Neil Young Gives Approval to Tim Walz to Use ‘Rockin’ at the Free World’ at DNC

Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz concluded his DNC speech Wednesday by walking off the stage to Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Despite the track’s litigious history on the campaign trail, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported that Walz sought Young’s approval to use “Rockin’ in the Free World” — one of the Minnesota governor’s favorite songs — and that the rocker himself personally authorized its usage.

A rep for Young did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment at press time.

In a recent article penned by Young in the Viewpoint section of his Neil Young Archives, he wrote that he would be watching the DNC, albeit on the unbiased C-SPAN and not one of the “smarmy talking head slanted” news networks. Young’s article also featured Shepard Fairey’s artwork promoting the Harris campaign, a not-so-subtle endorsement from the rocker who has spent the past eight years publicly criticizing and occasionally suing Donald Trump.

The long spat between Young — one of the many artists who have threatened legal action against the former president, including most recently Beyonce — and Trump dates all the way back to June 2015, when Trump played “Rockin’ in the Free World” immediately after announcing his intention to run for president. Young expressed his displeasure then and did so again after Trump played the song at a 2018 rally — he expressed the same sentiment after Trump played the Freedom cut at events in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Mount Rushmore.

Despite penning an open letter slamming Trump, the then-president continued to play “Rockin’” on the campaign trail, ultimately resulting in Young filing a lawsuit in August 2020 that claimed Trump and his campaign did not have a proper license to play his songs “Rockin’ in the Free World” and his “Devil’s Sidewalk” at rallies. 

The suit also claimed that the Trump campaign has “willfully ignored [Young] telling it not to play the Songs and willfully proceeded to play the Songs despite its lack of a license and despite its knowledge that a license is required to do so.” However, in a section right above that, the Young suit acknowledges that following the first dust-up over “Rockin’ in the Free World” in 2015, “the Campaign issued a statement stating that it had procured a license to do so, thus acknowledging that it knew a license is required.”