Clips & Pix: Neil Young & Crazy Horse/Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World

A few minutes ago, I coincidentally saw that Neil Young turned 75 today. Young is one of my favorite artists, and perhaps somewhat selfishly, the first thing that came to mind was ‘Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World, Neil, so I can hopefully catch you again sometime!’

The above clip was captured during Young’s 1991 tour with Crazy Horse to support the Ragged Glory album. When I saw the footage, I simply couldn’t resist posting it, even though I covered the tune before, which is one of my favorite Neil Young rockers. Evidently, the audience loved it as well. I mean, how can you not!

Young first recorded Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World for his 17th studio album Freedom released in October 1989. In fact, the track bookends the album with an acoustic opener and an electric closer. The tune was inspired by political events at the time and a conversation between Young and his guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro while they were touring in the northwestern U.S.

Here’s an explanatory excerpt from Songfacts: “There was supposed to have been a cultural exchange between Russia and United States,” Sampedro recalled to Mojo in a 2018 interview. “Russia was getting Neil Young and Crazy Horse and we were getting the Russian ballet! All of a sudden, whoever was promoting the deal, a guy in Russia, took the money and split. We were all bummed, and I looked at him and said, ‘Man I guess we’re just gonna have to keep on rockin in the free world. He said, ‘Well, Poncho, that’s a good line. I’m gonna use that, if you don’t mind.'”

“So we checked into the hotel in Portland,” the guitarist continued. “And we needed a song. We needed a rocker. We’d written some songs and they were good but we didn’t have a real rocker. I said, ‘Look man, tonight, get in your room, think about all this stuff that’s going down – the Ayatollah, all the stuff in Afghanistan, all these wars breaking out, all the problems in America… “Keep On rockin in the free world,” you got that: put something together man, let’s have a song!’ And the next morning, we got on the bus to leave and he says, ‘OK, I did it!'”

Indeed, and here’s to many more years!

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube