That’s right. Conservative. Rock ‘n’ roll. No, this isn’t the stuff found on George W. Bush’s iPod (which is largely country music, we gather). These are some of the treasured songs of our rock-and-roll canon. Groups like the Who, U2, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Beatles, the Stones and the Sex Pistols.
And now the conservatives are trying to take our music away.
Conservative US values, to those Filipinos unfamiliar with them, seem perfectly sane on the surface. They’re for things like smaller government, lower taxes, and – oh, yes, death to gays and abortion rights advocates. Conservatives, like terrorist sleepers, manage to blend in very easily in the US, but they have a tendency to show their true colors during election campaigns.
Conservatives are not so happy with Bush right now, because he’s a little too lenient on illegal immigrants and not tough enough on gays who want to get married.
So, in a proactive move, the National Review writers are trying to lay claim to rock history, saying not only is rock ‘n’ roll not revolutionary – not meant to be a thorn in the side of the system, that is – but it actually espouses good, old-fashioned conservative values.
Exhibit A is the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again. Yeah, Roger Daltrey’s riveting scream at the end may be rock-and-roll nirvana, but the lyrical message seems to be that revolution never really works. ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…") Leave it to the irony-challenged National Review to overlook Pete Townshend’s wry, all-encompassing take on ’60s politics.
Then we have Taxman by the Beatles. A searing George Harrison-penned indictment of the British tax system (which apparently left many ’60s rock musicians penniless and scampering off to France for tax shelter), the conservatives are trying to claim it’s really a "no new taxes" message, something Bush Jr., who’s never seen a tax cut he didn’t like, would surely embrace. But come on. Harrison also wrote Piggies, which was one of Charles Manson’s favorite ditties. So let’s not go calling the Beatles conservative.
Even John Lennon’s Revolution is on the list, with its line, "But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out." But Beatle fans know the original version of the song had both "in" and "out" spliced into that line (Lennon always was a fence-sitter when it came to violence).
A song like the Rolling Stones’ sly nod to Satanism, Sympathy for the Devil, is seen by the National Review as portraying the devil as "a tempter who leans hard on moral relativism." But that’s just Monday-morning quarterbacking. The Rolling Stones may be playing at Super Bowl halftime shows these days, but back in 1968, they were as close to Satan as you could be without getting your collar scorched. Conservative, my arse.
Sure, the National Review is on safe ground by including the Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice – which it calls "pro-abstinence and pro-marriage" – but they miss out on the wistful irony of Brian Wilson’s song ("You know it seems the more we talk about it, it only makes it worse to live without it"). And to call the squeaky-clean Beach Boys conservative – even after Wilson’s scary mental breakdown – is not exactly thinking outside the box.
They point a finger at the Sex Pistols’ Bodies for its brutal anti-abortion message. But this kind of lazy listing fails to reconcile with other scorching Pistols anthems like Anarchy in the U.K.
In aiming for obvious targets, the National Review misses out on rock songs that actually were conservative, like Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers’ anti-drug tune, I’m Straight. They forget the preppy, anti-freak stance of New York’s early punk scene that included Television and the Talking Heads. They overlook the West Coast hardcore bands, which not only eschewed drugs and alcohol, but were practically Nazis when it came to US immigration laws. And they bleep right over people like Frank Zappa, who was anti-drug and anti-big government, though his song lyrics often lampooned the behavior of those who were not.
What this shows us is that rock and roll is neither fundamentally conservative nor liberal. When it manages to take aim at society, many targets get hit – both on the right and the left. Inevitably, though, even the greatest rock- and-roll hits end up being recycled into what they originally began life as: commercial product, out there to be bought and sold and downloaded and placed in TV ads by the highest bidder.
Shown the top 50 list, rock critic Dave Marsh, according to the Herald Tribune, had this to say: "What happened was, my side won the culture war, in the sense that rock and related music is the dominant music form, not only in the US, but around the world. And once you lose that battle, you lose the war, and then a different kind of battle begins: the battle over meaning."
It’s always quaint when rock critics say things like "We won."
But then again, who can say what the lyrics to A Horse With No Name are really about?