Poli-Rock-Tics · by Adam Grant

The constant battle between musicians and politicians shouldn’t be a shock to anyone when you consider the egos possessed by those in either profession. Where it gets interesting though, is when the two factions decide to battle one another in a public forum – Mano-a-mano; policy-creator versus guitar slinger. Both enjoy the stage, both enjoy the spotlight, and both enjoy making headlines. So when George W. Bush somehow won the Supreme Court decision to become the American President in 2001, the ultimate battle between political and artistic ego began.

It’s easy to say that Bush should’ve expected backlash before he even began partaking in activities that eventually brought such hatred from the music public into his life. For eight years, the American public embraced the charm of Bill Clinton and his philandering ways. Surely, he received oral offerings in the Oval Office from an intern that left some peoples’ moral compasses a little insulted, but rarely (if ever) did those in the artistic community come out and rally openly against Clinton’s sexual indiscretions. After all, extra-marital affairs are to musicians as what fish are to water. Plus Clinton could play the saxophone, and there’s certainly no guarantee that Bush could even spell that.

“When Bush came into office – I think right when that happened – I told the guys in the band that, ‘things are going to get really, really bad for everyone.’ I hated seeing my prediction come true,” recalls Jim Lindberg, vocalist of the politically charged punk band Pennywise. “It gives something to rally against, but at the same time I’d rather see him not there. I think things were going pretty good with Clinton.”

Of course like any politician, Clinton had policies and took actions that not everyone would agree with, but none ever garnered as much outrage as Bush’s continuing military occupation of Iraq that has now lasted over five years – five years after his flight-suit appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, and his declaration of “Mission Accomplished,” in reference to what he assumed to be the end of major combat in the Iraqi region. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Along the way, filmmaker Michael Moore has targeted the commander and chief through 2004’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and subsequently 2007’s Sicko, while The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has been handed comedic, political gold with Bush on the throne and the collection of idiot cronies who have surrounded him (i.e., Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice). While both Moore and Stewart have succeeded in their visual ways, musicians have a much tougher time conveying their feelings in an honest, verbal way, and sometimes when they do, the political hounds come after them – case in point, Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks.

Known for years as pop-country darlings with a big-voiced front woman, and a sugary sound unable to offend anyone who owned a fringe dangling jacket, Maines stepped in it back in 2003 at a London concert when she proclaimed that her band was “ashamed” that the President was from the state of Texas. Soon enough, an unreal amount of hell broke loose and the trio went from pop-country darlings to a perceived threesome of unpatriotic, country she-devils. As shown through the band’s 2006 documentary Shut Up & Sing, the backlash directed at the girls was intense and unruly. There were public CD destroying sessions, country music stations banning Dixie Chicks’ tracks, as well as numerous death threats. However, the three soldiered on to create arguably the most acclaimed album of their career, Taking the Long Way.

Ultimately, what this documentary did was expertly magnify just how vile the relationship between musicians and politicians can be, as well as how quickly a political support system can rally its social footsoldiers to coax its citizens into believing that musicians and pop-stars are as much a danger to patriotism as planes flying into towers.

“I’m not sure the average person sees descent as being unpatriotic,” notes folk rocker Steve Earle, who in 2002 received raised eyebrows after releasing the album Jerusalem and the track “John Walker’s Blues” – a song which is penned and performed through the perspective of captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindth. “Artists comment on the society that they live in and that’s their job.”

101: Why do you think politicians are so afraid of that?

“I don’t think they’re afraid of (musician opinions) – I think they use them when it’s to their advantage,” continues Earle. “I don’t think politicians are afraid of anything. Politicians are just like people; they’re either afraid or they’re not. They are sometimes in the business of scaring people; it’s not really about what they’re really afraid of. It’s about, ‘how can I get votes?’ and one way to do that is to scare people and create an atmosphere of fear.”

The current “atmosphere of fear” in which Earle speaks about is a very real one and one that musicians have had to work within for years now – with varied results. In 2004 Green Day came out of an artistic slumber with the pummeling rock opera American Idiot, which sold well north of 10 million copies and earned them more trophies than many bowling teams combined. On the subsequent live album that followed (2005’s Bullet in a Bible), band vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong felt the need to clarify from the stage that the track “Holiday” (AI’s third single) “is not anti-American, it’s anti-war.” Surely, the question to that song’s message must’ve been questioned along the way, if an over-the-top explanation had to be proclaimed from a London, England stage. Either way, it’s doubtful that that track at all hindered the sales of American Idiot.

