War Pigs & the Art of the Protest Song

As a general rule, I don’t like to mix entertainment and politics.  This is mostly because the only preaching I like to hear is on Sunday mornings.  There’s a place for preaching, but it’s not in art.  Art is supposed to bring awareness and ask questions.  It can’t answer those questions for you.  You shouldn’t give a crap what an entertainer thinks of politics, one way or another. 

When I say it’s mostly done badly, I mean Eddie Vedder, the man who wrote “Black”, also wrote such garbage as “Fuck George Bush.  Fuck Dick Cheney.”  I’m sure Oscar Wilde wishes he’d been so clever.  If you can’t separate yourself from the emotions you’re trying to communicate, you’re going to fail to communicate effectively.

All that having been said, when it’s done right, it’s powerful.  Obviously, being a big fan of punk, I’m steeped in it from the Sex Pistols and the Clash to Bad Religion and Green Day.  There’s a rich history to mine, but I’ll leave the punk songs for a future post. 

Even if you look at a list of “top protest songs” on some hipster website, they’ll have the classics mixed in with some garbage, but they will have Bob Dylan (“Masters of War”, “With God on Our Side”, etc.), Sam Cooke (“Change is Gonna Come”) and Creedence Clearwater Revival (“Fortunate Son”).  I can’t argue with any of these.

There are three songs that I believe get grossly over-looked, even though they’re all by artists who are legends: “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath, “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and “Rich Man’s War” by Steve Earle.

·      “War Pigs” – First of all, this is Sabbath.  This is not some beta hippie singing “Kumbaya” and crying when a tree is cut down.  They put the blame strictly where it belongs, with people who not only don’t suffer from war, but profit from it.  Allowing for a few exceptions, the sons of the rich and powerful, when they served, had cushy assignments.  Think George W. Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.  When this song kicks in, it’s visceral.  Politicians, both Republican and Democrat, are prostitutes at best and evil at worst, but it’s the sons (and now daughters) of the poor who go do the dirty work.

·      “Ohio” – Remember when we didn’t treat the federal government as a god to be obeyed at all cost?  The National Guard opened fire on college kids peacefully protesting at Kent State.  The American government killed their own.  Now, sadly, we so casually call on the government to do our violence, our evil, for us.  No one is shedding a tear for the woman who was gunned down through a doorway in the Capitol on January 6th.  Think what you will about what happened that day, but when a woman, a veteran of the armed services, is shot in the back through a pane of glass, how do you justify that? Not sure that old, rich Canadian would be as offended now, but I am glad he was in 1968.

·      “Rich Man’s War” – Steve Earle has pumped out some turds over the years, but when he’s on, there’s few troubadours better.  Here he talks about the same issues that Sabbath does, but instead of talking about the evil politicians, he talks about those who pay the ultimate price.  Those who fight pay the ultimate costs: time away from their families, not being there for their wives and kids, the mental toll of the things they see and experience, the loss of friends, physical damage, and possibly death. 

I’m all for writing protest songs, but my standards are a lot higher.  Not everyone can be as lucky as the Dead Kennedys and write a song about Jerry Brown only to have him serve as the governor for another eight years three decades later.  Mostly, you would just have people saying, “Who is Jerry Brown?”  If the message is timeless, the song can be too, but as humans we’re too caught up in ourselves and our moments.  We’re obsessed with trees, we often don’t even know we’re in a forest. 

Find the forest, find the song.