Mark Steyn on the Neil Young song — yes, that Neil Young — that best captured the events on Flight 93 on the eleventh of September, 2001:

“Plumes of smoke billow from the World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, after a Boeing 767 hits each tower during the September 11 attacks.”
Photo by Michael Foran via Wikimedia Commons.

[T]here was one striking exception to the stultifying conformity of cultural critique, one lonely example of an A-list star confronting a specific 9/11 event head-on and offering his voice in full-throated support of authentic American heroism. Even more impressively, it came from a Canadian — and at a time when Jean Chrétien’s ministry was mostly engaged in petty sniping about alleged offenses to its amour propre. When I was, oh, fourteen years old I saw Neil Young with Crosby, Stills, Nash & … plus his compatriot Joni Mitchell and The Band. And to be honest in the intervening decades I can’t say I gave Neil Young much thought — and, whenever I’ve chanced to be tootling around and “After the Gold Rush” or “Heart of Gold” comes on the radio, I’m reminded of why I haven’t much missed him. Nevertheless, just a few weeks after September 11th, Neil Young offered a new song that took its inspiration from what I called in the papers that week “the only good news of the day” — the turn of events on Flight 93, the fourth plane, the one supposedly headed for the White House or the Capitol or Camp David that Tuesday morning but whose passengers rose up and overpowered the hijackers. Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field, but its fallen heroes saved hundreds of lives, including perhaps the Vice-President’s or multiple congressmen, and denied Osama bin Laden an even more iconic remaking of the Washington skyline and the symbolic (and potentially actual) decapitation of the Great Satan. Todd Beamer’s last words, heard by a GTE telephone operator to whom he’d been speaking, were, “Are you ready, guys? Let’s roll!”

It was hard to credit from the disposition of even moderate Democrats just a couple of years later; but Young, a very leftie celebrity, was genuinely moved by Lisa Beamer’s account of her husband’s sacrifice. As he put it:

She was talking about how he always used to say that (‘let’s roll’) with the kids when they’d go out and do something, that it’s what he said a lot when he had a job to do. And it’s just so poignant, and there’s no more of a legendary, heroic act than what those people did. With no promise of martyrdom, no promise of any reward anywhere for this, other than just knowing that you did the right thing. And not even having a chance to think about it or plan it or do anything – just a gut reaction that was heroic and ultimately cost them all their lives. What more can you say? It was just so obvious that somebody had to write something or do something …because it’s just such a great image – the whole story about the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93. I think it’s a legendary story that’s gonna go down through the ages; it’ll never be forgotten.

It was indeed “just so obvious”, and for writers there are two reactions to that: you jump on it and write it immediately — as a book, a play, a poem, a movie — or you figure some other guy must surely have got to it. Except in this case no one did. Neil Young was perhaps being too naïve with regard to contemporary culture’s ambivalence about unabashed heroism. So he waited, and waited. “I was very surprised,” he said, “that I didn’t hear any songs.”

And eventually he got tired of waiting. “So, I just wrote it. I couldn’t stop it anymore.” He took Todd Beamer’s catchphrase, turned it into a song title, and sang it out for real — no playing for irony or nuance.

Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll” is a dark, driving anthem that begins with a church organ (Young’s own, acquired in Europe) and over its ominous drone the sound of cellphones ringing. That was the most important weapon the passengers had: the mobile telephone. By all accounts, the hijackers of Flight 93 weren’t exactly the cream of Osama’s toxic crop. The flight was halfway across the continent before the boobs made their move and started meandering back east to their target. It was getting on for 9.30 on that Tuesday morning. By the time the passengers began calling home, their families were aware of what had happened at the World Trade Center. Unlike those on the earlier flights, the hostages on 93 knew they were not on a conventionally hijacked aircraft bound for Cuba or Libya, but were conscripts on an airborne missile intended to kill thousands of their fellow citizens. So, unlike the earlier passengers, they understood the FAA’s cobwebbed 1970s hijack procedures would not save them. The terrorists took charge at 9.28am. The pushback started at 9.57. In those 29 minutes, ordinary American citizens decided that, if they had to die, they would die as warriors. Put yourself in their shoes, on those phones, in that time-frame. Neil Young does, and, after the plaintive unanswered phones, and the organ, and a bit of guitar, an aged rock star’s familiar rasp captures the moment:

I know I said I love you
I know you know it’s true
I got to put the phone down
And do what we gotta do…

The song can’t be said to be of much melodic interest. In those first four bars, 17 of the 27 monosyllables are all set to the same single note: “know I said”, “love”, “I know you know”, “I got to put”, “phone”, “do what we got”, and what follows plonks along in the same vein. It’s what Sammy Cahn used to call “the kind of tune a lyricist writes”; the words are set as you’d expect, without any of the great transformative intervals that can give a bi-syllable a power way beyond what it would have as mere speech. But it’s urgent speech, and the track is great. At the time Young was working on an album with Booker T and the MGs, and in the studio one day unveiled the song to the guys somewhat sheepishly. Booker T Jones liked it. “You don’t have to figure out what to do on a song like that,” he said. “We were just able to pull it off.” He and the MGs aren’t much into vocals (as you’ll know from “Green Onions” and “Time is Tight” and their other killer instrumentals), but they gamely provide the old croaker with some discreet background support here. And of course Jones’ Hammond organ and Donald “Duck” Dunn’s bass keep driving the narrative relentlessly forward. Above the band, Neil Young distills the essence of those last, haunting cell conversations in a way few songwriters had either the courage or the inclination to do.