Neil Young blasts Donald Trump with new song at Milwaukee concert

Outspoken Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Neil Young performed a two-hour concert at a near-capacity BMO Pavilion in Milwaukee Aug. 29 with his new band the Chrome Hearts.
Young was in a fighting spirit for much of the show, ripping into President Donald Trump with a brand new song, “Big Crime,” performed for just the second time ever.
The 17-song show also included a powderkeg performance of “Rockin’ in the Free World” and a moving performance of “Looking Forward” Young dedicated to late collaborator David Crosby.

Neil Young has long been one of the most politically outspoken musicians – nay, public figures – on the planet.

He sure as hell isn’t going to stop now.

Seven songs into his two-hour BMO Pavilion concert in Milwaukee Aug. 29, Young and his latest band the Chrome Hearts busted out a blistering new rocker they introduced to the world at a Chicago concert two nights prior, and made available as a download on his website on Aug. 29. The song “Big Crime” didn’t name any names, but was a loud and clear condemnation of a certain sitting United States president and his administration and allies.

“There’s big crime in D.C. at the White House,” Young hollered over and over, a recurring refrain during the song where he also repeatedly cried out “time to blackout the system” and “no more great again.”

“Got to get the fascists out,” Young also sang over furious guitar. “Don’t want soldiers on our streets,” he continued, an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s recent controversial action to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C.

“No more money to the fascists,” he sang, “the billionaire fascists.”

In response to “Big Crime,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson suggested in a statement to Fox News Digital that Young was “tarnishing his legacy with cringe songs.”

The roaring fans at a near-capacity Milwaukee concert begged to differ. They wouldn’t expect anything else from Young, or want anything less. And even before this portion of the 17-song show, Young’s mood and music were frequently mad as hell, a tone likely treasured by fans likely to be appalled by our current sociopolitical situation.

Young speaks truth to power for songs like ‘Ohio,’ ‘Southern Man’

During a performance of the night’s third song, 2003’s “Be The Rain” with Crazy Horse, Young frequently said lines like “Coroporate greed and chemicals are killing the land” into a mic that processed his voice through a megaphone that swung back and forth between two other small microphones while under a spotlight. The radical approach also added a spark to protest anthem “Sun Green” (from that same Crazy Horse album “Greendale”) with Young barking out lines like “There’s corruption on the highest floor” through that megaphone.

Young’s condemnation of racism during “Southern Man” was just as scathing in Milwaukee as it was when he first recorded the song in 1970. Performing the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young classic “Ohio” in Milwaukee, Young’s outrage was also just as pronounced, the passage of time from the Kent State shootings not softening in the slightest the pain and fury over an avoidable and unjust tragedy.

But fired up as Young was in Milwaukee, there were softer, mournful moments too, that brought heavy emotion to the evening’s outcries for progress, and in turn made them more urgent.

Singing 1987’s Crazy Horse song “Long Walk Home” sitting at a piano, peppering the song with tender harmonica, the great weight on Young’s shoulders was undeniable as he softly, somberly sang, “America, America, where have we gone?” There was also a compelling quiver in Young’s voice as he pleaded “You hold the future in your hand” singing “Name of Love.” And for his performance of 1977’s “Like a Hurricane,” Young repeated one specific line again and again, emphasizing the desperation of his yearning to be in a better place, to be “somewhere safer where the feeling stays.”

Young dedicates ‘Looking Forward’ to David Crosby

Young wasn’t always on a soapbox for his songs in Milwaukee. The performance included a gentle and smitten rendition of classic “Harvest Moon,” clearly one of the night’s biggest crowdpleasers, and a soft performance of signature “Old Man” that seems to keep getting better with age as Young approaches his 80th birthday. And there was also a lovely performance at the BMO Pavilion of 1999 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song “Looking Forward” that Young dedicated to his late collabortor David Crosby, bringing moving poignancy to its penultimate line: “Songs fill the air but there’s no singer there.”

But in keeping with the primary mood of the evening, Young and the Chrome Hearts (which included famed, 82-year-old Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section organist and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Spooner Oldham) closed the night with a rambunctious and rollicking rendition of “Rockin’ in the Free World.” A guitar-blasting Young and his band mates – Willie Nelson’s son Micah on guitar, Corey McCormick on bass, Anthony LoGerfo on drums – really let it rip for the finale, offering not one but two heart-racing fake endings.

And at the very beginning of the concert’s end, Young in Milwaukee passionately chanted some additional lyrics that would undoubtedly irritate the subject of his scorn in “Big Crime.”

“Take America back! Take America back! Take America back!”

Five takeaways from Neil Young’s Milwaukee concert, including opener Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir

Before playing “Mr. Soul,” Young showed off his guitar he said he has had since high school. I’m guessing he made it sound even better in Milwaukee than when he jammed on it as a teen.
Before the band played “Like a Hurricane,” keyboards covered up to look like an eagle descended from the rafters above the stage, with Micah Nelson jamming on the suspended instrument during the song. I’m not really sure what that set-up added to the set, but Young and company certainly liked it, smiling and waving at the instrument as it made its ascent again after the song.
Reviewing an often quiet solo Young show at the Riverside Theater in 2019, I lamented about fans in my section of the theater who kept yelling during the set, and pondered if he decided to forgo a pipe organ on stage and not play more songs because of the disruptions. Well the organ was on the stage again at the BMO Pavilion, and this time, Young did play it, beautifully, while singing and also blowing into his harmonica, during “Name of Love.”
The cooler temperatures we’ve had lately have seemed to helped the incessant insect problem evident on the BMO Pavilion stage all summer. There were some flying bugs spotted in the stage lights, but far fewer than during sets with the likes of Third Eye Blind, the Isley Brothers, Japanese Breakfast and Red Clay Strays during Summerfest and earlier this month.
The protests began with the opening act, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, led by William Talen, who spoke of growing up in Green Bay and Madison and living for a time in Eau Claire. Dressed in a bright white suit, his six backing musicians huddled tightly around him, Billy seemingly spent more time preaching during his set than he did singing gospel originals like “I Go To The Mountain.” Among his talking points: that BMO, the title sponsor of the venue, was a “gas and oil financing criminal.” Bet company reps at the show loved hearing that.