The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest

Ian Peddie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351218047
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Popular music has traditionally served as a rallying point for voices of opposition, across a huge variety of genres. This volume examines the various ways popular music has been deployed as anti-establishment and how such opposition both influences and responds to the music produced. Implicit in the notion of resistance is a broad adversarial hegemony against which opposition is measured. But it would be wrong to regard the music of popular protest as a kind of dialogue in league against 'the establishment'. Convenient though they are, such 'us and them' arguments bespeak a rather shop-worn stance redolent of youthful rebellion. It is much more fruitful to perceive the relationship as a complex dialectic where musical protest is as fluid as the audiences to which it appeals and the hegemonic structures it opposes. The book's contemporary focus (largely post-1975) allows for comprehensive coverage of extremely diverse forms of popular music in relation to the creation of communities of protest. Because such communities are fragmented and diverse, the shared experience and identity popular music purports is dependent upon an audience collectivity that is now difficult to presume. In this respect, The Resisting Muse examines how the forms and aims of social protest music are contingent upon the audience's ability to invest the music with the 'appropriate' political meaning. Amongst a plethora of artists, genres, and themes, highlights include discussions of Aboriginal rights and music, Bauhaus, Black Sabbath, Billy Bragg, Bono, Cassette culture, The Capitol Steps, Class, The Cure , DJ Spooky, Drum and Bass, Eminem, Farm Aid, Foxy Brown, Folk, Goldie, Gothicism, Woody Guthrie, Heavy Metal, Hip-hop, Independent/home publishing, Iron Maiden, Joy Division, Jungle, Led Zeppelin, Lil'Kim, Live Aid, Marilyn Manson, Bob Marley, MC Eiht, Minor Threat, Motown, Queen Latifah, Race, Rap, Rastafarianism, Reggae, The Roots, Diana Ross, Rush, Salt-n-Pepa, 7 Seconds, Roxanne Shanté, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Sisters of Mercy, Michelle Shocked, Bessie Smith, Straight edge Sunrize Band, Bunny Wailer, Wilco, Bart Willoughby, Wirrinyga Band, Zines.

Part One
Politics and The Parameters of Protest

Chapter 1
Rock protest songs: so many and so few

Deena Weinstein

As a style of music born out of teenage rebellion and idealistic youth confronting hypocritical authorities, you would think that rock would be jam-packed with protest songs. In light of the spate of protest songs released in the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, that judgement would be reinforced. And if you do think that rock is replete with political themes, you are not the only one, for that is the prevailing view. Yet it is a view that doesn’t hold up to examination. While so many celebrate and enumerate various rock protest songs, I want to account for the myth of their ubiquity and their relative rarity, specifically in the United States. Broadly speaking, the protest in protest songs means an opposition to a policy, an action against the people in power that is grounded in a sense of injustice.¹ But which powers-that-be, or their actions or policies, count? Governments on all levels and their enforcers – military or police forces – certainly qualify. And the preponderance of rock protest songs do focus on what those songs identify as the improper use of force.

For example, there is a vast collection of rock songs that protest police brutality. Among them are: The Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth (Stop Hey What’s that Sound)’, Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘American Skin (41 shots)’, NWA’s ‘F**k tha Police’, KRSOne’s ‘Black Cop’, Body Count’s ‘Cop Killer’, and Vortis’ ‘The Ballad of Mumia Abu Jamal (F**k the Police)’. Other songs focusing on governmental authority involve civil rights and economic policies. Still others protest corporate power. The few examples of this sort are mainly against record companies (the Sex Pistols’ ‘EMI’, Lynyrd Skynydr’s ‘Working for MCA’, Pink Floyd’s ‘Have a Cigar’, and John Fogerty’s ‘Vanz Kant Danz’). There is less consensus about what constitutes a protest song when we look at other sources of power like teachers and parents. Are Chuck Berry’s and Alice Cooper’s complaints about the boredom of school to be included in the category of protest? What about the complaints against parental authority like Suicidal Tendencies’ ‘Institutionalized’?

Protest songs can be classified on several dimensions. One, just discussed, is the type of authority that is deemed unjust. Another is the specificity of the injustice – whether it is power in general, some particular policy or a specific instance of abuse of power. Songs in this last category are sometimes referred to as ‘re-ax’or reaction songs. They are ‘songs that concentrate their fury upon a single act of injustice’ (Corn, 2001). An example is the Ramones’ ‘My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg)’, which refers to President Reagan’s 1985 trip to West Germany where he declared that he wouldn’t visit a concentration camp but did lay a wreath at a German military cemetery in Bitburg containing graves of Nazi SS soldiers (Corn, 2001). Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s ‘Ohio’, about college students who were shot by the Ohio National Guard while protesting the Vietnam war, is another, better-known, re-ax song.² It is arguable that what are classified as protest songs, especially the re-ax type, are best thought of as lamentations.

