SLS: Lives In The Balance

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As he tells us in his post Power Dynamics etc Jim is inviting us to play a song that relates to civil rights, oppression, protest, revolution or social change for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday. I used ‘protest’ as a theme for a mini-series of Tuesday Tunes posts a while back, and thought about going back to one of the songs I featured in that, but instead have chosen something different. This is one of the angriest songs I know, and the unofficial video I’m playing for it really drives home the points it makes.

In case you missed the clue in my title, this is my song for this week:

And here are the lyrics, courtesy as always of genius.com.

Lives In The Balance was written by Jackson Browne and was the title track of an album he released in February 1986. He has always had a social conscience in his lyrics, but this was the first time he had been so overtly political in his music. As you will have seen and heard, the song is a very strong protest against the Reagan government and its policies, particularly in respect of Central America. Not only was it an accurate comment, it was also prophetic, as Wikipedia tells us

“Months before the Iran-contra scandal broke in the press, according to the 1989 Rolling Stone article “The 100 Best Albums of the Eighties,” Browne sang on “Lives in the Balance” of wanting “‘to know who the men in the shadows are/I want to hear somebody asking them why.’ After the arms-for-hostages deals hit the news, the increased public awareness of the U.S. government’s covert war in Nicaragua prompted Browne to produce and pay for a video for ‘Lives in the Balance’ well after the album had passed its peak in terms of sales. Discussing the song at the time of the video’s release, Browne said, ‘I imply that the truth is kept from us on a regular basis. I flat out say the government lies. Well, these things are no longer heresy.”

I’m sorry but I can’t find the video referred to there: I would have played it if I could!

The song has backing from members of Sangre Machehual, a Los Angeles Nueva Canción group. The band thought it was a prank when Browne called them up and asked them if they would play on the album, according to member Hugo Pedroza. Pedroza plays charango and tiple, Jorge Strunz plays nylon string guitar, and Quique Cruz plays zampoña. Percussionist Deborah Dobkin (who I’ve seen in concert with Richard Thompson) and actress Mindy Sterling provide harmony vocals. I’ve left Wikipedia’s links in, if you want to know more about the instruments being played: the zampona is the pan pipe that gives the song a distinctive feel.

Jackson also released a live version of the song on his album Solo Acoustic Vol. 1, which came out in October 2005. For this one there is an official video, and I thought I’d share that too:

By the time of that release the US and its allies were four years into the War in Afghanistan, the response to the dreadful events of 9/11. This gave the song a renewed relevance, though the background to this war was perhaps more understandable than previous military campaigns in the Middle East: the 1991 Gulf War was, basically, justified on lies told by governments in the US and the UK – remember those non-existent ‘weapons of mass destruction?’

It is a sobering thought that, forty years on from the first release of this song, it is all happening again. The US is engaged in a war with Iran that the US started but can’t as yet find a way to resolve, and as telling lies is the speciality of its so-called President, who can foretell what might be revealed at some point? Mind you, given that he and his cronies change their stories by the minute it is perhaps easier to spot the lies nowadays.

Jim asked us to play a song of protest. I think this one fits the bill.

36 thoughts on “SLS: Lives In The Balance”

    • Thank you, Lisa. I couldn’t think of a better fit for the theme. But when I bought the album forty years ago I could never have imagined that history would still be repeating itself now.

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  5. Clive, thank you for sharing this song and for your write-up on it. First time hearing it and the video is very affecting. There is a big difference between End This War and Endless War. As long as money is being made, wars will continue. A local aerospace company is tripling its workforce, and that says just as much as the headlines. We are nothing more than war fodder to the warmongers and probably worth much less in their eyes. What is it going to take to stop the madness?

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  10. It’s a distressing thought, but government lies don’t have the same impact they had during, say, the Pentagon Papers publication. Like you say, telling lies is Trump’s specialty, so he’s helped create that “new normal.” If people’s ideology is satiated, leadership lies are no big thing. They just look the other way. It would be nice to think Browne’s and other protest songs have an impact, but I’m not sure they do.

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  11. Great choice, Clive going with this song where Jackson Browne questions the official rhetoric that frames U.S. involvement abroad as “coming to the aid of a friend”, arguing instead that the government supports oppressive regimes for business and corporate interests while ordinary people suffer.  The Iran-Contra affair was one of the most complex political scandals in U.S. history because it secretly linked two completely separate foreign policy issues, the secret arms sales to Iran and covert funding for Nicaraguan rebels (Contras).  In the mid-1980s, the administration of President Ronald Reagan was trying to get the American hostages freed from Beirut and support the Contras who were fighting against the Sandinistas, a communist-leaning government in Nicaragua.  However, Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which strictly banned the U.S. government from providing any financial or military aid to the Contras.

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  12. This is such an amazing song with a powerful message. It’s shameful and criminal how the leaders of every country in the world repeatedly and continuously lie to their people …. a problem that has existed since the world began, which does not in any way make it acceptable.

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