The late summer of 1971 marked the tail end of an interesting sub-era in Top 40 history: the age of protest music. Beginning in '62 or '63 with the rise of Dylan, PP&M and folk-rock in general, it straddled the entire Beatles era, peaking about 1968-70 with the height of in-the-street antiwar hysteria. But Kent State demolished many hopes for an end to U.S. involvement in 'Nam anytime soon as well as peacefully bridging the generation gap here. Although 1971 had its share of protest songs, they were generally nonviolent as well as increasingly commercial and sedate (compare "Bring the Boys Home" to Edwin Starr's "War" only a year earlier). The anger was gone and there was a rather definite sense of resignation in the lyrics. In that sense, the Rare Earth hit is a perfectly preserved time capsule of the nation's mood at that time ("Put my faith in the people / But the people let me down / So I turn the other way and I carry on anyhow"). But it was "Won't Get Fooled Again" that really put the exclamation point on the period. Rather than being a pie-in-the-sky fantasy of what a radical revolution in this country would be like, according to the Who the song was written to debunk the idea that any genuine transformation for the better can come from a change in human government; any change is merely cosmetic. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The world looks all the same, and history ain't changed. And we won't become blindly optimistic to any more political upheavals, is what is meant by the song title. By 1972 protesting had all but evaporated, and Watergate stole the spotlight from SE Asia. Jeff
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Posted By: Jeff on: 08/14/2006 17:13:41 EDT