Carl's Rock Songbook, No. 124: Van Morrison, "Where Have All the Rebels Gone"
Rock's 2020 Conformism
As reported in the last number, Morrison released “No More Lockdowns” in October of 2020, along with three other songs questioning typical lockdown-policies Many establishment mouthpieces denounced those songs as dangerous, and various Potemkin critics claimed to find them aesthetically embarrassing. The same kind of response met his recently released album, Latest Record Project, Vol. 1.
To repeat, the album is, musically-speaking, somewhere between very-solid and straight-up great, irresistible to fans of classic R&B, and lyrically speaking, an absolute landmark, a decisive rejection of the progressivist-elite patterns of lying, denial, gaslighting, slander, and pressure to conform that have characterized the last half-decade. Its songs are not as focused on specific policies as the four anti-lockdown songs were, but quite clearly, the target is the progressivist oligarchs, and the way they betrayed us all in 2020.
What I mean by that betrayal I spell out in an endnote below, for the sake of readers wanting to think more analytically about political things.1 That’s my bag.
Morrison’s job, however, is singing the blues about the general character of our times, times in which, alas, one isn’t allowed to be all that apolitical, as the oligarchs’ powers and deceptions have come to intimately shape everyone’s existence. In Morrison’s profession, that has been most felt in the ban on live performance. Our elites refused to countenance democratic deliberation about possible exceptions to and creative applications of the new rules. This stony refusal continued even as evidence quickly mounted that practices like outdoor live music would pose nearly no danger. Authorities refused even in regions like Southern California, where outdoor shows could have been held year-round. And for that matter, why weren’t well-ventilated venues allowed to try half-capacity and strictly time-limited shows?
Even band practice was illegal! One eventually noticed pathetic things like the (usually) great La Luz issuing a mock “live album” in which each member recorded their part separately, with no audience present. Bureaucrats reducing great artists to an acceptance of mediocrity! As I said in my IM-1776 piece “A 2020 Songlist,” riffing off the Specials’ “Ghost Town,” the most horrible thing was thinking about what wasn’t happening. Which would-have-been couples never saw one another standing there? Which would-have-been new bands never got to form? Which conversations never happened, and which young ideas never got discussed or tried? As Tocqueville put it, Soft Despotism’s most terrible power is that of preventing things from being born.
But something else wasn’t happening. Despite rock’s and bohemia’s long default preference for ever-greater personal liberty, and their valorization of underground and rebellious artistic activity, almost no stars of the music scenes spoke out against the confinements of everyone, or against the squashing of their own activity! It would have been one thing if a portion of them had tried and yet failed to loosen restrictions on live performance, or to have tried and yet failed to have organized illegal shows; but they didn’t even try. They either issued blather about the duty to be as “positive” as one could about the awful situation, talking about the greater opportunities for songwriting and hyping-up the possibilities of Zoom-sharing, or, they went silent.
And thus, Rock walked right into Morrison’s wallop of a lyrical blow, with its gloves down and chin extended way out.
Why don’t they come out of the woodwork now?
One for the money, two for the show.
It’s not very rock and roll.
Where have all the rebels gone?
…Why are they sitting on the fence?
This attack is particularly embarrassing for the late-boomer and Gen-X acts associated with punk rock, because they justified their entire aesthetic on a demand for Freedom and a duty to Question Authority. Recently, there was a youtube interview of Jake Burns, a Belfast man like Morrison, who is the still-performing (quite strong, I can report) leader of the classic punk-rock band Stiff Little Fingers. The interview is uninteresting in itself, but one commenter said this, referring to lyrics from SLF’s ultra-angry “Suspect Device”:
Whatever happened to the Jake that [sang] They play their games of power...they cut and mark the deck...they deal us to the bottom...etc.?
Or, as Morrison puts it here:
…Where they really all that tough?
Or was it just a PR stunt?
They’re not saying very much, are they?
Where have all the rebels gone?
The song seems pedestrian at first, but as it lyrics deliver these hits, expressing what so many are feeling these days, it builds up intensity, heightened by a rave-up and solo that is very rock ‘n’ roll indeed. It culminates in this shouted-yet-sardonic line:
I can’t find anyone!
Well, I’ve looked too, and there are a few exceptions to the general pattern of Rock’s obedient conformism. Here are the clear cases that emerge from simple internet searches. I assume that someone with greater familiarity with the rap, metal, and country scenes would be aware of at least a dozen more examples.
