Great post. This is truly one of the OG protest songs. I remember the Ronstadt backlash. I believe it was because of her relationship with the governor…at least that’s when it started. I also had a number of people tell me she became difficult to get along with. I had started my personal security career in the mid 70s but would run into people in the business who had been in for awhile and I was always curious.
Thanks, Daniel. That's very interesting about Linda Ronstadt -- and about your career! (Personal security -- that's quite intriguing.)
I do know that Peter Asher became her manager in the mid-70s and that's when she had four platinum albums in a row, but she also felt that pressures from the label had commercialized and sexualized her in ways that went against who she was. I suspect that's why she eventually 'escaped' to Broadway and other forms of music. But I haven't read her autobiography and suspect that there's a lot more to it than that from her and others' perspectives.
Yeah it’s an interesting dynamic. A lot of these artists find that when they “make it big”, they’re forced to sell at least a piece of their soul.
I did the security thing for 25 years before I finally had to get off the carousel. It took me some time to acclimate to the real world but I did make it.
Welcome back to the "real world"! (Since I spend a lot of head space in the rock 'n' roll world of 50-60 years ago, not sure how much I myself live in the real world at the moment. It's a form of escape from our current realities, I have to admit, but also a return to phenomenal music. I feel so grateful to have it.)
I think everyone’s idea of what a real world is varies. I was gone so much I missed much of my two kids growing up. I’m lucky they still talk to me. I am also fortunate my wife stuck around. The real world for me now is fronting a music school to teach performance to young musicians. I can use old connections when necessary. I just got my granddaughter tickets to a Green Day concert so I’m a hero. So like you, I’m ensconced in the music part of the real world but not on the merry go round that I used to be on. Keep up the great columns.
Yes, I think they get a bad rep too. I sometimes wonder if people are just afraid of being associated with something that challenges the official narrative in any way. As someone who doesn't pay enough attention to lyrics or mishears them, I've fallen for songs because I loved their melodies and not known they were protest songs until years later.
Ira Hayes is such a sad story. The folk tradition has been so vital in preserving so many of these stories of injustice. Where there's a guitar or a harmonica, or even a voice, people will keep telling these tales. Thanks for sharing that song, Nick, which I hadn't heard before.
The standard criticism of protest songs is that they're too of-their-time. That they attempt to connect with a specific issue, and that makes them narrower.
My favorite bad protest song (in the sense that I love it, and think it's a great song while also thinking that the attempt to make a political statement mostly fails and is sometimes unintentionally comic) is Blondie's "War Child" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOve1Rx4RRw
That's something not-quite-right about the lyric, "My occupation is being occupied"
But I'm really glad you appreciated "Ira Hayes" by contrast that's a song that I feel changed me (in a small way). Having heard it, I can't forget it or (completely) ignore it (and, incidentally, it's been covered by a number of people, most famously Johnny Cash, but I think Peter LaFarge brings a deeply personal intensity to it).
I think there's an element of authenticity that's required. During the 60s Americans were living with daily news about a war that they did not support, that was actually illegal under the law, and that was forcibly conscripting young men to sacrifice their lives. It was immediate and personal. The songs resonate with that outrage and protest.
For me, the lyrics for War Child don't have that authenticity. It's a western band singing as if they were in that position, whereas perhaps it would have resonated more if it had been about the sense of helplessness and frustration of not knowing how to help war children.
In terms of folk singers, many of them did get involved directly in causes, and Johnny Cash performed in prisons. But I tend to avoid writing about folk and country music and their artists unless they crossed over into the pop world, as Dylan etc did, because I'm not informed enough. So Peter LaFarge is new to me and I wouldn't write about him for that reason. I'd feel out of my depth. But it's a great song!
(1) I think one reason the Dylan song works so well is that the songwriting isn't specifically topical-- the motivation for writing it is topical, but the language isn't tied to a specific case.
(2) on the other hand maybe that's a red herring. Maybe the reason protest songs get a bad reputation is that the skills of writing and performing a good protest song don't overlap that much with the skills of being a pop star. Dylan being an exception that proves the rule -- a lot of people would stumble badly if they tried to write and sing something like, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll."
(3) thinking about it for an hour I've thought of a number of protest songs I like, but I'll hold off and wait to see what else you want to write about-- there are plenty of good examples
For me, the best songs are not topical and specific, but rather travel across time and have resonance in similar circumstances. When Edwin Starr asks what war is good for, that applies to any war.
