As last week’s set of protest songs seemed to be well received I thought I’d go with some more for this week. Unlike last time, though, these aren’t all from the US: I’m bookending the set from there, but the three in the middle come from elsewhere. After all, variety is supposed to be the spice of life, isn’t it? So here goes with some more songs about things that are wrong with our world.

Having remarked last week that the Sixties and Seventies were fruitful times for protest songs, I’m going back there again with this first one:

I’ve previously played an older version of that clip, but this reworking has improved the sound and visuals and generally made it better. That was, of course, Buffalo Springfield with For What It’s Worth. They were a Canadian-American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1966 by Canadians Neil Young, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin and Americans Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, and released three albums and several singles from 1966 to 1968. For What It’s Worth was added to the March 1967 second pressing of their eponymous debut album, first released in November 1966, after it was a single in December 1966 and got to #7 in the US and #5 in Canada. It has never charted here but was awarded Platinum status last year for 600,000 UK sales – that’s what I call a song with staying power! The album didn’t do especially well in chart terms, only reaching #80 in the US and, rather oddly perhaps, #122 in France. This song was written by Stephen Stills, who takes lead vocal, and has long been associated  with the Vietnam War, but this is apparently a popular misconception: the song is about young people clashing with police during the counterculture era. Either way, it is still a powerful song of protest, and still just as relevant now as it ever was.

My second tune for today takes us into the Seventies, just. This is another updated and reworked video, which might explain why it sometimes looks ever so slightly out of sync:

I know I only just played The Moody Blues two days ago, in this week’s SLS piece,  but I did say then that they have long been a favourite band of mine – so you’re getting them again! They released Question as a single in April 1970, and it then became the opening track on their sixth album, A Question Of Balance, which came out in August of that year. For this record, the band made a conscious effort to produce songs which lent themselves better to live performance than some of their previous offerings, and the video shows how well they did that with this song. The single peaked at #2 in the UK and #21 in the US, but topped the charts in the Netherlands. The album went to #1 in the UK, #2 in Australia, and #3 in the US and Canada, going Platinum in both countries.

The song was written by Justin Hayward, who pieced together parts of two songs on which he had been working, which explains the change in tempo midway through. He has been quoted as saying that it was written when the band were touring America, and a lot of young people were living in fear of being called up to fight in the Vietnam War, “so I think we were speaking for them in a way.” The Moodies may have given us an album of songs that could be played in concert, but that didn’t stop them asking the big questions about the motivations behind wars, and who was expected to pay the human price for them. Another one which is still so very relevant today.

As protest songs go, this next tune is one of the simplest but most effective ones I know. More of a chant than a song, perhaps, but no less powerful for that:

In case you hadn’t noticed, that was John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band with Give Peace A Chance. As far as I can tell I’ve never played this one before: that feels very strange, but I can’t find it in a search of previous posts! It is, as you may have noticed, an anti-war song, and was written by John Lennon and recorded with the help of Yoko Ono and a small group of friends in a hotel room in Montreal, Canada. Released as a single in July 1969 by the Plastic Ono Band it was the first solo single by Lennon, while he was still a member of the Beatles, and became an anthem of the American anti-war movement during the 1970s. It peaked at  #14 in the US and at #2 in the UK. Its high point was probably when it was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington, D.C., on Vietnam Moratorium Day, 15 November 1969. They were led by Pete Seeger, who interspersed phrases like, “Are you listening, Nixon?” and “Are you listening, Agnew?”, between the choruses of protesters singing, “All we are saying … is give peace a chance”. A simple but very effective chorus of protest, but it seems that those in power are deaf to it – still.

After a pair of Brits I’m now going to Australia. I played this band three weeks ago for one of my work theme posts, and here they are again for a protest:

I’ve played Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning a couple of times before – both for Tuesday Tunes and also as a feature in a Song Lyric Sunday piece, but those were a while back and I think it worthy of a reprise. As you will have noticed from that, Midnight Oil’s music has always been underpinned by a high degree of political and social awareness, and it is perhaps not surprising that Peter Garrett, their lead singer and songwriter, became a politician, serving two terms in the Australian House of Representatives for the Labor Party. He was appointed a minister in the governments of both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and has held many non-governmental positions in which his concern for the environment is evident.

This was a track on the band’s sixth album, Diesel And Dust, which was released in August 1987, spending six weeks at #1 in Australia and peaking at #19 in the UK and #21 in the US. It was also released as a single, and got to #6 in both Australia and the UK, and to #17 in the US. After Midnight Oil toured through the Outback in 1986, playing to remote Aboriginal communities and seeing first hand the seriousness of the issues in health and living standards, Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie and Rob Hirst wrote Beds Are Burning to criticise how those populations were often forcibly removed from their lands, highlighted by the pre-chorus lines “it belongs to them, let’s give it back”. Their concern was genuine, and Garrett’s later career was his way of doing the best he could for those who had been downtrodden by successive governments.

I’m closing today with one that I have played several times before, as befits the first record I ever bought. It is still just as relevant as ever – after the weekend’s events and a fragile (failing?) ceasefire, probably more so:

Barry McGuire, with Eve Of Destruction, in case you didn’t know. The song was written by P.F. Sloan, who was a prolific writer of pop hits in the sixties, and was a protest against the Vietnam War. It was recorded in July 1965 and was released at once, becoming an instant hit: #1 in the US and #3 in the UK. McGuire started his singing career in the New Christy Minstrels, who you may well remember for their song Three Wheels On My Wagon, which was a regular choice on the old BBC Light Programme’s nod towards children, their Saturday morning show Children’s Favourites, hosted by ‘Uncle Mac.’ Today, that sounds a bit creepy, but this was the time before 1970s DJs started their laying on of hands! McGuire had a few other minor hits, but this song remained his real claim to fame. He became a born again Christian and devoted his musical life to making records in tune with his beliefs – nothing wrong with that but it did take him away from mainstream attention. As far as most of us are concerned, this song is his musical legacy. He had an instantly recognisable growling voice, once memorably described as sounding like Johnny Cash gargling ball bearings, but I will always associate that voice with this song.

That’s today’s set of five, and I hope you enjoyed some more trips down memory lane. It feels a little trivial to be playing songs of protest in the face of the dangerous world in which we currently live, but how else are people’s voices to be heard? But those in positions of power never listen anyway, do they?

And on that cheery note I wish you a pleasant week, and I’ll see you again in couple of days 😊