Will Donald Trump try to keep Neil Young’s tour out of the United States?
Donald Trump and members of the artistic community are not getting along. It’s nothing new, but it’s become much more personal and intense since his second term began in January.
It started with his takeover of The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Many scheduled plays have pulled out due to this. The latest is “Hamilton,” which is moving to Chicago for a week of performances. What’s next…The Kennedy Center Honors: Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and Scott Baio?” Stranger things have happened!
Now, Trump is going after some of the biggest popular music artists in the world. Again, this is nothing new; the two groups have never gotten along, but now he’s talking about using the Department of Justice to begin investigations against Bruce Springsteen.
The situation became intense during a May 16th Springsteen concert in England. Bruce took the first shot with these words:
"In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”
Naturally, Don isn’t going to take that without a comeback:
I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he's not a talented guy - Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country."
There was some more back and forth with Trump calling Springsteen a “dried up prune”, with the President finally making legal threats against The Boss—of course, in capital letters:
“HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT?” he wrote on his social media site Truth Social. “WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? …AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter. Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment.”
Not just an investigation—a “major investigation!”
As if the situation isn’t bizarre enough, Neil Young has decided to get involved by backing Springsteen.
"What are you worryin' about, man?"Bruce and thousands of musicians think you are ruining America. You worry about that instead of the dyin' kids in Gaza. That's your problem. I am not scared of you. Neither are the rest of us. You shut down FEMA when we needed it most. That's your problem Trump. STOP THINKING ABOUT WHAT ROCKERS ARE SAYING. Think about saving America from the mess you made.”
A little bit of a disjointed ramble there, but we get the point. Neil can’t stand Trump and is backing Bruce. To be honest, we didn’t need this statement from him to get this, but cool. So, how did he get there?
Young was born in Canada—growing up in Toronto and Winnipeg. During his time with the Buffalo Springfield, he moved to California in 1967. He lived in the United States for more than fifty years, without becoming an American citizen. That changed in 2020. His reasoning for finally doing this—he wanted to vote in the presidential election. You can guess who he didn’t cast his vote for!
But Young took this to a deeper and darker level in this interview with The Guardian:
“When I go to play music in Europe, if I talk about Donald J Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminium blanket. That is happening all the time now. Countries have new advice for those returning to America. If I come back from Europe and am barred, can’t play my USA tour, all of the folks who bought tickets will not be able to come to a concert by me. That’s right folks. If you say anything bad about Trump or his administration, you may be barred from re-entering USA if you are Canadian. If you are a dual citizen like me, who knows? We’ll all find that out together.”
You may think this is ridiculous or that Neil is being paranoid. Still, we’ve heard stories about comedians who have been in Europe being asked by customs officials if they made jokes about Trump during their performances. If they answer yes, they’re taken to a room where they’ve been interrogated for hours before being let go.
Springsteen’s European tour ends July 3. It will be interesting to see what happens when he returns to America. “Born in the USA” will be playing on Independence Day, as usual, but the actual meaning of the song will be closer to the truth this year.
As for Young, his “Love Earth” tour starts in Europe next month. The fourteen-date American portion is supposed to begin in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 8. We’ll see if that happens or if the only “Rockin’ in the Free World” Neil does is across the Atlantic Ocean.