to capture it.

In the earlier essay, I discussed Picasso’s reaction to Hitler’s unprovoked bombing of Guernica, Spain, along with Hendrix expressing his outrage at the Vietnam War in the form of his distorted version of our National Anthem. The essay ended with a poignant example by David Crosby, who in the late 60’s struggled mightily to find his voice amid the social upheaval after the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Pressed by his bandmates to use his art to express himself….. instead of his mouth, he penned his magnificent “A Long Time Gone.”

It’s with that same messy period in mind that I have another piece of art to discuss, this one being Neil Young’s “Ohio”.

Because I love the music from the period, I often wonder what camp I would have landed had I been a young, draft eligible guy at the time. What side would I have chosen? Given my idealistic leanings, I would likely have found myself somewhere in the midst of those protesters.

Just take a step back and consider the true mayhem for a moment, the absolute chaos playing out in the streets and campuses across America, with a mandatory draft, a war sending back thousands of young men draped by flags, political lines being argued in the streets and families struggling to hold their often-divided houses together. It must be with all that in mind that the powder-keg context of “Ohio” must be viewed. Fortunately, American citizens have a constitutional right to protest what their government is up to – or do they?

On the morning of May 4th, students at Kent State University (Ohio) staged a peace rally opposing the proposed expansions to the War into Cambodia, meaning more young men draped in flags. Evidently, this gathering was considered such a major threat to National Security that an armed contingent of National Guardsmen were ordered to maintain a presence on campus to prevent things from escalating. It had the opposite effect. The rally went ahead as planned with upwards of 300 students actively participating and another thousand who were observing between classes.

At some point the National Guard ordered the students to disperse. This did not happen. After using tear gas against them and still failing, a segment of the national guard opened fire upon the students. Four students were killed, and nine others wounded.

Neil Young and David Crosby were staying at a house in northern California when reports of the shootings arrived and were as shocked and horrified as everyone else. In the days that followed, they each felt a nagging urge that something had to be done, that they had to do something, say something… but what?

Well, for artists, that can only mean one thing.

That “something” took shape during breakfast on the morning of May 19th, when their thoughts and feelings on the matter were brought into acute focus by a photo. Crosby said later:

“Neil and I were out driving around in one of his cars, and we went over to a friend’s house. And the friend was just coming back from the market, so we sat down on his porch and played around on the guitar a bit, just fooling around, talking. And Frank came back with a magazine which had a picture of the girl kneeling over the dead kid on the ground. And I looked at it and my heart froze.”

The magazine in question was the latest issue of Life Magazine – the issue dated May 15^th, 1970, with the cover line Tragedy at Kent. Crosby took the magazine, stared at it, looked at the article, stared at the front image some more. Then he intently handed it to Young, who described the scene.

“I was at this house in Anna Canyon on the California coast. Crosby came up and he had the magazine with the Kent State killings cover on it. And I’d heard it on the news, but Crosby always has a way of bringing things into focus. That woke me up to that there was something going on that I had some thoughts about.”

Young grabbed his guitar and wandered off, his mind reeling as he pondered how to articulate what he felt. By all accounts, Young emerged some fifteen to twenty minutes later with the basic song we know as “Ohio.” He sat down and played it for Crosby, who immediately began working on the harmonies as Young sang the lyrics. It was difficult for both, as the words were incredibly direct, striking, and painful. They were as angry as they were sad.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer, I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

They both understood that the song was something special and felt it had to be recorded and released as soon as possible, while the nation’s emotional wound still bled. But the band had just finished an album and was already booked to go on the road in just days and were not even together, with Crosby and Young in northern California, with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills in Los Angeles. The album was already out, singles had been released and/or planned, and everything was mapped out. Another song did not fit into any of it, and besides, there was no time. How to solve it?

Simple. Put Crosby on the case.

Crosby said: “As Neil put the guitar down, I called Graham and said, ‘get us a studio now. No, I mean now. Not after breakfast, NOW!’ And he did.”

