published on August 29, 2024 in Informative Details

GULF WAR SONGS, OUT OF TUNE

What if they gave a war and it was over before anybody could write a song about it?

Well, the Persian Gulf conflict wasn't quite that quick, but an awful lot of opportunistic music became instantly outdated at the end of the 100-hour ground war. In fact, bad timing all around is likely to ensure that we won't remember this war through song the way we did Vietnam.

For instance: The Lenny Kravitz-Sean Lennon-Peace Choir update on John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" was released the day the air war started and while the multi-star video got lots of MTV airplay, the single -- like Randy Newman's "Lines in the Sand" -- got very little commercial exposure. At the other end of the war, Fox telecast a documentary on the making of the celebrity choir "Voices That Care" the day after the cease-fire was declared; around the same time, the Rolling Stones, long known for their lack of haste in the studio, weighed in with "Highwire," written in December, recorded in January. And Tony Orlando has just released "With Every Yellow Ribbon (That's Why We Tie 'Em)," a rotten variation on his 1973 anthem, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree."

The Stones' song, which has the group's classic rhythmic punch, is critical of arms-for-oil trade-offs ("we sell 'em missiles, we sell 'em tanks/ we give 'em credit, you can call up the bank/ it's just a business, you can pay us in crude"). It also expresses concern for the soldiers on the front lines, but suggests that "sometimes dictators need a slap on the wrist/ another Munich we just can't afford/ we gonna send in the 82nd Airborne." We already did, Mick, we already did.

"Voices That Care," described by USA Today as "an all-star singing telegram to U.S. troops," may be returned to senders since the troops are already heading home. It was rushed to radio in late February, but the record wasn't released until this week. The decidedly undistinguished pop song was created by producer David Foster (he co-wrote "Not by Tears Alone," the Canadian version of "We Are the World") and Linda Thompson Jenner, who gathered the 100 celebrities (as many actors and athletes as singers). One artist appears on both "Give Peace a Chance" and "Voices That Care" -- Little Richard, who thankfully muffles the wop-bopa-lu-bops.

Orlando's "With Every Yellow Ribbon" isn't likely to get the ride his original did when the Iranian hostages came home in 1981; like "Voices That Care," it's ill-timed, with lyrics like "we know you're facing the edge of a storm/ but you're not alone any more, no, not in this war." A yellow ribbon (the tradition goes back to the Civil War, not to Orlando) did make it onto one Rolling Stone cover (apparently to the chagrin of many staff writers); Spin played it safe by going with a spread on peace fashions.

The song that got the most exposure, not surprisingly, was Whitney Houston's "Star-Spangled Banner," advertised by Arista "as performed at the Super Bowl." Maybe the company that brought us Milli Vanilli is a little publicity-shy, particularly after it was revealed that Houston's stunning performance was prerecorded at a Los Angeles studio several days before the game; Arista says Houston didn't just lip-sync but sang along live, though she was inaudible to the stadium crowd. Oddly enough, the Florida Orchestra supporting Houston was also playing live, but its microphones were off, so Houston was hearing a tape of it on the monitors.

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This week, "The Star-Spangled Banner" is No. 21 (with a bullet) on the Billboard charts (five places behind Houston's "All the Man That I Need") and is rapidly approaching platinum sales status (CDs and cassettes include a Houston reading of "America the Beautiful," recorded in the studio at the same time). And shades of Madonna, there's also a hot-selling video single version available. This is the highest the national anthem has charted since Jose Feliciano's version in 1969. Not surprisingly, Houston will star in a "Welcome Home Heroes" concert for HBO on Sunday, March 31.

The war was good for a number of acts with "appropriate" songs on albums that had already peaked commercially (Bette Midler's Grammy-winning "From a Distance," Oleta Adams's "Get Here," George Michael's "Mother's Pride" and Styx's "Show Me the Way"), but whether any of these songs will have the impact 20 years down the line of Edwin Starr's "War" remains to be seen. Country radio accented support-the-boys, fly-the-flag and stomp-Saddam Hussein songs, and pop radio hugged the middle of the road as always.

Urban and rock radio leaned toward classic protest songs from the Vietnam era: Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," Freda Payne's "Bring the Boys Home," "War" (the Starr original and Springsteen's cover), Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers," the Doors' "Unknown Soldier," Lennon's original "Give Peace a Chance" and Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" (not the indecipherable version he rendered on the Grammys, the one many failed to recognize as Dylan's sharp attack on the political-military-industrial complex). Veteran pacifist Pete Seeger took to performing a revised version of Country Joe and the Fish's classic "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag": "Come on all you young men and women/ Uncle Sam needs your help down near Yemen/ Got himself into some terrible strife/ defending a lubricated way of life."

Rhino Records recently released "Songs of Protest," including "War," Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," and "Fixin' to Die." But this is a surprisingly lifeless collection from a company that usually does much better with its compilations: The only Dylan is Manfred Mann's "With God on Our Side," and there's but one Phil Ochs song, an electric version of "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore." You could do a whole album of Ochs, of whom it was said that his anti-war songs fell somewhere between pacifism and treason. Even Ochs conceded that the public didn't listen to his protest songs because it couldn't accept "blunt truth served on a negative platter."

That may be the major difference between Vietnam and the Persian Gulf: This has turned out to be a popular war, one fought by a volunteer army, backed by state-of-the-art weaponry and supported by a great majority of the people. Not just a war, but a just war and a short one, not a long war fought in the midst of a countercultural uprising. All this has probably given well-known artists pause, particularly if they wanted to offer anti-war positions at a time when the music industry and the establishment are sometimes indistinguishable. The sound of silence was surprising. Apparently it's easier to express anti-war sentiments in times of peace and harder to criticize the war without seeming to criticize our troops (another Vietnam guilt-associated lesson).

There has been a glut of songs by deservedly unknown writers and performers, on vanity labels, or custom tapes sent to local radio stations and newspapers looking for angles. They take either of two paths: one maudlin and sentimental, focusing on absent soldiers and their families; the other, jingoistic and confrontational, focusing on Saddam Hussein specifically, and Iraqis in general. Luckily, the end of the war means they no longer have to be discussed.

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