By Max Pilley - NME
The legendary singer-songwriter and Glastonbury 2025 headliner has been a long-standing critic of the current US president, writing earlier this year that “this guy is out of control” and “we need a real president”.
At a show with his band The Chrome Hearts in Chicago’s Huntington Bank Pavilion on Wednesday (August 27), he gave a first airing to a new song named ‘Big Crime’ that directly attacks the Trump administration.
Young posted the song’s lyrics on his Neil Young Archives site, along with complete audio of the soundcheck. “No more great again / There’s big crime in DC at the White House”, he sings. “Don’t need no fascist rules / Don’t want no fascist schools / Don’t want soldiers on our streets / There’s big crime in DC at the White House”.
On August 25th at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, Neil Young sat at the piano and performed his Reagan-era protest song “Long Walk Home” for the first time since 1989.
Young and his wife, actress Daryl Hannah, are very vocal supporters of Ukraine. When Hannah appeared at the Oscars earlier this year, she made the peace sign with her hands and said, “Slava Ukraine.” This means “Glory to Ukraine,” 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.
“We had a good venue, close to the shelter, but the changing situation on the ground was too much,” Young wrote in a letter to fans. “I 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.”
When Young originally recorded “Long Walk Home” in 1987, it was a sign that his early support for Ronald Reagan was a thing of the past. “I was never a Reagan supporter in a total blanket sense,” he told MTV in 1990. “I 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’s this old guy and he’s 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.”
