Do you remember when you first became aware our planet was in trouble ?
Neil Young : Hmm … probably in 1970 . It was just this kind of creeping awareness . I ’ d been living in LA for three or four years at that point . When I first got to LA , the air had a smell . There was so much pollution . But I can ’ t explain it any more than that . The most pollution in any of the places that I ’ d travelled to at that point in my life was Los Angeles . It took me a while to understand that that wasn ’ t just something happening here . Over time [ my awareness ] grew , and it never stopped .
When did you begin to take action regarding environmental issues ?
There was an evolution . I changed , and the older I got , the more things mattered . I started thinking about my children ’ s children , and reading about the trajectory of life and the history of what it ’ d been like for centuries — what it was like now , and where it was going . If you check things out on a graph , we ’ re on the end of a hockey stick , and people don ’ t have a chance because the governments have stacked it all against them feeling it or even knowing it . They know it ’ s there , but they ’ re not reminded they can do something about it , except by a few people on the fringe . Nonetheless , [ taking action ] is still the thing to do and I have a lot of faith in the young people . I just hope they can get things going and that it ’ s not too late for them .
You see the messages around town : “ Save the planet ,” “ The earth does not belong to man , man belongs to the earth .” How can you encourage action instead of simply raising awareness ? are supposed to be in my view , and so I do that . And whatever happens because of that will be an illustration of what happens when you do that .
Is that something you learned early on ?
I just know that you ’ ve got to do what you believe in . There ’ s a bumper sticker that says “ Question Authority ,” which is a really healthy thing to do . Keep questioning what you hear , what you see . Turn off your TV — burn the fucking TVs . There ’ s nothing on mainstream corporate television except control of people . Entertainment is like icing on the cake . But really , it ’ s what ’ s not on TV , what they keep off of the TV …
In [ your 2012 memoir ] Waging Heavy Peace , you wrote a passage about walking with your dog and always sending a warning as you walk so as to avoid startling anything you might be approaching . How drastically have we ignored our planet ’ s warnings ? Is that to some degree what EARTH is about ?
We don ’ t even pay attention to what ’ s going on . We ’ re so distracted , we don ’ t see . You can experience the whole [ new record ] as an ear movie . Close your eyes and listen to it with no stops for an hour and a half . The [ message ] is that with all the creatures , there ’ s a relief . There ’ s no politics with animals , they don ’ t have an agenda . There ’ s a war going on and the crickets are still singing . Where they ’ re allowed to sing , they sing . Every once in a while they get wiped out by what we ’ re doing , but if they ’ re not being wiped out , they ’ re being themselves . They ’ re not campaigning ; they ’ re living .
Remember “ Earth First !” [ the radical environmental activist group formed in 1979 ]? Earth First ! was early . The time when people can understand Earth First ! is now . I don ’ t condone violence and destruction , [ but ] it ’ s hard to get people ’ s attention . The corporations have power , and they control the government . That ’ s the way our system works , and it ’ s hard to beat . The media is corporate and the politics are corporate , so we never hear about anything else . If I wrote “ Ohio ” today and put it on the radio , no one would hear it . America is not what it used to be .
Did you have any trepidation when you wrote “ Ohio ” for how it could be received , or did you worry about the same for “ Monsanto Years ”?
I just write about what I think and what I ’ m feeling . I ’ m one person and I just do what I do . If I feared , I didn ’ t feel it .
Did you feel the flipside of that fear — empowerment ?
It ’ s great to be able to say what ’ s on your mind , and that ’ s a part of the way things
Is there an implied chronology to the nature sounds on the record ?
One thing leads to another . [ The original ] running order started with a war , and then there was silence , then nature , and then the record happened . But that just didn ’ t work for me . So the second running order was this one . It ’ s all one big song — everything relates to everything else . It was quite a monumental undertaking to put this together . [ Neither the co-producer ] John Hanlon , who I made the record with , [ nor ] I had ever worked on anything like it before . It got completely out of control .
Do you mean with making the field recordings ?
Field recordings , editing , putting the transitions together , crossfading , going from one place to another , [ figuring out ] where you introduce the animals [ and on ] which song . A lot of the field recording I did myself around my home , because my home is surrounded by animals . A crow lives [ there ], I see the crow every morning , and he has his girlfriend .