Posted on 07/22/2002 8:39:11 AM PDT by Gurn
'U.S. Taliban' Inspires Controversial Ballad
Mon Jul 22,11:00 AM ET
By Aly Sujo
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - A new country-rock song that compares American Taliban John Walker Lindh to Jesus Christ is drawing both raves and howls of indignation just days after the 21-year-old pleaded guilty to aiding the former Afghan regime.
Recorded in Nashville by the maverick Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Steve Earle, "John Walker's Blues" is a stately ballad punctuated by the sound of Arabic prayers, and makes reference to Lindh's interest in music videos, boy bands, and religious fanaticism.
Over a layered backdrop of electric guitars recorded backward, the song serves as a kind of nightmarish funhouse-mirror version of Fess Parker's classic "Ballad of Davy Crockett" of the 1950s:
"We came to fight the jihad, our hearts were pure and strong.
We filled the air with our prayers and we prayed for our martyrdom.
Allah has some other plans, a secret not revealed.
Now they're dragging me back with my head in the sack to the land of the infidel.
If I should die, I'll rise up to the sky like Jesus."
The song is featured on Earle's forthcoming album "Jerusalem," which touches on a number of political and social issues including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It offers a rare sympathetic view of Lindh, the Californian dubbed the "American Taliban" after he was captured fighting alongside troops of Afghanistan ( news - web sites)'s fundamentalist Muslim rulers in November.
UNPATRIOTIC ANTHEM
Some Nashville commentators quickly labeled the song unpatriotic -- par for the course, they say, for an alternative country singer who has long challenged the down-home platitudes of mainstream country music.
"This puts him in the same category as Jane Fonda and John Walker and all those people who hate America," says Nashville talk show host Steve Gill.
"We'll give it airplay once and then it's going into the dustbin of history, where it belongs. I'm not surprised that Steve's singing about that traitor. I'm going to play it just once, and then we'll rip the shred out of it. This is not gonna be a big hit for Steve."
"I'm just an American boy, raised on MTV,
And I've seen all the kids in the soda pop bands,
But none of them look like me.
So I started looking round, and I heard the word of God.
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
of Allah, Peace be upon him."
MARXIST COUNTRY STAR
Earle has joked that he's thinking about leaving the country once the CD is released in September, and he told an audience at the Mariposa Folk Festival in Ontario earlier this month: "This song just may get me ... deported."
Earle was in Europe on July 15, when Lindh pleaded guilty to two counts of assisting the Taliban and carrying explosives, and could not be reached for comment.
In a plea deal which scrapped the government's more serious terrorism charges, Lindh agreed to serve 20 years in prison.
The ruckus over the Lindh song marks a return to the political spotlight for Earle, who irritated the Nashville establishment for years, calling himself a Marxist and joining the movement to abolish the death penalty as well as the campaign against land mines.
Earle's supporters say the outspoken singer -- who received his eighth Grammy nomination for his 2001 album "Transcendental Blues" and has won many other accolades -- will welcome controversy.
"He's a big guy," says Grant Alden, publisher of the magazine No Depression, which specializes in alternative country music. "He can take care of himself if anyone confronts him on the issue."
CHALK ONE UP FOR THE OUTLAW
Bill De Main, a Nashville-based music writer and lead singer for the band Swan Dive, says Earle's political leanings "probably finished him off in mainstream country."
Earle became an outlaw country rock star in the 1980s with "Guitar Town" and "Copperhead Road," but his heroin addiction nearly cost him his career.
He got sober after he was arrested for drug possession and spent three weeks in jail, and launched a successful comeback with his own Warner Brothers-distributed record label.
The new album's political agenda, which comes at a time of corporate conservatism, was encouraged by Artemis Records' outspoken chief Danny Goldberg, who once tussled with then-Sen. Al Gore ( news - web sites)'s wife Tipper over rock lyrics and censorship.
Earle has said that the new material serves as his response to the more reactionary elements of post-Sept. 11 politics.
A smattering of like-minded New Yorkers who heard an advance copy of the Lindh song said they were enthusiastic.
"Steve Earle is standing up against the new patriotism, the 'You're with us or you're against us' mentality," said Joan Hirsch, manager of Revolution Bookstore, which stocks anti-war pamphlets and leftist literature.
"(The song) speaks of the U.S. demonization of anyone who would go against the traditional American way," Hirsch said. "It's important for people to come to the defense of artists who are speaking out."
But Martha Bayles, author of "Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music" and a literature professor at Claremont McKenna College in California, said Earle's apparent identification with Lindh reflected "a psychological need to repeat the good old days of the radical 60s, just like Mom and Dad."
"Never mind whether the cause makes any sense -- the point is to march in the streets and get on TV. It sounds as if Earle is singing to this crowd," Bayles said.
I joked that that was saying a lot, for him. He made no mention of his Taliban John song.
Steve is dead-wrong about everything, politically, as far as I'm concerned. But he's the greatest songwriter in America.
And it doesn't suprise me one wit that some weeney, "lamestream" Nashville radio guy is condemning Steve in advance.
Better he should shut up and spin the next Tim McGraw record, which I'm sure will say absolutley nothing of substance.
He's always been political, and he's always been leftist, that is, wrong.
But he's still the greatest songwriter in America.
Martha Bayles says it all.
They ought to title this story:
Found, a Smart Media Specialist
I hope he bumps into Toby Keith out on the road somewhere.
"This song just may get me ... deported." <<
Sounds like an admission that the song is anti-american, pro "Johnny Taliban."
To hell with him.
And they're against one overriding thing that you didn't mention, and that the radical Islamic movement is also dead set against: Capitalism.
I said it in the other thread about this, and I'll say it again here; If I only listened to people who were right of the political spectrum, I'd have a very small music library.
Say what you want about Steve's politics, but his music has more heart, soul, and conviction in it than all the rest of Nashville put together.
Well, I'm not a country fan; never have been. Growing up in the South in the 70s, the "cool kids" were rock/no country, and the "redneck kids" were country/no rock.
However, how does your description square with the fact that Garth Brooks is on most peoples' Top 10 list of greatest country artists ever?
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