I remember Blowin' in the Wind getting a lot of radio play when I was a kid, whereas his specific tunes like Hattie Carroll didn't get much if any. When songs become specific, people often can't figure out what the words are, remember them, and sing along with them. So that's a problem too, because people want to sing along, especially with protest songs.
There's also the 'we are in this together and it's our issue and we need to fight', versus intellectual songs that comment on social ills, which is true of a lot of folk songs, including some of Bob's protest songs. I think the former are the ones that become anthems for a generation, not the latter.
But see what you think as we go through the songs this week and next.
And thanks for sharing the Prospect article. Interesting.
I am absolutely curious to see what you will cover. I will probably also write up a post of some of my favorite protest songs, and I think it will be interesting because there won't be that much overlap -- it's good to have different perspectives.
The more I think about it, the way that prospect article and the Country Joe quote overlap, is that they both raise the question of what is the implied relationship between the singer and audience.
It's easy to parody the protest song as either the singer asserting superiority over the audience or just being self-congratulatory (as Tom Lehrer joked, "It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.")
I think the most successful protest songs have an element of, "we're all in this together" and often a recognition that there aren't any easy answers.
I'm ultimately coming down on my second hand of the "on the other hand above." I think the issue with protest songs is that they present certain songwriter challenges and not everybody who is famous and writes a protest song is good at solving those challenges.
As I think through my favorite songs, I don't think that being specific and topical is a problem, it just isn't enough. Like any song there has to be something else that allows the specific to speak to universal concerns. I'll see if my list is at all convincing.
You absolutely should do a post on your favorite protest songs. Please do come back and put a link in one of my comment sections.
I think there are different kinds of protest songs, and those from the folk tradition tend to be more specific and issue-based and have a very definite stance. I think protest songs in the rock tradition tend to be more broadly anti-authoritarian as opposed to protest about one specific incident or issue. But of course that's a generalization and doesn't always hold true.
But I'll be interested to see what you come up with and where it leads you.
Apologies for all the comments, but here's one more bit you might find interesting-- Country Joe McDonald talking about "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die-Rag"
"Fixin'-to-Die" was hated by top brass and the prowar people who were safe. It was also hated by some of the rank-and-file, but as the years went on and the war went on, I don't think there were many military people from that era who disliked the song. I was surprised to find out that it was sung and played in Vietnam by American soldiers. And years later I also met Phil Butler, who was a POW in North Vietnam for seven years. He told me Hanoi Hannah [the English-speaking propaganda broadcaster for Radio Hanoi] used to pump the song into the Hanoi Hilton [Hoa Lo Prison]. The North Vietnamese thought it fit for their party line. Phil told me when they played "Fixin'-to-Die-Rag" the prisoners would smile and hum along. It was a morale booster for the American prisoners. The Vietnamese never understood that. The French-educated Vietnamese who were running the Communist party during the war thought that they understood Americans because they had studied Jeffersonian democracy, but the song contains something which I think is unique on this planet -- an American sense of humor.
Starting in the 1970s, followed Linda Ronstadt's career since I was living with a distant cousin of hers who had inherited some of the vocal gene and physical resemblance. You are right in all respects regarding the controversies surrounding her. A complicated soul with an operatic voice caught in the throes of public opinion. And an enigma. Censored.
Thanks for sharing that personal experience, David. She did reveal some of what she was going through in a Rolling Stone interview in 1978. From what she said, but also from other sources, I've gotten the distinct impression that rock stars and musicians in the 70s were becoming increasingly hostile and self-protective as they found themselves under the microscope and no longer allowed to be 'people', and even viewed as being owned by the record companies, the media, and the public. Not unlike being a celebrity on social media today. Not something to be envied, in my view.
Interesting post! I need to listen to this song more closely.
The lyrics are very powerful, imho. And you're def a lyrics guy!
Great post. This is truly one of the OG protest songs. I remember the Ronstadt backlash. I believe it was because of her relationship with the governor…at least that’s when it started. I also had a number of people tell me she became difficult to get along with. I had started my personal security career in the mid 70s but would run into people in the business who had been in for awhile and I was always curious.
Thanks, Daniel. That's very interesting about Linda Ronstadt -- and about your career! (Personal security -- that's quite intriguing.)
I do know that Peter Asher became her manager in the mid-70s and that's when she had four platinum albums in a row, but she also felt that pressures from the label had commercialized and sexualized her in ways that went against who she was. I suspect that's why she eventually 'escaped' to Broadway and other forms of music. But I haven't read her autobiography and suspect that there's a lot more to it than that from her and others' perspectives.