A third dimension for classifying protest songs is their impact. At one extreme are songs that most listeners fail to perceive as protest songs and thus they have no influence. Argent’s 1972 hit ‘Hold Your Head Up’ was a feminist anthem with no impact, because the word ‘woman’ that followed the title refrain in the chorus was indiscernible. Most heard the word as ‘whoa’. At the other extreme are the few rock songs that inspire action of one kind or another. An example would be a pair of songs by DC hardcore band Minor Threat: ‘Straight Edge’ and ‘Out of Step (With the World)’. These songs exhort people to engage in a lifestyle that renounces addictive drugs and excessive alcohol consumption. The straight edge movement among fans of the genre, who often marked their hands with an X, was strongest at the start of the 1980s when the songs were released, and continues today. There is agreement about the most obvious songs protesting political policies, especially war. However, there is no consensus on what targets of opposition are to be included in the category of ‘protest’.

Protest songs are defined as such by virtue of their words, but many make their impact in tandem with their sonic elements, the emotionality of the music, the strength and confidence of the vocals, or their simplicity and repetitive phrases, which allow the audience to sing along. And although lyrics of rock songs are typically used to define them as protest songs, one can also understand music itself to be the locus of the protest. The best example – one of very few – would be Jimi Hendrix’s version of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, first heard at Woodstock in 1969. Indie-punk band Vortis goes one better on Hendrix with ‘God Won’t Bless America Again’, hijacking the patriotic anthem both sonicly and verbally. Nevertheless, the number of rock protest songs varies by how inclusively we define ‘protest’ and ‘rock’. Even with the most generous definitions of each of these terms, the number of protest songs is dwarfed by the profusion of songs about love’n’lust. Yet we have tended to think otherwise – not only now, but throughout rock’s history.

Why do we think that there are so many rock protest songs?

Thanks to the policies and practices of the Bush administration in Iraq and domestically, a raft of rock protest songs has been recorded recently. Artists as varied as John Mellencamp, the Beastie Boys, Lenny Kravitz and hundreds of punk bands have released anti-Bush songs. Metal’s protest songs come from all eras of the long-lived genre, starting with the Black Sabbath’s counterculture-era ‘War Pigs’, through thrash (Motorhead’s ‘Orgasmatron’, Megedeth’s ‘Peace Sells But Who’s Buying’, and even to death metal (Six Feet Under’s ‘America the Brutal’), a subgenre not usually given to politics.

Yet rock came into being at a time of high political fervour – the 1960s. This was a time of protest – initially the civil rights struggle, and later demonstrations for free speech by university students and, especially, the anti-Vietnam War movement. Youth were at the forefront of each of these movements and, by the 1960s, rock, as opposed to its 1950s forerunner, rock ’n’ roll, was not just greasy kid stuff, but appropriate for an older, college-aged crowd. Youth’s involvement in these protests and, simultaneously, their interest in rock music, created the conditions for a proliferation of protest songs. Thus rock’s history, which is celebrated more today than ever before, is associated with protest. And those protests, which at the time were vigorously opposed by the powers-that-be and the general public, are now understood, by the establishment, the general public and many of those who were more or less engaged in those struggles at the time, as fully vindicated and successful. (But of course they weren’t successful. Indeed, there is much truth in the position held by some leftist political leaders during the 1960s who saw rock as being antithetical to motivating political engagement.)³

Nonetheless, the 1960s generation was a generation in the strict sense. Whatever its members’s engagement at the time with various protest movements, they tend to feel reflected glory by virtue of having been there, man, and having been fans of the music. Importantly, this was the first generation of young people who continued to listen to the music of their youth long after that youth was gone. They have listened to their old vinyl LPs, bought the songs again when CDs were introduced, listened to the classic rock radio format which plays a canonical set of these songs, bought them again as box sets, and have attended, at increasingly great expense, the concerts given by the artists who recorded their songs. The history of the era as presented by the popular media, especially as TV specials, Hollywood movies and college courses on the 1960s, spotlight the rock protest songs.

