- Back in the days when this was a free country, it was
possible to sing an antiwar song like "Masters of War" without
having to give the Secret Service a second thought.
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- But 41 years after Bob Dylan recorded his elegiac, acoustically
spare meditation on the folly of war, the lyrics are still causing trouble
with those H.L.Mencken referred to as the "booboisie."
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- Last week, radio talk shows in Colorado were abuzz over
a local punk band's plans to cover "Masters of War" at a Friday
night talent show at Boulder High School. Rumors about the band, which
drolly calls itself the Coalition of the Willing, prompted calls to the
Secret Service in Denver because of alleged threats against President Bush.
The "threat" consisted of the following copyrighted lyrics:
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- "Let me ask you one question / Is your money that
good? / Will it buy you forgiveness? / Do you think that it could? / I
think you will find / When your death takes its toll / All the money you
made / Will never buy back your soul.
- "And I hope that you die / And your death will come
soon / I will follow your casket / In the pale afternoon / And I'll watch
while you're lowered / Down to your death bed / And I'll stand over your
grave / 'Til I'm sure that you're dead."
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- Never mind that the intent of the song was to use a corpse
as a metaphor for the Cold War-era U.S. military, people still called talk
shows in Boulder insisting that the lyrics were about assassinating George
Bush! These days, high school students who call themselves the Coalition
of the Willing are assumed to be seditious until proven innocent.
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- Bob Dylan was standing on less controversial ground four
decades ago when he wrote what would became the third-most-covered antiwar
song in recording history.
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- In "Masters of War," Dylan was echoing President
Eisenhower's parting words to the country in 1961 -- a blunt warning about
the military industrial complex and its corrosive effects on American life.
Ike's words were still an important part of the public conversation when
Dylan's song hit the airwaves nearly two years later.
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- But as clever as the lyrics were, they weren't particularly
radical. If anything, Dylan's observations, though laced with bitterness
and poetic license, were a distillation of conventional wisdom:
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- "You fasten the triggers / For the others to fire
/ Then you sit back and watch / When the death count gets higher / You
hide in your mansion / As young people's blood / Flows out of their bodies
/ And is buried in the mud."
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- Decades after the trauma of Vietnam, the public's attitude
toward the military has become less skeptical than it was at the beginning
of the Cold War. Since 9/11, most Americans prefer to let the yellow ribbons
on their car bumpers debate the issues for them. "Support the Troops"
has become shorthand for "Don't Ask Questions." In the context
of today's politics, the lyrics to "Masters of War" can't help
but come across as both radical and prophetic.
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- A day before the talent show, the Secret Service paid
a visit to Boulder High School and corralled the school's principal, who
quickly vouched for his students' patriotism. Most of the chatter that
had been swirling on talk radio about the band was nonsense, but the Secret
Service had to check it out. Rather than risk another second of embarrassment,
the agency quickly cleared the band.
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- The next night, the Coalition of the Willing performed
before a sold-out crowd of young people who'd gotten a crash course on
the threat to their civil liberties. An American flag was the band's only
backdrop, signaling the anarchy in their souls.
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- Though cleared of treason, the C.O.W. must have taken
delight in singing the song's most prescient lyrics:
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- "How much do I know / To talk out of turn? / You
might say that I'm young / You might say I'm unlearned / But there's one
thing I know / Though I'm younger than you / Even Jesus would never forgive
what you do."
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