Yeah it’s an interesting dynamic. A lot of these artists find that when they “make it big”, they’re forced to sell at least a piece of their soul.
I did the security thing for 25 years before I finally had to get off the carousel. It took me some time to acclimate to the real world but I did make it.
Welcome back to the "real world"! (Since I spend a lot of head space in the rock 'n' roll world of 50-60 years ago, not sure how much I myself live in the real world at the moment. It's a form of escape from our current realities, I have to admit, but also a return to phenomenal music. I feel so grateful to have it.)
I think everyone’s idea of what a real world is varies. I was gone so much I missed much of my two kids growing up. I’m lucky they still talk to me. I am also fortunate my wife stuck around. The real world for me now is fronting a music school to teach performance to young musicians. I can use old connections when necessary. I just got my granddaughter tickets to a Green Day concert so I’m a hero. So like you, I’m ensconced in the music part of the real world but not on the merry go round that I used to be on. Keep up the great columns.
I love happy endings! I'll keep writing, you keep training and inspiring the upcoming generations with music.
I'm looking forward to this series. I think protest songs often get a bad reputation and that it's worth paying attention to them.
This is a good place to start. I have somewhat ambivalent feelings about Bob Dylan, but I have to admit that it's a great song.
[For what it's worth my favorite protest song is probably "Ira Hayes" by Peter LaFarge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pzm4LMpdnM ]
Yes, I think they get a bad rep too. I sometimes wonder if people are just afraid of being associated with something that challenges the official narrative in any way. As someone who doesn't pay enough attention to lyrics or mishears them, I've fallen for songs because I loved their melodies and not known they were protest songs until years later.
Ira Hayes is such a sad story. The folk tradition has been so vital in preserving so many of these stories of injustice. Where there's a guitar or a harmonica, or even a voice, people will keep telling these tales. Thanks for sharing that song, Nick, which I hadn't heard before.
The standard criticism of protest songs is that they're too of-their-time. That they attempt to connect with a specific issue, and that makes them narrower.
My favorite bad protest song (in the sense that I love it, and think it's a great song while also thinking that the attempt to make a political statement mostly fails and is sometimes unintentionally comic) is Blondie's "War Child" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOve1Rx4RRw
That's something not-quite-right about the lyric, "My occupation is being occupied"
But I'm really glad you appreciated "Ira Hayes" by contrast that's a song that I feel changed me (in a small way). Having heard it, I can't forget it or (completely) ignore it (and, incidentally, it's been covered by a number of people, most famously Johnny Cash, but I think Peter LaFarge brings a deeply personal intensity to it).
I think there's an element of authenticity that's required. During the 60s Americans were living with daily news about a war that they did not support, that was actually illegal under the law, and that was forcibly conscripting young men to sacrifice their lives. It was immediate and personal. The songs resonate with that outrage and protest.
For me, the lyrics for War Child don't have that authenticity. It's a western band singing as if they were in that position, whereas perhaps it would have resonated more if it had been about the sense of helplessness and frustration of not knowing how to help war children.
In terms of folk singers, many of them did get involved directly in causes, and Johnny Cash performed in prisons. But I tend to avoid writing about folk and country music and their artists unless they crossed over into the pop world, as Dylan etc did, because I'm not informed enough. So Peter LaFarge is new to me and I wouldn't write about him for that reason. I'd feel out of my depth. But it's a great song!
A few more thoughts
(1) I think one reason the Dylan song works so well is that the songwriting isn't specifically topical-- the motivation for writing it is topical, but the language isn't tied to a specific case.
(2) on the other hand maybe that's a red herring. Maybe the reason protest songs get a bad reputation is that the skills of writing and performing a good protest song don't overlap that much with the skills of being a pop star. Dylan being an exception that proves the rule -- a lot of people would stumble badly if they tried to write and sing something like, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll."
(3) thinking about it for an hour I've thought of a number of protest songs I like, but I'll hold off and wait to see what else you want to write about-- there are plenty of good examples
Follow-up, I just found this interesting article about what works and what doesn't in a few of Dylan's protest songs: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/37642/bob-dylan-at-80-why-the-lonesome-death-of-hattie-carroll-is-his-greatest-protest-song
For me, the best songs are not topical and specific, but rather travel across time and have resonance in similar circumstances. When Edwin Starr asks what war is good for, that applies to any war.