Rock’s first decade coincided with a time of various social protests, yet, despite newspaper headlines and the newly enlarged TV newscasts, there were only a few protest songs on the Billboard charts. What follows is a list of the top ten records of the 1960s, starting from the highest: ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Theme from A Summer Place’, ‘Tossin’ and Turnin’’, ‘I Heard It through the Grapevine’, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ‘I’m a Believer’, ‘Let the Sunshine In’, ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’, ‘In the Year 2525’, and ‘It’s Now or Never’ (Weiner, 1998). Are any of these rock protest songs? For all that, the 1960s was the golden age for rock protest songs. Most (if not all) such songs that people can name today come from that era. It was not merely the political situation that encouraged their creation and appreciation. The songwriters, performers and their youth audience were strongly influenced by the infusion of a revivified folk music beginning in the late 1950s. The majority of the rock protest songs of the 1960s can be seen as folk music, or at best, folk-rock.

Another important explanation for the profusion of protest songs in the fabled 1960s is the state of the rock media in its first decade. The established music industry had no interest in the new style, and so it was left to newcomers without established rules or conventional practices. ‘When the boomers’s explosion of romantic art flared up from London to San Francisco it caught the old music business unprepared,’ writes Ronnie Pontiac. ‘Most of the old school executives, hating the hippies and their music, saw no opportunity there. That sadly predictable state of affairs became a gold rush for hustlers, young lawyers, agents and accountants’ (Pontiac, 2004). These newer record label executives and managers allowed artists to do their own thing, and one of their things was protest songs.

Radio in the late 1960s and early 1970s was also wide open to this new music. Not commercial radio, of course, where the tight Top 40 format ruled. One of that format’s rules was to keep off the air anything controversial (although Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction’ was a number one record on Top 40 radio in the summer of 1965 [Fong-Torres, 1998, p. 255]). Television, with the exception of The Smothers Brothers Show, avoided protest music even more than radio’s Top 40 stations. But, coinciding with the anti-war movement in the latter half of the1960s, the FFC-instigated FM stations embraced controversial songs. The format’s name emphasizes its lack of rules: free-form. (It was also called ‘underground’ and ‘progressive’.)

Another reason why rock is seen to have so many protest songs is the role of rock critics. Rock criticism began in the mid-1960s, and early critics shared the views of those who were fighting for civil rights for blacks and struggling against the Vietnam war, and their progressive ideology has permeated rock criticism ever since. As the arbiters of rock tastes in the ensuing decades, they have selected and praised artists with similar views to their own (while ignoring or damning those with anti-progressive sentiments). That is, they underscore the protest songs and highlight the careers of artists with progressive views like Bruce Springsteen and The Clash. The Clash, for instance, was hailed as the ‘Only Band that Matters’. That is what Joe Strummer, the band’s vocalist, guitarist and sloganeer, told everyone. ‘And the press, especially the American critics who’ve always been patsies for political pop, bought the line hook, line and sinker,’ concludes their biographer, David Quantick (2000, p. 9).

Critics are the ones who enshrine their ‘greats’ in books and halls of fame, and reference them in their reviews of contemporary music. They are the makers of the rock canon – those ‘best of’ songs that are preserved on lists and comprise classic-rock-format playlists. It is easy to see the ideological current running through the rock press today by noting the spate of articles about protest songs related to the Bush administration. Some bemoan their absence, with articles sporting titles such as: ‘Is Protest Music Dead?’ (Chang, 2002), ‘Where are all the protest songs?’ (Young, 2003), ‘Few are raising voices for protest music’ (Kot, 2002) and ‘Sing Now, or Forever Hold Your Peace; Where are the new protest songs?’ (Epstein, 2003). Others celebrate the appearance of protest songs: ‘Once Again, Anti-war Songs Proliferate in the US’ (Bessman, 2003, p. 35) and ‘Protest song is back-with a vengeance’ (Blagg, 2004). But critics aren’t the only ones who call our attention to protest songs. When the powers-that-be are attacked by such songs and react publicly, they manage to promote the very music to which they object. They are far more effective marketers than the rock press. The response to Body Count’s ‘Cop Killer’ by police groups throughout the US is a case in point. They spoke out, refused to work security for the band’s shows and marched in front of venues where the band played. The press covered these activities and helped the song become a hit record.

A final important reason for thinking that rock is replete with protest songs is the image provided by rock musicians when they involve themselves with various protest activities in addition to, or instead of, performing protest songs. They proffer political statements during interviews published in magazines and newspapers. They also make comments on stage, such as the embarrassed-to-be-from-the-same-state-as-Bush remark that got Natalie Maine’s group, the Dixie Chicks, virtually banned from country radio playlists. By the same token, Springsteen has been telling his audience that ‘the Bush administration has run “roughshod over our civil liberties” and cautioning, “It’s never served this country well to rush into war”. His remarks were greeted with scattered boos’ (Kot, 2002). Radiohead’s Thom Yorke dedicated ‘No Surprises’, a song which contends that the government doesn’t speak for us and should be brought down, to George W. Bush (Ross, 2001, pp. 117–18). On stage, Pearl Jam went further. ‘After making a series of antiwar and anti-Bush remarks … which were met with a mixture of cheers and boos, Vedder impaled a mask of President George W. Bush on a microphone stand, stabbed it into the floor and began stomping on it. Suddenly the boos were thunderous and dozens of patriotic Pearl Jam fans stormed out of the show’ (Berlau, 2003, p. 30). The video clips that played as Black Sabbath did their sixties-era ‘War Pigs’ at 2004’s Ozzfest tour showed a montage of pictures of Bush and Hitler together with the caption ‘Same shit different asshole’. Bush was also shown with a clown nose.⁴

