Songs about war: what are they good for?; Electing a new leader at

Sunday Herald, The, Oct 10, 2004 by Barry Didcock

ON September 7, 1970, as actress Jane Fonda and a then-unknown Vietnam veteran called John Kerry were preparing to address an anti- war demonstration in Pennsylvania, Edwin Starr was celebrating another week at number one with the song which was fast becoming that movement's unofficial anthem. Released on the Motown label, it was an old-school soul stomper with a call-and-response chorus which asked a simple question and offered an equally simple answer.

It was penned by the legendary songwriting team of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. Called War, its effect was to give the finger - in emphatic style - to a Republican administration which was fast running out of time and friends.

When a cultural engine like Motown gets in on the act, you know you've lost the argument - and as newly elected President Richard Nixon was discovering back in the long hot summer of 1970, there is no more emphatic "screw you" than the one which blares from a million transistor radios.

Nixon's day is past, of course - what was he good for? - but John Kerry's may yet be upon us. He's come a long way in three decades and on November 2 he goes head to head with George W Bush in the US Presidential elections, the winner pocketing the keys to the White House. And next week, in the final of his three live debates with Bush, he will rise to his feet to talk about war once again. It's a different conflict this time but, just as on that September day 24 years ago, Kerry's arguments will have a pop music soundtrack. America's FM dials are once more rattling to the sound of gunfire.

Last week a CD companion to the DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11 was released. Compiled by Michael Moore himself, its catchy title is Songs And Artists That Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11 and it features the usual suspects - Bob Dylan, The Clash, Bruce Springsteen - alongside Pearl Jam, System Of A Down and Texan country trio Dixie Chicks.

Even Tom Waits, not an artist known for political statement, has included a sideswipe at the Iraq war on his new album, Real Gone, also released last week. Called Day After Tomorrow, it's written as a letter home from a soldier. "They fill us full of lies everyone buys," the soldier complains, before asking: "How does God choose? Whose prayers does he refuse?"

Meanwhile rabble-rousing country singer Steve Earle has released The Revolution Starts Here. Earle hurried the album to ensure it hit the shops well before the election and wrote and recorded many of the songs in the same day. Condi, Condi! is a playful, reggae-tinged sideswipe at Condoleeza Rice, George W Bush's national security advisor; Home To Houston is about an American truck driver in Basra and Rich Man's War offers three mini-narratives set in Baghdad, Kandahar and Gaza.

"We proved in the 1960s that the Constitution allows us to make America a hipper place than it was intended to be if we work really hard at it, and we never go to sleep," Earle told the Chicago Sun- Times, explaining why he wrote the album. "I think that's happened - we've gone to sleep. I don't think it's about them. There's always been a them. There will always be a them. I think it's about us. And I think we went to sleep."

They're waking up now, though. In the black music community, producer Babyface has assembled a supergroup of hip hop stars including Mary J Blige, Wyclef Jean, Ashanti, Jadakiss and Missy Elliott and recorded a cover of a Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes song. It's actually called Wake Up Everybody.

Moreoever, Jadakiss has issued his own rebuff to Bush in a remixed version of his current US billboard hit Why? It features the immortal couplet "Why is Bush acting like he's trying to get Osama/Why don't we impeach him and elect Obama" (a reference to Barack Obama, a black civil rights attorney and member of the Illinois Senate). Brooklyn rappers The Beastie Boys made a similar plea in a track called In A World Gone Mad which they released online last year. "Is the US gonna keep breaking necks?" they asked. "Maybe it's time we impeach Tex." Others have added their voices, including Outkast (Bombs Over Baghdad), Jay-Z (Beware Of The Boys) and Lenny Kravitz (We Want Peace).

Finally there's retro-punk outfit Green Day, who are currently at number one in the US album charts with American Idiot. The cover shows a fist wrapped round a heart-shaped hand grenade. It's not hard to guess who the idiot in question is - "Sieg heil to the President gasman," they growl on one track.

Some of these songs have received a great deal of airplay. Some, like Steve Earle's F The CC (a broadside against the Federal Communications Commission, which monitors the American media) are guaranteed none at all. They do all have a common focus for their ire, however - the person of the President. They share a common aim too: his removal from office. But will they have any effect? Are they, in fact, any good?

Simplicity is what makes a good and enduring protest song, says Janis McNair of Glasgow Caledonian's Centre for Political Song. But Simon Frith, professor of film and media at Stirling University, thinks that even then a critical mass of public opinion has to exist before a song can become iconic.