Did you tell them they’re guest stars on a Neil Young album?
We’ll protect Monsanto for taking seeds, which have been a gift from God for
centuries. Things that we use for life are now patented and changed, altered
Yeah! I talk to them all the time, and they talk back. They know me, and they’re
in ways that are completely loony that are only for money. And I don’t buy the
not just there, they’re aware; if you pay attention to them, you can see that they’re
“we’re feeding the world” bullshit. That’s total crap—we’re not feeding the world,
just as there as you are. My girlfriend has a hummingbird that comes out in the
starvation is rampant. If all this was helping, why don’t we see it? I believe that
morning and [hovers] right in front of her face and looks at her. It’s interesting;
organic agriculture is good because it replenishes the soil, and there’s a balance
they’re forms of life, and to me it’s a very simple thing: I would like to make sure
of nature. You just have to give it room; give it room to grow and it’ll grow. You
they have a place to live.
can’t speed it up, like what Monsanto tries to do, driving things faster and faster.
The new song, “Seed Justice,” touches on the battle over commodification of life.
Sounds a bit like a record label to the artist: “Hurry up and be creative.”
Is there a parallel between the seed war and the ownership of creative ideas?
Not all labels. I’ve put out over fifty records, and I’ve never been told by my record
Here’s the deal with that. There are ideas that people have, things that they
label that I had to hurry. Nobody ever said, “Get out there and do something” to me.
create, and the law of the land says if you patent it, you own it, you get royalties:
That’s another thing that happened with the tech revolution—suddenly you don’t
“it was my idea, I thought of it first.” But we’ve abused the patent system. People
need albums anymore: “We got tracks. You can have as many tracks as you want.”
use it for control and not what it was originally intended for, just like democracy.
They didn’t tell you that less than five percent of the content of the music is in those
The fact is there’s one area not represented by our laws: there’s no representation,
tracks; you can recognize the songs but that’s not enough. You can recognize the
protection, or rights given to nature.
Mona Lisa looking at a Xerox but you can’t feel the beauty of the Mona Lisa.