Unless the messages are uniquely subtle, I don’t see anything particularly leftist about the songs on “Deja Vú.” Maybe “Almost Cut My Hair,” but, really, that’s about fashion, not politics. What songs one might mistake to have a political message—for instance, “Teach Your Children” or “Woodstock”—are vague at best.
Not denying that individual members were leftists. Nor that the general vibe was unmistakably “hippy.” However, nothing on this particular album is like “For What It’s Worth,” “The Cost of Freedom,” or “American Dream.”
Your threshold for what makes a leftist album are a mite higher than mine.
Almost Cut My Hair was a lot more than a fashion statement...read the lyrics if you’re weren’t around then to remember. It was an ode to the dope and yippie feeling of being persecuted by the man.
Woodstock...an homage to the hippie and anti-war and anti-capitalism mood of the freaks?...please...I still remember the lyrics in my head....”And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation”
I was a part of that time and a believer...young dumb and full of ____, and believe me that album really crystalized that us versus them feeling....idealistic long haired pot smoking semi yippies versus the staid establishment
Teach Your Children was a lecture to about don’t let your kids be squares like the parents.
that was my take anyhow