Rock and pop stars are taking to the stage with three chords and a few anti-Bush truths. With the election so tight, could pop culture sway the swing voters? Brian Boyd reports
We know Tony Blair played bad rhythm guitar in a bad college band; we know Bill Clinton still plays bad saxophone, but the first real rock 'n' roll politician was in fact Jimmy Carter. Before Carter, the relationship between musicians and politicians was easy. Musicians viewed politicians as "straights" and politicians viewed musicians as "long-haired weirdos".
President Carter changed the relationship irrevocably; a relationship that is now so intertwined that Bruce Springsteen can write an editorial for the New York Times, in which he (or the writer) shows an impressive knowledge of both US domestic and foreign policy and makes a passionate plea for "regime change" in the upcoming US election. An election so tight that pop culture may make all the difference.
The 1976 US election was the first presidential campaign that had any rock 'n' roll or pop music content. It happened only because the head of a record company was so fervently pro-Carter that he ordered two of the acts on his books - The Marshall Tucker Band and The Allman Brothers - to go out and tour in support of the Carter campaign.
In the upcoming election, it sometimes seems that courting the endorsement of a rock band is just as important as that of the Hispanic vote. You're no one on the stump now without some leather-clad rocker in the background plugging in his amplifier ready to "Rock The Vote".
John Kerry is currently beating them away with a stick - Springsteen, R.E.M., OutKast, the Dixie Chicks, P. Diddy, Jon Bon Jovi - and thousands more acts have all thrown their weight behind the Democratic challenger; George W. Bush, meanwhile, is stuck in a small soundcheck room with only two "out and proud" musical friends: the negligible appeal of Lynyrd Skynrd and Kid Rock. Britney Spears has expressed support for the regime without performing at Republican fund-raisers.
What is interesting is that prior to this election, you could round up the usual musical suspects to support/ endorse any amount of nonpartisan causes: Artists against Apartheid, No Nukes (against nuclear power), various African famine appeals, and the campaign for Tibetan independence from China. Musicians, however, wary of the varied political make-up of their paying audience, usually stopped short of an actual endorsement of a single party. Until now.
In the rock 'n' roll world over the last few years it was practically a necessity to be anti-Bush, but to be actually pro-Kerry was perhaps a step too far. It's a dilemma facing R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, who damns Kerry with the faintest of praise when saying: "I respect him as much as I respect any politician", before going on to say that being pro-Kerry is simply the most effective way of voting Bush out: "The job is to get Bush out - I'd have almost anyone who isn't a convicted killer in his place".
SPRINGSTEEN WENT A bit further along the Kerry support spectrum when writing in the New York Times: "I believe Kerry and [running mate, John] Edwards are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way towards honest solutions. They understand that we need an administration that places a priority on fairness, openness and humility. The Bush administration dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited."
Springsteen's editorial provoked harsh criticism from elements of his sizeable fan-base. "Boycott The Boss" read one Internet posting, which continued: "He thinks making millions with a song-and-dance routine allows him to tell you how to vote. Here's my vote: Boycott him. If you don't buy his politics, don't buy his music".
Another "fan" posting observed that "Bruce Springsteen is a total left-wing tool. I won't be buying any of his albums in the future, nor concert tickets."
R.E.M. also report that their support of Kerry has meant a "small" number of their fans have thrown out all their records.
The problem for Bush, says one musician, is that "a lot of groups think that if they campaign for him, they're going to be counted as mean-spirited, right-wing Christians". Historically, Republicans could always count on vocal support from white country 'n' western acts - but pro-Bush acts, such as Ricky Skaggs, really don't have Outkast's media profile - or, indeed, cachet.
There was hope that Toby Keith, whose flag-waving anthem Courtesy of The Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) topped the charts for a few months after September 11th, 2001, could be rounded up for the Bush campaign, but it turned out Keith is a registered Democrat.
Just last week, Springsteen (along with a number of other Democrat-supporting musical acts) brought his "Vote For Change" tour to certain crucial swing states. Also on the tour was John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival who last campaigned on a musical/political level against the Vietnam war. Strangely, in 1969, Fogerty wrote the anti-war anthem Fortunate Son - the lyrics mention a "senator's son" who pulls strings to avoid going to war (this coincidence didn't escape the attention of Michael Moore, who has included Fortunate Son on the soundtrack album of Fahrenheit 9/11). Fogerty provided a living link between the previous Vietnam war protests and the current Iraq War protests.
The Republicans have now admitted defeat on the electoral music front. There are plenty of well-known, huge-selling rock bands in the US - all of whom benefited generously from George W. Bush's tax breaks for the very rich and are as pro-Republican as they come - who will tell you that they would have made a musical stand for Bush only for, ironically, the treatment meted out to the Dixie Chicks a few years ago.
After making hostile remarks about George W. Bush during a concert in London, The Dixie Chicks arrived back in the US to find their records had been "banned" from many US radio stations - and in some extreme cases, their CDs were being ritually burned by hardcore Republican voters. Similarly, when Linda Ronstadt, during a concert in Las Vegas last July, dedicated a song to Michael Moore, calling him "a great American patriot", the audience booed her off the stage.
Pro-Bush musicians feared a reverse backlash if they took a political stand.Nevertheless, this election has provoked an unprecedented amount of musical activity (however one-sided). Observers, though, see it as a one-off.
Prof James Stroupe of the University of Virginia's Centre For Politics argues that rock stars urging people to vote "may create the sense that this is the chic thing to do this year, but it's not likely to create sustained behaviour".
And will any amount of rock star endorsement change anything? The polls within polls after the election may answer that. But it's worth remembering that a recent survey of voters newly registered for this election revealed that four out of 10 of them are evangelical Christians. It may yet come down to the Church Choir vs the Rock Band.