America, where are you now?
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
– Steppenwolf, “Monster”
Everything is politics.
– Thomas Mann
So, the other day I was reading the online posts of a friend of mine who was involved in a discussion of sorts with someone else, and at some point, he quoted a song lyric to emphasize a point.
It was a lyric with which I was quite familiar: In fact, I had written it some 35 years ago, when as a younger man I had felt less inclined to articulate anything particularly well. However, to this day I do find this still to be very much a truth: Sometimes meaning and intention really are secondary to syllabication and rhyme.
I won’t bother you with that particular lyric, or its application the topic in question, or even my own meagre contributions to the catalog of whatever passes for rock ‘n’ roll. I will say, however, that it got me thinking about music and its ability to inspire – particularly when one is young and impressionable.
I remembered the popularity of some of those many West Coast bands of the late 1960s like the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Doors, and so many others, who seemed to make a point of promoting free love, civil protests and hallucinogenic drug usage, even on those occasions when they clearly didn’t. Regardless, they sold a lot of records, so one would think that they had more than a few fans who agreed with them.
Despite that, many of those hippies/fans (or at least their li’l hippie children) eventually grew up and cut their hair, secured jobs and served their country as they had been expected to anyway. I’m sure many commentators much more qualified than myself have discussed this elsewhere, so for the moment let’s focus on the music: Where are those artists and songs that once fueled the collective imagination of a generation?
Consider Steppenwolf and their album Monster, released in November 1969. Probably their most overtly political album, it was never a personal favorite. By the time I was old enough to understand any it, some of the topics it addressed felt dated (re: “Draft Resister“), at least as far as the rock scene of the mid- to late-1970s was concerned. By then, Steppenwolf seemed to exist only on radio via the perennial hits “Born to be Wild” and “Magic Carpet Ride,” and in the record racks with their compilation 16 Greatest Hits.
But the lead off track from Steppenwolf’s Monster was a lengthy medley entitled “Monster/Suicide/America,” and to this day I wonder how this countercultural artifact seemed to disappear so quickly from the collective memory. Perhaps being edited down from its original 9-plus minute length to an AM radio friendly 3:56 was part of the problem. Or maybe by 1970 the country had moved on, and didn’t want a history and civics lesson disguised as a rock ‘n’ roll song.
Still, there’s no denying its anthem-like quality, and its attempt to reconcile the shortcomings of specific aspects of American history with the spirit of American optimism.
In this day and age, everything has become so politicized: the environment; the economy; the protocols to follow during a pandemic. Even the running of the Postal Service has become something to cause heated disagreement. Maybe it’s about time for another revolution in popular music, or at least an anthem to rally around.
Or maybe sometimes people just need to be reminded: “We can’t fight alone against the Monster.”
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