1.) Eric Clapton. He performed one of Morrison’s four anti-lockdown songs: “Stand and Deliver.” Good for him, but in terms of the propaganda war, we conservatives should know that he recently had some racist comments of his from the 1970s exposed—he has thoroughly apologized for and renounced them, but we all know how the proggie slander-addicts use such a fact. Defend him, but be aware.
2.) Mick Jagger and David Grohl. “Easy Sleazy.” Grohl was in Nirvana, and has long led the Foo Fighters. A bit late, and I’m not aware of whether either guy has voiced support for Van. It includes a verse that cleverly mocks populist conspiracy theories, but overall delivers an anti-lockdown message. I’m not much of a fan of the punk style itself, and am inclined to dislike septuagenarian use of it, but Jagger is disgusted-enough that this song might work for you.
3.) Right Said Fred. “We’re All Criminals.” These are the guys who a couple decades ago had that song with the hilarious I’m too sexy for my car line in it. Not a major act, but they’ve kept their wit sharp. Profound lyrics, and an excellent video that displays one shameful arrest action after another.
4.) Ian Brown. “Little Seed, Big Tree” Formerly of the Stone Roses. Lyrics very alert to the despotism threat, although they’re too anti-vax for me, even though my plan is to refuse any of the Covid-19 vaccines for at least five years.
In terms of song releases, that’s all I could find, besides one other song from an obscure metal band. Do any readers know of others?
To speak more broadly of recent dissent by rock stars against the progressivist elites, Damon Alban, of Blur and Gorillaz, made some interview comments criticizing the UK government for not finding more ways to support artists and young people during the lockdowns, and Roger Daltrey of The Who recently said he’s worried about cancel culture--in both cases, pretty mild stuff. Armond White claimed to hear some Trump-friendly notes in Bob Dylan’s (excellent!) 2020 release Rough and Rowdy Ways--I don’t hear it that way, while acknowledging some specific criticism of progressivist scientism in “My Own Version of You” and a tip of the hat to populist-conservative fears about coming despotism in “Crossing the Rubicon” (but also, a warning about where such fears might lead one). And whatever we think of the new songs’ messages, we should note that Bob could have issued a statement supporting Van in a clear way had he wanted to, and alas, he evidently did not.
The most impressive example of recent rock dissent is the way Morrisey, although he has said nothing specific about lockdowns, has voiced support for the populist-conservative party For Britain, a party that is anti-lockdown, but which is most known for daring to say that the problem with the amount of Muslim immigration to Britain is not just one of “Islamism,” but is fundamentally one of Islam’s own poor fit with democracy. We’ll need to discuss that rising and oft-slandered party some other time—here I should say that unlike Morrisey, I’m not in full agreement with one of its trademark stances, its anti-Halal policy position (which is also anti-Kosher), while I nonetheless fully support his right to push such policy and I see its consistency with his having penned the unforgettable “Meat Is Murder”.
So, to sum up, review in your mind all the rock artists, or rock-like music artists, that you’ve ever respected for defending personal freedom, for speaking to the real on-the-ground issues of life, or for questioning or defying the authorities of any era. Omitting the tiny handful of artists just mentioned, take it from A to Z, say, from Arcade Fire to Frank Zappa, and admit it: in 2020, they all conformed. They wouldn’t even really defend the right of others whom they might disagree with to question and resist. Whatever claim they once had to be exemplars of a healthy spirit of rebelliousness has now been forfeited.
Why did they fail this test?
One thread of the discussion here will lead us into taking at their word those who felt that the pandemic looked to be so serious, that there was no choice but to err heavily on the lockdown side. Now, I was among those who adopted the tag “lockdown sceptic,” and who, due to the leadership of Eric Moutsos and Utah Business Revival, was able to join one of the earliest protests anywhere against the lockdowns. (For those who can recognize me, I’m on and off the screen right at 2:15. Black suit.)
I no longer use the tag skeptic, for at least in terms of the effectiveness of lockdown-policy, my side has been proven right. There is no correlation between states and nations that imposed stricter lockdown policies, and better rates of Covid-19 deaths. None. We now know that every state and nation could have proceeded as Sweden did--which of course still had a number of rules--without much difference of results.
Folks like me must admit, in fairness, that whatever set of probabilistic reasons we skeptics had arrived at for our case back in April and May of 2020, we didn’t know for certain that we were right. Or, to what degree we were.