I remember Blowin' in the Wind getting a lot of radio play when I was a kid, whereas his specific tunes like Hattie Carroll didn't get much if any. When songs become specific, people often can't figure out what the words are, remember them, and sing along with them. So that's a problem too, because people want to sing along, especially with protest songs.
There's also the 'we are in this together and it's our issue and we need to fight', versus intellectual songs that comment on social ills, which is true of a lot of folk songs, including some of Bob's protest songs. I think the former are the ones that become anthems for a generation, not the latter.
But see what you think as we go through the songs this week and next.
And thanks for sharing the Prospect article. Interesting.
I am absolutely curious to see what you will cover. I will probably also write up a post of some of my favorite protest songs, and I think it will be interesting because there won't be that much overlap -- it's good to have different perspectives.
The more I think about it, the way that prospect article and the Country Joe quote overlap, is that they both raise the question of what is the implied relationship between the singer and audience.
It's easy to parody the protest song as either the singer asserting superiority over the audience or just being self-congratulatory (as Tom Lehrer joked, "It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.")
I think the most successful protest songs have an element of, "we're all in this together" and often a recognition that there aren't any easy answers.
I'm ultimately coming down on my second hand of the "on the other hand above." I think the issue with protest songs is that they present certain songwriter challenges and not everybody who is famous and writes a protest song is good at solving those challenges.
As I think through my favorite songs, I don't think that being specific and topical is a problem, it just isn't enough. Like any song there has to be something else that allows the specific to speak to universal concerns. I'll see if my list is at all convincing.
You absolutely should do a post on your favorite protest songs. Please do come back and put a link in one of my comment sections.
I think there are different kinds of protest songs, and those from the folk tradition tend to be more specific and issue-based and have a very definite stance. I think protest songs in the rock tradition tend to be more broadly anti-authoritarian as opposed to protest about one specific incident or issue. But of course that's a generalization and doesn't always hold true.
But I'll be interested to see what you come up with and where it leads you.
Of course (and I'll link to your posts since that was the inspiration).
I'm getting close to finishing the post, but just to give you a teaser in advance, here are the songs I end up selecting:
1: “Ira Hayes” — Peter LaFarge
2: “My Name is Lisa Kalvelage” — Pete Seeger
3: “Arthur McBride” — Paul Brady (trad)
4: “Alice’s Restaurant” — Arlo Guthrie
5: “Moving On Song” — Ewan MacColl (Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger)
6: “Broken English” — Marianne Faithfull
7: “Think Again” — Dick Gaughan
8: “Stand Up For Judas” — Leon Rosselson
9: “Shipbuilding” — Robert Wyatt (Elvis Costello)
10 “Duffy’s Cut” — Christy Moore (Wally Page)
Apologies for all the comments, but here's one more bit you might find interesting-- Country Joe McDonald talking about "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die-Rag"
https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1013
"Fixin'-to-Die" was hated by top brass and the prowar people who were safe. It was also hated by some of the rank-and-file, but as the years went on and the war went on, I don't think there were many military people from that era who disliked the song. I was surprised to find out that it was sung and played in Vietnam by American soldiers. And years later I also met Phil Butler, who was a POW in North Vietnam for seven years. He told me Hanoi Hannah [the English-speaking propaganda broadcaster for Radio Hanoi] used to pump the song into the Hanoi Hilton [Hoa Lo Prison]. The North Vietnamese thought it fit for their party line. Phil told me when they played "Fixin'-to-Die-Rag" the prisoners would smile and hum along. It was a morale booster for the American prisoners. The Vietnamese never understood that. The French-educated Vietnamese who were running the Communist party during the war thought that they understood Americans because they had studied Jeffersonian democracy, but the song contains something which I think is unique on this planet -- an American sense of humor.
Thanks for sharing this article, as this song is on my list!
Starting in the 1970s, followed Linda Ronstadt's career since I was living with a distant cousin of hers who had inherited some of the vocal gene and physical resemblance. You are right in all respects regarding the controversies surrounding her. A complicated soul with an operatic voice caught in the throes of public opinion. And an enigma. Censored.
Thanks for sharing that personal experience, David. She did reveal some of what she was going through in a Rolling Stone interview in 1978. From what she said, but also from other sources, I've gotten the distinct impression that rock stars and musicians in the 70s were becoming increasingly hostile and self-protective as they found themselves under the microscope and no longer allowed to be 'people', and even viewed as being owned by the record companies, the media, and the public. Not unlike being a celebrity on social media today. Not something to be envied, in my view.