Shaun Richman

One of fascism’s most insidious tendencies is to warp history with revisionist interpretations. The National Review’s recent list of the 50 conservative rock songs of all time is a contemptible attempt to claim protest music for the forces of reaction. Freedom is, indeed, slavery and rock is Republican if you believe these pinheads. I see no more than twelve actually conservative rock songs here (and that’s being generous with Sammy Hagar’s weenie complaint about the “nanny state,” “I Can’t Drive 55”).

Some of the 50 are non-political songs given a right-wing spin by the magazine, like the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?,” an innocent song about dopey teenagers daydreaming about living together which National Review interprets as a paean to marriage and abstinence. My filthy mind interprets it as a post-coital parting of two teenage lovers who would rather spend the night together than sneak back home. Similarly, where National Review hears a “law-and-order classic” in “I Fought the Law,” it sounds more like an anti-establishment classic when covered by the Clash and Dead Kennedys.

Context is crucial, but the National Review ignores and obscures context when reinterpreting these songs. Sure, the Band sang “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” from a Confederate perspective, but it’s storytelling. On the same record, they also sang from a pro-farmworkers union perspective on “King Harvest,” declaring “I’m a union man all the way!” And to declare Bowie’s “Heroes” as some kind of anti-Communist ballad is to ignore the prominent quotation marks around the song’s title, signaling Bowie’s ironic detachment (Jakob Dylan made the same grave error in his overly earnest cover).

Most galling is the usurpation of the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” as the #1 “conservative” rock song of all time. Pete Townshend’s “pox on both your houses” fury has been particularly misinterpreted since it became a staple of post-9/11 airplay. The context of the song is that it comes after the British elections of 1970, when the Conservatives defeated the Labour Party, whom Townshend had supported and in whose leadership he was disappointed for acting just like the Conservatives and squandering their opportunity. (“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”) A rank-and-file complaint about the Labour Party not being left-wing enough is a bit of a stretch as a “conservative” anthem.

Further stretching brings the Rolling Stones of the 1960’s into the conservative ranks. Nevermind that young Mick Jagger had a political conscience and compass and was mulling a run for Parliament as a Labour Party candidate at this time, because clearly his playing the role of the Devil is a clever use of moral relativism to to critique…um, er, Bolshevism! And “what you need” in “You Can’t Always get What You Want” is apparently neo-liberal hegemony, and not a break-up with your girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, the one with the bloodstained hands from her drug-induced miscarriage.

Bloody fetuses abound on this list. Graham Parker’s frankly gruesome “You Can’t Be Too Strong” (“Did they tear it out with talons of steel, and give you a shot so that you wouldn’t feel?”) is mistaken for a criticism of the right to choose. No, he’s just calling a spade a spade, much like his current labelmate, Jon Langford’s band the Mekons who exclaimed “Chop That Child in Half!” twenty years ago, before updating the song as the less ambiguously pro-choice “Born to Choose.”

The Sex Pistols’ anti-abortion anthem, “Bodies,” is one of the genuinely conservative songs on the list. What a pisser that the only explicitly political song of the flagship band of the punk era had to be reactionary. Blame Johnny Rotten’s Irish Catholic upbringing.

The Beatles’ “Taxman” is also pretty fucking reactionary. A bunch of pampered rockstars whining about too much of their vast fortune being taxed to pay for universal health care and social security? Boo-fucking-hoo.

Skynnard’s “Sweet Home Alabama” is undeniably reactionary. But who has the nerve to be proud of segregation and Gov. Wallace?

The one elegantly conservative song on the list is the Kinks’ “20th Century Man.” Ray Davies is a curmudgeon, the kind who can complain about the government razing bombed-out tenements to make room for inhabitable new homes, but he is still eloquent when he sings about tradition and history and fears or too much artificial change. He is a genuine conservative, not some lying, deceitful right-winger. If there were more of him, the National Review could fill out a proper list without stealing from the left.