Frankendesign

Rock Without Rollers
John Patterson

The Guardian | 02 August 2002

You can usually count on Nashville to formulate the most reactionary responses to political crises. Check out Merle Haggard's 1969 classic The Fightin' Side of Me, in which Merle bollocks "some squirty guy who don't believe in fightin'." Sergeant Barry Sadler's Ballad of The Green Berets - a defence of the My Lai murderers - wasn't straight country, but you can bet it sold big in the old Confederacy. So far, the loudest country-music response to the September 11 attacks has been Lee Greenwood's syrupy anthem I Love America.

The odd man out is Steve Earle, who describes himself as "somewhat to the left of Mao". Red of both neck and political complexion, Earle has recorded a song for his new album called John Walker's Blues, in which he tries to imagine what was going through the mind of American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh.

He must have known there would be problems: he introduced the song on stage in Canada recently with the words, "This song just may get me fuckin' deported." Back in America, Steve Gill, a rightwing talk-show host in Nashville, predictably condemned it without listening. "This puts Earle in the same category as Jane Fonda and John Walker, and all those who hate America," he shrieked.

Fox News and the New York Post beat their drums in unison, with headlines like "Twisted Ballad Honors Tali-Rat", and claimed that the song "glorified" Walker and called him "Jesus-like." Untrue.

All of which goes to prove that the right will bear down on a leftwing artist because he's on the left, and not because of any serious attempt to understand what he is saying. In his defence, Earle says, "I'm trying to make clear that wherever [Walker] got to, he didn't arrive there in a vacuum. My son Justin is Walker's age. Would I be upset if he suddenly turned up fighting for the Islamic Jihad? Absolutely. Fundamentalism, as practised by the Taliban, is the enemy of real
thought, and religion too."

Can't put it any plainer than that, can you? But it won't have any effect on his critics: they won't be satisfied until Earle strips to the waist and builds them a 50ft statue of Joseph McCarthy right there on Music Row.
more information ]www.steveearle.com