Joe Rogan, host of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” responded on Sunday to attacks from musician Neil Young last week — who pulled his music off of Spotify in protest of Rogan — by saying that he is a huge fan of Young and even partially sang one of his songs.
Rogan’s remarks were contained in a video where he also addressed the controversy with Spotify after Spotify released a statement earlier in the day saying that they were going to take new steps to “combat misinformation.”
Toward the end of the nearly 10-minute video, Rogan addressed the situation with Young, who had told Spotify last week that “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
“First of all, I’m not mad at Neil Young, I’m a huge Neil Young fan,” Rogan said. “I’ve always been a Neil Young fan. When I was 19, I was a security guard at a place called Great Woods in Mansfield, Massachusetts. It’s an outdoor concert amphitheater. And Neil Young was playing there. And that was the last day I worked there, I quit during the Neil Young concert.”
“So one day during a Neil Young concert, the amphitheater the way it’s set up is, there’s a covered area outside that has seats, and then there’s a lawn area behind it. And the lawn area, during the Neil Young concert, they got a little rowdy, it was cold out and they started bonfires. So they had these raging fires on the lawn. And we were supposed to go and put these fires out and stop them. So we tried for a little while. But then brawls started breaking out and it started getting crazy. And I was like f**k this, so I put my hoodie on, I zipped it up and I left and I drove home. And as I was driving home, I was singing, ‘keep on rockin in a free world.’”
“That was my last day on the job,” he said. “I don’t even think I collected my last check. So no hard feelings towards Neil Young. And definitely no hard feelings towards Joni Mitchell. I love her too. I love her music, ‘Chuck E.’s In Love’ is a great song.”
WATCH:
Posted Sunday night, in his own words @joerogan, “Thank you to all the supporters and even thank you to the haters because it’s good to have some haters.” Wait for him to break into Neil Young song. Full video: https://t.co/hxfwBtplyC pic.twitter.com/TbEuzaDGK5
— Asra Q. Nomani 🐻 (@AsraNomani) January 31, 2022
“I don’t know what else I can do differently other than maybe try harder to get people with differing opinions on right afterwards,” Rogan concluded. “I do think that that’s important. And do my best to make sure that I’ve researched these topics, the controversial ones in particular, and have all the pertinent facts at hand before I discuss them. Again, I’m not trying to promote misinformation, I’m not trying to be controversial. I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations. I didn’t plan it, I can’t believe it’s as successful as it is. It was never really an idea that I had I that the podcast started off is just f**king around with my friends and having fun and talking. And then, when it became popular, other people wanted to come on. And I was like, oh, it’d be cool to talk to that person.”