Communication breakdown: why are there so few rock protest songs?

Despite the foregrounding of protest songs in rock discourse, there are, then, far fewer of them than one is led to believe. They are but a tiny proportion of all rock songs, even using the most generous definitions of rock and protest. Understanding why there are so few protest songs reveals a great deal about rock music. We can divide a somewhat complex explanation into three categories: (a) there are relatively few protest songs, (b) protest songs that do exist aren’t widely heard, and, most significantly, (c) protest songs that are heard aren’t understood as protest songs.

The Vietnam era, when the counterculture was in the ascendancy and there was a self-conscious and fairly unified youth culture, has been called the Golden Age of Rock Activism (Pontiac, 2004; Collins, 2003). It was during this time that the best-known, and, for most Americans of all ages, the only known rock protest songs were created.⁵ The largest batches of protest songs appear in eras of assertive and highly publicized social movements, especially against wars. One reason for the paucity of rock protest songs is the absence of mass protest movements during most of rock’s history. It is easy to understand this feast or famine: if there is no potential audience for protest songs, they are less likely to be written, released or played on the commercial media. A cynical, or perhaps merely realistic, reading is given by David Segal: ‘most artists keep at least three bodyguards between themselves and any agenda more complicated than hanging on to fame. Why? Economically speaking, ignoring politics makes sense’ (2003, p. 50). We are currently in another era of protest, it would seem. Record industry insider Danny Goldberg, is pleased, stating: ‘I can’t remember any time, including the 60s, when so many artists were addressing politics’ (quoted in Cave, 2004, p. 3).

Protest songs that do exist are not heard on mainstream media

The dearth of protest songs can also be attributed to the mainstream media. The story about the goose that laid the golden egg is mirrored in the history of FM’s free-form format. It became so popular, and so profitable that rules were imposed. No longer based on the counterculture’s standards, it morphed into a programmed AOR format. Rock record labels also began to achieve financial success in the 1970s. And that era, often called the ‘Me Decade’, was not friendly to protests. ‘By then conditions in the music business had changed radically,’ Pontiac laments. ‘For obvious reasons the new music business had little use for activism, instead they saw The Beatles in The Knack and punk rock was successfully repackaged as supposedly edgy New Wave acts ideal for ushering in the Reagan years’ (Pontiac, 2004). Musicians’ careers are not helped, and may be harmed, by any political action. For example, in 2003, New Jersey radio station WCHR banned Jethro Tull after the band’s lead singer, Ian Anderson, was quoted in a local paper saying, ‘I hate to see the American flag hanging out of every bloody station wagon. It’s easy to confuse patriotism with nationalism. Flag-waving ain’t gonna do it’ (quoted in Cave, 2003).

We now have conglomerates such as Clear Channel – a corporation with strong ties to the Bush administration (Hajdu, 2004, p. 33) – in control of much of the music that gets heard on radio or seen in concert. For these reasons, the majority of protest songs in the past three decades have been released on indie labels – those without the capital clout to get any attention from radio, TV or mainstream print media. Indies currently make up about 14 per cent of releases (Bruno, 2003). Addressing punk in particular, Johnny Temple wrote:

Today there’s only a minimal chance that any music fan – young or old – will encounter through any major media outlet the songs of protest that continue to spring forth from the punk underground; the major record companies have succeeded in erecting a pay-to-play industry that effectively shuts out any band whose label cannot pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars for radio, video, retail and print promotion. (1999, p. 17)

But today more than ever, major media outlets are not the only game in town. And unlike the media conglomerates, which are friendly to the status quo, the underground media – seriously indie labels, innumerable internet sites, rock ’zines, and college radio – do not shy away from protest songs. Protest songs against the Bush adm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• General Editor’s preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One Politics and the Parameters of Protest
• Part Two Monophony or Polyphony?
• Part Three The Problems of Place
• Part Four The Paradox of Anti-Social Protest
• Bibliography
• Discography
• Index