{"id":94169,"date":"2025-08-24T19:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T19:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/94169\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T19:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T19:20:07","slug":"neil-young-performs-reagan-era-protest-song-long-walk-home-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/94169\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Young Performs Reagan-Era Protest Song ‘Long Walk Home’: Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMidway through his set at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, on Saturday night, Neil Young<\/a> sat at the piano and performed his Reagan-era protest song \u201cLong Walk Home\u201d for the first time since 1989.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lyrics were largely faithful to the original version on Young\u2019s 1987 LP Life with one crucial difference. \u201cFrom Vietnam to old Beirut\/If we are searching for the truth\/Why do we feel that double-edged blade\/Cutting through our hand\u201d from the album was changed to \u201cFrom Canada to Old Ukraine\/We broke our word and left the pain\/Why do we feel that double-edged blade\/Cutting through our hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYoung and his wife, actress Daryl Hannah, are very vocal supporters of Ukraine. When Hannah appeared at the Oscars earlier this year, <\/a>she made the peace sign with her hands and said, \u201cSlava Ukraine.\u201d This means \u201cGlory to Ukraine,\u201d and has become a battle cry for supporters of the embattled nation. Young originally planned on beginning his 2025 Love Earth Tour with a show in Ukraine, but ultimately pulled the plug.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had a good venue, close to the shelter, but the changing situation on the ground was too much,\u201d Young wrote in a letter to fans. <\/a>\u201cI could not in good conscience take my crew and instruments into that area. My apologies to call. Ukraine is a great country with a good leader. Slava Ukraini.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Young originally recorded \u201cLong Walk Home\u201d in 1987, it was a sign that his early support for Ronald Reagan was a thing of the past. \u201cI was never a Reagan supporter in a total blanket sense,\u201d he told MTV in 1990.<\/a> \u201cI was one of those who felt that some ideas he had were good ideas. He had one point that he was stressing in the first six months of his job that he thought the people in the communities and neighborhoods should pull together and try to do things on their own more than depending on government to do it for them. And I thought that was a hell of an idea and here\u2019s this old guy and he\u2019s kind of got this image, of this fatherly image, telling all these people in their neighborhoods to pull together and get your own daycare centers happening, and get this and that happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tIf there were any lingering doubts about his political views after \u201cLong Walk Home,\u201d he got rid of them in 1989 with the release of \u201cRockin\u2019 in the Free World.\u201d It\u2019s a furious screed against George H.W. Bush that took his famous \u201cThousand Points of Light\u201d speech from the 1988 Republic National Convention, along with his inaugural pledge to \u201ckinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world,\u201d and twisted it into, \u201cWe have a thousands points of light\/For the Homeless Man\/We\u2019ve got a kinder and gentler\/Machine-gun hand.\u201d (And that was a gentle song compared to his 2006 response to the elder Bush\u2019s son.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the Jones Beach show on Saturday, Young closed out the night with \u201cRockin\u2019 in the Free World,\u201d and added in the \u201cTake America Back!\u201d chant he originated in April at a Los Angeles Bernie Sanders\/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier in the night, he played \u201cSinger Without a Song\u201d for the first time in 12 years. The super deep cut appears on no album, and only surfaced on the 2012-13 Crazy Horse Alchemy Tour, along with a handful of benefit gigs later in 2013. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time since we\u2019ve done this one,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cNever.\u201d (Earlier in the day, Young and the Chrome Hearts soundchecked it a number of times since no member of the band had ever played it before.)<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two rarities weren\u2019t the only unusual aspect of the Jones Beach show. The lingering impact of Hurricane Erin produced a high tide that event organizers knew would flood the pit midway through Young\u2019s set. (The amphitheater sits directly on Zach\u2019s Bay, and the pit is below sea level.) Fans with general admission pit tickets were presented with the option of accepting refunds or receiving unsold reserved seats in the stands. It created a very unusual scene where the large area directly in front of the stage was completely empty, and it indeed slowly filled with water throughout Young\u2019s set.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tour continues Monday night at the site of the original Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York, which is now known as the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. Things were pretty wet the first time that Young played there back in 1969, but there shouldn\u2019t be any flooding this time around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Midway through his set at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, on Saturday night, Neil Young sat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,30305],"class_list":{"0":"post-94169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-neil-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}