I used to think this song was just an amazing example of how to use an A chord better than anyone ever could. It's all in the little finger on the fifth fret adding those two top notes to the bottom three. Of course the effect is much greater with several hundred watts of electricity, but it still comes through on this lovely acoustic version.
At some point it struck me that it was about the revolutionary dreams (fantasies) of the sixties, crashing head on into reality. History tells the tale; leaders fall and the oppressed become the oppressors. At the time, rock music was rife with songs promising an easy take-over of the status-quo. The Doors sang "The old get old and the young get stronger\ may take a week and it may take longer\ they got the guns but we got the numbers\ gonna win yeah were takin over\ Come on!"
Jefferson Airplane were only slightly less subtle with: "Volunteers of America... Gotta Revolution!" Crosby Stills Nash & Young were suitably outraged with "Four dead in Ohio... Gotta get down to it, soldiers are hunting us down, should've been done long ago."
Things got ugly at the 1968 Democratic convention when Chicago police, at the orders of Mayor Daley, brutally beat protesting hippies within inches of their lives.
John Lennon wrote his song "Revolution" with the great line "If you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is brother you'll have to wait." Of course, John being the abstractionist he was followed that with "When you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out/in." Hard core activists were pissed that the Beatles were so uncommitted to the cause. Cheers Beatles! Anyway, Pete Townshend saw through the crap and put it all into perspective. Still a timeless song, and never too late to change things through peaceful means. Don't forget to VOTE!
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2 comments:
Amen brutha. Nice version of the tune, too.
Looking back at the histories of Britain and the United States you can kinda see why the attitudes of the American bands and Townshend (most of the Brit bands were fairly apolitical) would have the differences you cite.
The last time Britain was in the occupied/colony mode was probably around 450 when Rome gave up on the place. For Americans it was less than 200 years before.
Britain spent thousands of years pulling their country together through wars and treaties and such. America was pretty much a Shake-n-Bake affair wit the cumulative education, philosophy, technology & crap of all of Europe and the middle east. That is, there were a lot fewer mistakes to be made.
They had cast off Britain, one of the most powerful nations in the world. They established a radical new government and made it stick. Within less than a hundred years after sovereignty they were becoming a world power and a hundred years later America was THE most powerful nation on the planet militarily as well as economically.
In the meantime the sun had started setting on the British Empire. Revolution to a colonial power had a bad connotation whereas it was the rallying cry in America.
Viet Nam was considered a fluke at the time but as time goes by, we see that America's pseudo-colonialism (or whatever you want to call it) hasn't panned out any better than Britain's or Rome's. But we're talking '73, here.
Americans just thought they could do anything - even have another successful revolution. The Brits just had a more weary and cynical view. They had been slaves and conquerors. It still rained all the time.
ok, I gotta go beat a dead horse now.....
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