Folk rocker Neil Young is now 70 years old, and some 50-years into a music career that started with Buffalo Springfield in 1966. With a new live album out called Earth that blends show recordings with animal noises and Earth tones (read the review here), it seems that Young has reached the point where he doesn’t care what people think. At least, that’s how he comes across in a new interview with Rolling Stone, published earlier today.

“This is the age where you should have freedom to do whatever you want and put it out,” he says of the new album. “I like to listen to the animals… “I like to track the beauty of what’s going on. I enjoy being with the plants and stuff.” He then adds, “There’s a lot going on in the world that isn’t all lovey-dovey and cool beach songs… I’ve done all of that.”

Young continues on a war path against societal practices, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has heard the word PONO before. Young has long had issues with the technology behind music, saying, “Technology has done a disservice to music… I think there’s a place for rebel radio, with special receivers, where jocks play what they want: vinyl, new stuff, old stuff, and it’s all analog. Because there’s no variety. It’s all, like, GMO music.”

“Just because everything else is broken doesn’t mean I have to be broken,” he says about his own music, before giving praise to Mikah and Lukas Nelson of his newest backing band, Promise of the Real. “They’re much better players than I am. Lukas is like a gunslinger, and Micah is very ethereal and spaced. So they’re completely different, and I’m somewhere in between.”

Of course, don’t expect Young to play his biggest hits, even at this October’s Desert Trip festival. On the bill with legends like Paul McCartney, The Who and more, Young says of the upcoming gig, “I don’t give a shit… I don’t care what people want to hear – that’s not why I’m playing. I’m not an entertainer in the classic sense. I play what I feel like playing, and I hope the people like it.”

Young’s mental freedom is downright endearing, as fans clamor to hear long-lost songs from his iconic catalog. You keep on being you, Neil.