Ohio

"Ohio" is about the events of May 4, 1970, when the US National Guard shot four unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio. In the May 15 issue of Life magazine, the shootings were the cover story, with the headline "Tragedy At Kent" and a cover photo of a wounded student lying on the ground. When Neil Young read the story and saw the photos, the song came to him. "He was silent for a long time, then picked up his guitar and 20 minutes later had this song," his bandmate David Crosby recalled. Crosby summoned the other members of the group - Stephen Stills and Graham Nash - and they recorded the song in Los Angeles on May 21. Ahmet Ertegun, head of their label (Atlantic), flew the master to New York and had it pressed right away. "Ohio" was released on June 4, just a month after the shootings.

The Kent State shootings had a profound effect on some of the students who later became prominent musicians. Chrissie Hynde was a student at the time, and eventually formed The Pretenders. Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale were also on campus, and after the shootings, they developed the band Devo based on the concept of "De-Evolution," meaning the human race was regressing. Said Casale, "It refocused me entirely. I don't think I would have done Devo without it. It was the deciding factor that made me live and breathe this idea and make it happen. In Chrissie Hynde's case, I'm sure it was a very powerful single event that was traumatic enough to form her sensibility and account for a lot of her anger." Mothersbaugh added, "It was the first time I'd heard a song about something I'd been a participant in. It effected us. It was part of our life."

A tin soldier is a toy solder, mindlessly controlled by its owner. In this song, Young likens the National Guard troops to tin soldiers controlled by Nixon. It's likely he got the metaphor from a 1969 song by The Original Caste called "One Tin Soldier," which went to #1 in Young's native Canada (it was an American hit two years later for the band Coven). Other songs with the phrase in the title include "The Little Tin Soldier" by Donovan (1965) and "Tin Soldier" by the Small Faces (1967).