- June 17, 2015 -
Donald Trump: ‘I Love Neil Young. And He Loves Me!’
Most candidates stride to their inaugural campaign stage with a touch of humility, surrounded by regular folk standing in for the great American heartland. But Donald Trump found a way of performatively escalatoring to his official announcement Tuesday, as light beamed down to the ground floor of his trophy tower. Thumbs-ups were interspersed. Big news was coming, and the music had to fit the mood. From loudspeakers on high came the song. “Rockin’ in the Free World,” by Neil Young. Fitting, from a man whose biography on his corporate website describes him as “the very definition of the American success story.” Free world indeed.
Except on Tuesday afternoon, Neil Young’s longtime manager, Elliot Roberts, said in a statement to Mother Jonesthat Young had not authorized use of the song.
But, according to Trump, this is far from the case. "We actually have the rights to the song through whatever mechanism it is," he said. Still his campaign has already announced that it would "respect" the musician's "wish and not use it because it’s the right thing to do.”
“I love Neil Young,” the real-estate tycoon said. “And he loves me! We have a great relationship.”
The music for Trump’s announcement had been carefully selected. Reporters entered as the angelic voices of the London Bach Choir that open the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which gave the morning a highly celestial feel. That song looped, with Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” Puccini's “Nessun Dorma,” and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” Teenage girls from Iowa who’d been plucked from inside Tiffany’s next door and given tee-shirts bearing Trump’s name bopped on.
But the track of honor was by Neil Young, a man who, in his Wednesday Facebook posting, called the United States Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United proof of corruption. He wrote, “Increasingly Democracy has been hijacked by corporate interests." Young wrote, "I choose to speak Truth to this Economic Power.” And later, “I do not trust self serving misinformation coming from corporations and their media trolls. I do not trust politicians who are taking millions from those corporations either. I trust people. So I make my music for people not for candidates.” He signed his letter, “Keep on Rockin in the Free World.”
Rolling Stone, naming it the 216th best song of all time, described it in 2011 as “raucously ambivalent song about the pride and guilt of being an American.”