Not that our detractors were ever similarly fair, about what could or could not be known, with us!
Lockdown opponents nonetheless must admit the fact that many persons were understandably too uncertain about the situation to take a stand, and just found it easier to go along with the hive mind. There’s also a practical aspect here. In the music world, attempts to have organized illegal or push-the-envelope on-the-regulations music tours would have required many allies in the music business, and there just weren’t enough of such persons. I suspect many in those scenes were too scared they might get labelled a deplorable, if they seemed to question, even in the slightest, the approved-of line. If I’m right about that, then moving forward there should be rebellion in the music-industry against the power of those who most clearly hinted their intention to enforce that line.
But there is another “why” question to ask, and of the sort my Songbook is more interested in. It has two parts. First, bracketing out the Covid-19 specifics of the matter, why had Rock put aside its long-professed duty to rebel by 2020? For there is much evidence that it had generally done so well before Covid-19. Second, were we right to have put such an expectation upon a pop music scene in the first place? Van and I are disappointed, but perhaps, the lesson to draw from Rock’s 2020 conformity is that its rebellion was never all that serious.
Now I do believe it was more serious than just a PR stunt. So does Van. I’ll grant that it was always partly that even for many of the best artists, and merely that for the many poseurs. But again, as to the sincerely-meant part of it, what was that all about? As recently as 2019 Van released a song that positively alluded to the poetic beatnik rebellion centered around the City Lights Bookstore of San Francisco, going so far as to sing of its North Beach neighborhood as the Paris of the West. He knows that the rebel-stance that Rock embraced had a serious and admirable side.
We’ll save the discussion of all that for the next Songbook number, and in another, we’ll look at one punk song in particular, Hüsker Dü’s “Divide and Conquer,” that should have predicted greater rock resistance to the deadly variant of despotism which came upon us in 2020.
1) They betrayed us by not permitting a truly democratic (and scientific) debate about lockdown polices.
2) They betrayed us by not seeking out creative exceptions, that would have allowed more in-person education, artistic activity, visiting, religious services, health screenings, sports, etc.
3) They betrayed us by exploiting the pandemic to benefit the economic interests of the big corporate and big government entities, and of the rich generally.
4) They betrayed us by doubling-down on their support for cancel-culture and CRT-type dogmatism with respect to identity issues (which in the UK also involved egregious “hate-speech” laws). This included their backing up the racialist and pro-violence-in-democratic-politics organization #BLM.
5) They betrayed us by going along with unprecedented campaigns of big-tech censorship and opinion manipulation. Political speech and political assembly were actively squelched.
6) They betrayed our constitutions, by engaging in no efforts to keep checks and balances vigorous, or to balance individual rights against government powers/duties.
7) They betrayed our political systems, in America, by hobbling, and by continuing to resist, efforts to investigate widespread evidence of election cheating, and in the UK by trying for years to nullify the Brexit vote.
8) They betrayed the very symbols of our nations’ democratic and constitutional heritages. When George Washington’s form was dragged to the ground, they muttered.
There’s more, but that’s good-enough for now. Morrison’s anti-lockdown songs and Latest Record Project come out plainly against all of these betrayals, with the exception of four, seven, and eight.
I just got to your post today (waiting, inexplicably for VMs LATEST Latest record project, Move On Skiffle, three weeks late!). It's a shame how lockstep the music critics, so-called, uniformly panned Van's LRP1! I saw him perform several of these songs, at Cesars Palace last October, and they kicked a$$, and they were rousingly applauded. The whole LRP1 was... Three Chords and the Truth! And funny as hell!
Sorry for the delayed response. Your reply got buried in a slew of other emails. Life happens. I'm sort of with you on my own response to the Skiffle songs that were released. I still am waiting for my hard copies of the new record (I ordered vinyl + CDs, since I like the sound of the former, but the portability of the latter). I have been streaming what I can squeeze in on drives, mostly. But since I'm semi-retired, I don't have a commute (PTL!). But when I have recently listened, I've been liking it them more, and like some of my favorite recordings, sometimes it just takes a while for records to grow on me. Dylan's late period masterpiece, "Time Out of Mind" was like that for me, for example. Now, 25 years hence, I just paid a couple hundred bucks for the 10-LP limited edition bootleg release featuring that record's session recordings and a fine remix of the original, which still stands the test of time. Go figger!