Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of a amateur performer (I guess) covering Bob Dylan's John Brown. Sorry, I could find no clip of Dylan doing the song. Singer-songwriter, professional folk version, Eric Andersen did a cover, if you can find it.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
***********
Markin comment:
The next time someone argues with you that it is unpatriotic, treasonable, bad form or just plain, ordinary cowardice to question the notion of young men and women going off to fight Obama’s Afghan and Iraq wars just direct them to Bob Dylan’s John Brown. In several verses he says all that needs to be said about so-called patriotic fervor in “supporting” the troops, no, not just supporting them but pushing them, seemingly at bayonet’s point, to the front. (You can also fill in the appropriate president’s name depending on which one is in power at the time and you can also fill in the appropriate war, or wars, depending on the time of the argument, although Afghanistan might be a correct fill-in for a long time to come unless we can turn the tables on that war now.)
Needless to say that this is a very different John Brown than the one the reader is used to seeing in this space. Our beloved John Brown, late of Harper’s Ferry, was a hero in the struggle for human emancipation. Dylan’s ordinary young soldier is more a victim, or, plainly speaking, mere cannon-fodder for some imperial design. In that sense his lyrics here stand in the tradition of his much better known Masters Of War written in the same time period. What comes to mind even more fully though is to compare its sentiment to that evoked in Dalton Trumbo’s World War I-centered, anti-war classic novel, Johnny Got His Gun. Trumbo’s Johnny had all the same impulses for glory, medals and the girls, as Dylan’s John Brown. When, unfortunately too late, the horribly wounded Johnny got “hip” to the war question and asked, begged, to be put on display at war bond rallies and such it was too late. When John Brown slips his mother those vaunted medals he also got “hip”, again too late. Read Trumbo and listen to Dylan.
It has been a while since there has been a draft system to fill out the armed forces in America (and here I am not referring to the de facto economic draft that places our working class sons and daughters, white, black, and brown in harm’s way in disproportionate numbers, as cannon fodder, but the universal conscription system used when I was young) so many Americans may not be fully aware of the sentiments expressed in Dylan’s lyrics, the notion that a mother, any mother, would, willingly, push her son (or daughter) into military service for glory, medals or fighting some unnamed enemy of the hour.
Lately, for the last several years at least, at many of the peace rallies that I have attended there is usually a representative speaking for Military Families For Peace or some such organization that signifies that they too have gotten “hip” on the war question. What seems to be universally true is that in this overwhelmingly working class element of the anti-war movement (probably most prominently represented several years ago by Gold Star Mother, Cindy Sheehan, in her struggles to get ex-President George W. Bush’s attention) the initial pride, patriotism, and sense of glory turned to ashes when the deal went down. The simple, ubiquitous yellow ribbon didn’t mean a damn thing beyond some superficial nod to that service.
Let me say that on this question I speak from some experience, although somewhat from the opposition direction. My growing-up working class neighborhood provided more than its fair share of soldiers and other military personnel for the various stages of the Vietnam War. Although, I am sure, every mother exhibited the usual anxieties about military service for her sons during war time no one, at least publicly, called for opposition to the Vietnam War early on (and later, when it was practically de rigueur to oppose it even in the working class quarters to do so quietly without public fanfare). When I was called to military duty and “turned commie” in the process for opposing the war while in uniform, as my own mother related to me concerning the opinions of other neighbor mothers, this was so “abnormal” that I was officially disinvited from many homes.
And truth be known, my own working class mother, although there was a very strong strand of the Catholic Worker movement in her was not immune to that pressure, and that criticism coming from her friends, the “shawlies” (although in the end she was a stalwart supporter). Here is the kicker though, the guy who you would think would go the other way, the guy who went through World War II with the Marines in the Guadalcanal campaign and other savage South Pacific actions, quietly, as was his manner but in his own manly way was most supportive from day one (although he did not personally agree with my stance for a number of reasons that I will write about at another time). Yes, my father. See, he was “hip” to war, the hard Johnny and John Brown way. So like I said before when they come, like vultures, at you for not “supporting” the troops, or some such argument show that you are “hip” and run this song at them. Oh, and scream to the high heavens, Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries (and whoever else they have running around) From Afghanistan And Iraq!
***********
John Brown Lyrics- Bob Dylan
John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin
“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”
As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood
She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war
Oh! Good old-fashioned war!
Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”
She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes
Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face
“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away
“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”
“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”
Oh! Lord! Just like mine!
“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”
As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand
Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music
No comments:
Post a Comment