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Neil young sings patriot 911 songs Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/2002/2002-04-11-neil-young.htmhttp://www.usatoday.com/life/music/2002/2002-04-11-neil-young.htm
04/11/2002 - Updated 09:05 AM ET
Neil Young is passionate about 9/11 anthem
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
Neil Young figured the music world would get on a roll with "Let's roll," Sept. 11's instant catchphrase for U.S. defiance against terrorism.
Amid the glut of musical spinoffs, Young's Let's Roll, a tribute to the passengers of doomed Flight 93, is the only Sept. 11 anthem to seize upon Todd Beamer's last known utterance.
The song, rushed to radio in December and available this week in a longer version on Young's Are You Passionate? album, recounts the drama of passengers conspiring to foil hijackers presumably bound for a Washington, D.C., landmark. The plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field, killing all aboard, minutes after Beamer's final remark in a cell phone conversation: "Let's roll."
"I just grabbed that phrase as soon as I heard the story," Young says. "I thought there would be five, maybe 10, songs called Let's Roll in the next hour. It seemed so obvious to me. But nobody did it."
Breaking a silence he's maintained since writing the song last November, Young says he wanted to recognize "an unbelievable pure act of heroism" in an emotional but apolitical manner. He was particularly moved by reports that passengers had taken a vote before acting, upholding democratic ideals in the midst of crisis.
"We'll never know what happened, but we do know these guys made up their minds to do something, and they had maybe five minutes," Young says. "There was no reward, no harem, no virgins, no martyrdom. You can't compare them to the guys who crashed the planes.
"You have to wonder if the passengers thought about the deeper meaning of their actions, about their place in history. Now everybody thinks about it every time they get on an airplane."
Midway through the recording session, Young realized Let's Roll required prudent handling and couldn't be marketed as a typical single. "I thought, why not just put it out there, send it to radio, give it away," he says. "If people want to duplicate it, let them."
"I knew the song couldn't follow a normal path," says Young, who's pegged Let's Roll royalties for Sept. 11 charities. "It's a sensitive thing. I wasn't looking to capitalize on it. I didn't want to sensationalize it by showing up at a memorial service. That would have been opportunistic. I didn't want it to be a press thing, which I why I haven't talked about it before. It's OK now, because the most sensitive period is over."
Relatives of Flight 93's victims, including Beamer's widow, Lisa, have responded positively to Young's salute.
While the song has won bipartisan support, Young came under fire from liberals after publicly backing the Patriot Act, passed last fall to afford federal agencies greater leeway in pursuing terrorists.
"My heart wants one thing, my mind wants another," Young says. "Benjamin Franklin said that anyone who gives up essential liberties to preserve freedom is a fool, "but maybe he didn't conceive of nuclear warfare and dirty bombs."
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