Of course, Nash wasn’t expecting such an urgent call and in speaking with Howard Stern in 2013, he said: “I got a call from Crosby. I’m in Los Angeles, Neil and David are up in a place that I had in Pescadero in Northern California. It was a friend’s house. Crosby calls me and goes, ‘book the studio right now. Get the band together, get Halverson!’ (He was their engineer – Bill Halverson) ‘Wait until you hear this song.’”

As Crosby explained the background, there was no doubt in Nash’s mind that this was a song they just had to do. Stephen Stills also got on board with it pretty much immediately. They booked themselves into the Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles, while they waited for Crosby and Young to arrive.

Crosby: “We went to Los Angeles, and we recorded it the next night after Neil wrote it, I think it might even have been the night of the morning that he wrote it.”

By all accounts, they went to work on the song with a single-minded determination, with a level of shared vision that was rare for them. The result was the smoothest recording session they ever did as CSNY, with everyone being fully agreed that the song must retain its original, raw approach, especially the last verse with its unavoidable clarity.

What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Towards the end of the song, while they recorded the final mantra “Four dead in Ohio”, repeated over and over, as if to prevent us from simply enjoying the song, reminding listeners of the stark reality right in front of them, a particularly emotional Crosby began to ad-lib callbacks during that final chorus, bringing out his raw frustrations with a tone that was evocative of keening, or wailing for the dead—with the words “Four!”, “Why?” and “How many more?”

Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio – four!
Four dead in Ohio – how many more?
Four dead in Ohio – why?

Crosby cried after the recordings were complete. He later said, “I was so moved by it that I completely lost it at the end of the song, in the recording studio, screaming, ‘Four… Why? How many more?’”

“The mood was just very intense,” engineer Bill Halverson related on his website. “They were bent on getting it right and were on a mission.”

Amazingly, the song was rehearsed and completed in only five takes with no overdubs. What they had captured was magical, raw, real, and emotional.

But an interesting dilemma quickly presented itself……if they were going to release “Ohio” as a single, they needed a suitable B-side, with the key word there being “suitable.” As fate would have it, they had been performing Stephen Stills’ “Find the Cost of Freedom” live on their most recent tour and it was quickly recognized as a supremely well-fitting tune to accompany its A-side companion. Where “Ohio” is filled with anger at the shootings, its B-side is the emotional hymn, the requiem, an ode to those who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom.

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down

Things moved quickly from there. CSNY wanted the single out as soon as possible, and the master tape was given to Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun. “We mixed it, gave him the two-track and said, ‘Ahmet, we want this out now,’” Nash remembered. Ahmet did have concerns about what this might do to the single they already had out, but ultimately he supported the band. He took the tapes back to New York and set the wheels in motion. “Ahmet put up an argument, but we were firm,” Nash said. “Twelve days later, we put it out in a single sleeve with an image of the Constitution with four bullet holes on it.”

It should also be noted the courage it took for the band to fight for that rawness, and the unapologetic indignation at the shootings by implying that “Nixon”, the sitting President, was tacitly responsible, should remain. Many radio stations banned it over that very line, but the band held firm. Crosby once stated that Young’s insistence to keep Nixon’s name in the lyrics was “the bravest thing I ever heard.”  He also felt that “Ohio was a high point for the band, a major point of validity. There we were, reacting to reality, dealing with it on the highest level we could – relevant, immediate. It named names and pointed the finger.”

The song would become a major turning point for Neil Young as a songwriter as well since it was his first “protest song.” Throughout his career, he would pen other songs reflecting his political stance and activism, including the lethal “Southern Man,” which I consider to be the supreme “bitch-slap” of all protest songs.

I want to end this little digression by providing a different version of the song from a concert Young gave at Massey Hall in Ontario, in January of 1971, just six months after the song’s release. When listening, keep in mind that the original was still charting strong, and the social wounds from the killings were still raw.

In the clip, Young crystalizes the entire intent of the song by poignantly pausing his guitar playing precisely when he sings the key line, “what if you knew her and saw her dead on the ground” (the moment comes at the 2:10 mark). That momentary pause allowed his voice and words the fragility they deserved, creating the effect of something close to a sledgehammer to the chest.