Cracker's David Lowery issued an apology yesterday to Neil Young after bandmate Johnny Hickman slammed Young for his stance about music piracy.
In a Huffington Post article Monday, Young was quoted comparing the piracy of music to being the new version of radio.
"It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio," he said. "I look at the radio as gone... Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around... That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it."
Young's comments were taken from the D: Dive Into Media conference he appeared at this past January.
According to Jambands.com, Hickman took to the band's Twitter account to take it to Young.
"Fuck you Neil Young, I love most of your music (some of it sucks ass) that you made millions upon millions of dollars on," Hickman tweeted. The full statement has been removed but Jambands.com had the full statement which continued: "...you own property all over the world, have 50 antique gas guzzling cars and a full recording studio..you have no say in the matter NOW you rich, greedy old asshole. We hundredaire working class musicians DO!"
After the post, Lowery issued a Facebook post which was linked to via Twitter, but has also been removed.
"Apologies to Neil Young," the statement read. "He is free to think whatever he wants about Piracy. I'm not against casual non-profit sharing of files among fans. I draw the line when it becomes a for-profit business. for example in the case of 'file lockers' or 'cyber lockers' which are for profit businesses that make their money from advertising and 'premium' faster downloads. These companies make millions a year and share nothing with the artists. Johnny got a little over excited."
Early this morning Hickman commented on Lowery's apology and elaborated on his own stance in the comments section following the JamBands.com article.
"Hey, read a little more carefully folks. ( I am a huge Neil Young fan by the way)," Hickman wrote. "David did not say anything about Neil's stance on piracy, I did so quit harshing him about it. I was perhaps a little too hot headed in my post it but still stand by my opinion that a man with a net worth of $65,000,000 that he made SELLING music should not be pontificating about music piracy being a good thing. It hurts every indie band out there. It's actually okay to disagree with your heroes people.
A second post by Hickman added that "I completely agree" with Lowery regarding the statement Lowery made about "file lockers" or "cyber lockers."
Cracker have a handful of tour dates the rest of the year including a run of post-Christmas dates leading up to a New Year's Eve gig in Denver. The band released its last studio album Sunrise in the Land Of Milk and Honey back in 2009.
Young, meanwhile, is gearing up for a North American tour with Crazy Horse and a forthcoming new studio album entitled Psychedelic Pill.