Neil Young: The Songwriter Who Wrote a Protest Song in Fifteen Minutes and Pulled His Own Catalogue

David Crosby handed Neil Young a copy of Life magazine with photographs from the Kent State shootings, four unarmed students killed by Ohio National Guardsmen during a campus protest in May 1970. Crosby watched it hit him. Young picked up a guitar that was nearby and started writing. Fifteen minutes later, "Ohio" existed, a furious, specific chant built around the line "four dead in Ohio." Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded it within days, and their label rushed it to radio while the story was still front-page news.

More than half a century later, Young pulled his own music off one of the biggest platforms in the world over a different kind of public-health concern, giving Spotify an ultimatum most artists his size would never risk. The two moments are decades apart, but they come from the same place: Young has spent his career treating a strongly held position as a reason to act immediately and take the commercial hit, rather than wait for the moment to pass.

Learning speed and repetition from a band that barely rehearsed

Young started performing in Winnipeg in the early 1960s and moved through a string of Canadian bands before co-founding Buffalo Springfield in Los Angeles in 1966 with Stephen Stills. The band's internal tension and short lifespan taught Young something he carried for the rest of his career: he preferred writing and recording fast, often with musicians who hadn't rehearsed a song to death, over labored studio perfectionism. His long-running backing band Crazy Horse became the clearest expression of that instinct, a deliberately loose, sometimes ragged group that Young has used for decades specifically because their limitations kept his songs from getting too polished. It's a useful thing for a songwriter to notice in his catalogue: some of his most enduring recordings sound almost unfinished on purpose, because Young decided a take that was alive mattered more than a take that was clean.

Writing "Ohio" from a photograph, and getting it on the radio while the wound was still open

The urgency behind "Ohio" wasn't just creative, it was logistical. CSNY recorded the song on May 21, 1970, roughly two weeks after the shootings, and their label rushed the single out while the Kent State story was still being actively covered, an unusually fast turnaround for the era. Some radio stations reportedly wouldn't play it because it directly criticized President Nixon by referencing "tin soldiers and Nixon's coming." Young didn't write "Ohio" as a considered retrospective on a national tragedy. He wrote it as a reaction, in the same room, within minutes of seeing the images that caused it, and pushed to get it out into the world before the moment cooled. It's a different discipline from the slower, more deliberate songwriting he was also capable of, and it's worth remembering that both speeds can produce a genuinely great song, depending on what the moment actually calls for.

Writing his only number one while barely able to stand up

"Heart of Gold," released on 1972's Harvest, became Young's only number one single in the United States, and it came out of genuine physical limitation rather than artistic choice. Young had injured his back badly enough that playing electric guitar was difficult, which pushed him toward the acoustic, more subdued sound that defined much of Harvest. He recorded some of the album's key tracks in Nashville during a trip built around a Johnny Cash television taping, with James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt singing backup on "Heart of Gold" itself. Young has also said "Heart of Gold," along with "Harvest" and "Out on the Weekend," was shaped by his relationship at the time with actress Carrie Snodgress. It's a good example of a constraint, a bad back that ruled out his usual instrument, quietly steering an entire album's sound and producing the biggest hit of his career almost as a byproduct.

Turning away from his own biggest hit almost immediately

Rather than chase the commercial success of Harvest, Young spent much of the mid-1970s deliberately moving toward rawer, less commercial material, a stretch of albums he later described collectively as travelling "through the ditch" on the way to a more interesting place than the middle of the road Harvest had put him on. It cost him some of the mainstream audience Heart of Gold had won, and he did it anyway, on purpose, immediately after his biggest commercial moment. Few songwriters actively steer away from their own most successful sound while it's still working. Young treated that instinct less like a risk and more like an obligation.

Pulling his own catalogue off a major platform over a public-health objection

In January 2022, Young publicly objected to Spotify's continued hosting of Joe Rogan's podcast, specifically pointing to episodes he believed spread COVID-19 misinformation, and gave the platform a direct ultimatum: Rogan or Young, not both. Spotify chose to keep Rogan and removed Young's catalogue instead, a significant commercial sacrifice for an artist in his mid-seventies whose income depends substantially on streaming. Other artists, including Joni Mitchell, followed his lead and pulled their own music in solidarity. Young returned his catalogue to Spotify in 2024, roughly two years later, once he judged the platform's handling of misinformation had sufficiently improved. It's an unusually direct, costly stand for a musician of his stature to take against one of the industry's most powerful distributors, and it's consistent with a pattern that runs back to "Ohio": when Young decides something is wrong, he tends to act on it in public, on a timeline set by his own conviction rather than by what's commercially convenient.

Still recording, still touring, still making the work with the people he trusts

Young has continued performing regularly into his eightieth year, touring coastal dates with Crazy Horse and releasing Coastal, a 2025 concert documentary directed by his wife, actress and filmmaker Daryl Hannah, along with an accompanying live album. The two married in 2018 and have largely stepped back from a public Hollywood or industry lifestyle in favor of a quieter life, with Hannah taking an increasingly active creative role in documenting his live work. It's a late-career partnership built around continuing to make and perform music on his own terms, rather than scaling back.

What's worth taking from his career

Young was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 1995 and again as a member of Buffalo Springfield in 1997, and into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2017.

What connects a fifteen-minute protest song written from a photograph to a multi-year standoff with a streaming platform decades later is the same basic instinct: Young treats conviction as something to act on immediately and visibly, even when the commercially safer move would be to wait, soften the position, or say nothing at all. He's spent six decades moving between raw, fast, barely-rehearsed recordings and quieter, more considered ones, and walking away from his own biggest hits on purpose when he felt the work needed somewhere rawer to go. If you've got a song or a position you're sitting on because it feels commercially risky, Neil Young's catalogue is a long argument for writing and releasing it anyway, on your own schedule, before the moment passes. If you need someone to help you get it right while the feeling's still fresh, go find your co-writer.

Sources: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Neil Young, American Songwriter: How the Kent State Shooting Inspired CSNY's 'Ohio', Rolling Stone: Kent State — How 'Ohio' Helped Save CSNY, Songfacts: Heart of Gold, CBS News: Neil Young returning to Spotify after Joe Rogan boycott, NPR: Neil Young's music removed by Spotify, Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame: Neil Young, Wikipedia: Coastal (film)