In a semi-less successful attempt, Pearl Jam put out the song “Bushleaguer” on the band’s 2002 album, Riot Act.

Eddie Vedder sings:

A confidence man, but why so beleaguered?
He’s not a leader, he’s a Texas leaguer
Swinging for the fence, got lucky with a strike
Drilling for fear, makes the job simple
Born on third, thinks he got a triple

While the song was an album cut that didn’t make it to mainstream radio, the live presentation of it reportedly pissed some people off and led to early exits at Pearl Jam shows. During the “Bushleaguer” part of their live set, Vedder would traditionally come onto the stage in a glittered disco-esque jacket and a rubber George W. Bush mask on his face. In this costume he’d dance like a buffoon, strike some Richard Nixon poses, smoke a cigarette, and occasionally put the mask on the mic stand before tearing it to shreds on stage in front of thousands.

One widely conceived theory in regards to why rockers go after Bush with such a full-steam-ahead attitude is that they have to because the media hasn’t or won’t. Over time, it’s become obvious that FOX News is a conservative outlet, and while other networks (i.e. CNN) do better at hiding their partisanship, one thing everyone has in common is not going after the Bush administration the same way documentary makers and musicians do. That said, why has much of the actual media restrained itself from taking a hard line approach with little W. and his crew?

“I think the Bush White House really had the press either intimidated or something where they weren’t transparent – they didn’t give us real information,” offers musician, television host, and spoken word artist, Henry Rollins. “You can’t see any images of casualties from Iraq – that should tell you something.

“With this conflict, it’s like every reporter has to turn in all of his stuff and have it vetted before it goes on air. The Bush White House did things that are so egregious, so crass, and so in your face, almost daring you to say something,” he elaborates. “The press never once in my opinion stepped up and went, ‘hey, wait a minute!’ And, the congress didn’t (stand up) and for the most part, the American people didn’t – so we deserve our misery. I’m just sorry that we spread it on other countries, but, we deserve it; that’s what (Thomas) Jefferson would tell us. Jefferson would’ve said, ‘you’re bummed out? It’s all your fault, you’re the people, you should’ve made (Bush) listen and understand that he serves you.’ This administration has this crazy idea that we’re there to serve them and it’s completely wrong.”

Now with the clock ticking closer to the Tuesday, November 4, 2008 United States Presidential election, the Bush experience will thankfully come to a close and it’ll be time to (briefly) reflect on the eight years of arguably the worst leader in America’s history. Aside from Iraq, he’s had approval ratings as low as the 30% range, been the butt of more jokes than yo mama, and seemingly triggered more outrage from the musical community than anyone since the Vietnam era. Is America willing to change? We’ll see.

Barack Obama (Democrat) could make history by becoming the first African-American President or John McCain (Republican) could squeeze through and continue along the path of his predecessor and prolong this seemingly hopeless mission in Iraq. While there are never any guarantees until the final votes are tallied, one thing is for certain; musicians will be making their voices heard regardless of which individual gets sworn in.

“The best thing I can do for a politician I want to see elected, is to stay as far away from him as possible. It’s obvious that I’m not going to vote for John McCain, because he represents continuing our foreign policy in the Mid-East exactly the way we’ve been doing it and I definitely can’t support that,” feels Earle. “I’ll vote for Obama; I would’ve voted for Clinton if she had been nominated, (because) I don’t see any third party as being viable in this country. As far as what I’m going to do during the election cycle, I probably won’t go to Denver to the Democratic National Convention – I’m not a democrat – but I’ll probably go to St. Paul, Minnesota just to fuck with the Republicans.

“I’m a citizen in a democracy, so it’s not anybody’s business what I talk about and what I don’t talk about – that is my decision,” he adds. “Either there’s freedom of speech, or there isn’t. If there is, and I assume that there is, then I can say any fucking thing I want to say whether I’m an artist or whether I’m not.”

sketch of Steve Earle
by Greg Prystie