For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday we’re asked to feature something that links to Earth Day. It has to be said that rock musicians were aware of, and producing music about, climate change and other damages that we as a species have been wreaking on the planet for a long time – certainly from the late sixties.
One of the most prominent has been Neil Young. Many will be familiar with the line “Look at Mother Nature on the run/ in the nineteen seventies” from ‘After The Goldrush’, released in 1970.
In 2016 he released a live album (with Promise Of The Real) called ‘Earth’ which pulls together thirteen songs on this subject, including this, which originally appeared on the 1990 album ‘Ragged Glory’ (with Crazy Horse).
Oh, Mother Earth
With your fields of green
Once more laid down
By the hungry hand
How long can you
Give and not receive?
And feed this world
Ruled by greed
And feed this world
Ruled by greed
Oh, ball of fire
In the summer sky
Your healing light
Your parade of days
Are they betrayed
By the men of power
Who hold this world
In their changing hands
They hold the world
In their changing hands
Oh, freedom land
Can you let this go?
Down to the streets
Where the numbers grow
Respect Mother Earth
And her giving ways
Or trade away
Our children’s days
Or trade away
Our children’s days
Respect Mother Earth
And her healing ways
Or trade away
Our children’s days
Written by Neil Young
the only deadhead in the hameau 