This song was written in February 1989 as Neil Young toured the Pacific Northwest. His guitarist Frank Sampedro recalled to Mojo in a 2018 interview, "I said, 'Look, man, tonight, get in your room, think about all this stuff that's going down: the Ayatollah, all the stuff in Afghanistan, all these wars breaking out, all the problems in America… [...] And the next morning, we got on the bus to leave and he says, 'OK, I did it!'" "
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,… They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
As for Young, he has removed his songs from Spotify before - quitting the service, along with Apple Music and other streaming sites, in 2015 after stating their audio quality was not good enough.
Young specified that his decision was motivated by The Joe Rogan Experience, which is currently Spotify’s most popular podcast and one of the biggest in the world. Rogan signed a $100 million (€88 million) deal in 2020 giving Spotify exclusive rights to the show.
