"Won't Get Fooled Again" top rock song for conservatives

[L. Bird]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/arts/music/25rock.html

Listening to Rock and Hearing Sounds of Conservatism

By BEN SISARIO
Published: May 25, 2006

It is a primal moment in rock. In the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," Roger 
Daltrey sings about gladly fighting in the street for a "new revolution," 
and with a virtual mushroom cloud of guitar behind him, lets out a fearless 
cry. But what is the political message?

Classic conservatism, says National Review, the venerable conservative 
magazine, which in its latest issue offers a list of the "top 50 
conservative rock songs of all time." Its No. 1 choice is "Won't Get Fooled 
Again," which ends with the cynical acceptance that nothing really changes 
in revolution: "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss."

"It is in my view a counterrevolutionary song," John J. Miller, the author 
of the article, said in a phone interview yesterday. "It's the notion that 
revolutions are often failures, like the French Revolution leading to 
Napoleon. The song is skeptical about revolutionary idealism in the end, and 
that's a very conservative idea."

Among the other conservative ideas that Mr. Miller found in the songs — most 
of them hits, many of them classics — are opposition to taxation ("Taxman" 
by the Beatles, at No. 2) and a preference for abstinence before marriage 
("Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys, at No. 5).

Mr. Miller, 36, a political reporter for the magazine, said the list was 
meant to take issue with the idea that rock's politics are essentially 
liberal, and to offer an alternative view.

"Any claim that rock is fundamentally revolutionary is just kind of silly," 
he said. "It's so mainstream that it puts them" — liberals — "in the 
position of saying that at no time has there ever been a rock song that 
expressed a sentiment that conservatives can appreciate. And that's just 
silly. In fact here are 50 of them."

Asked to comment on the list, Dave Marsh, the longtime rock critic and 
avowed lefty, saw it as a desperate effort by the right to co-opt popular 
culture. "What happened was, my side won the culture war, in the sense that 
rock and related music is the dominant musical form, not only in the U.S. 
but around the world," he said. "Once you lose that battle, you lose the 
war, and then a different kind of battle begins: the battle over meaning."

The list comes at a time when liberal protest songs are gaining popularity. 
Public approval of the Bush administration and the Iraq war is at a low, and 
the patriotic sentiments expressed in some rock and country songs in the 
aftermath of 9/11 seem to have vanished.

Mr. Miller's criteria were broad: the songs had to be good and express 
classically conservative ideas "such as skepticism of government or support 
for traditional values." Mr. Miller posted an item on the magazine's Web 
site, www.nationalreview.com, late last year and received hundreds of 
responses, he said.

The choices, accompanied by quotations from the lyrics and pithy remarks by 
Mr. Miller, can be surprisingly persuasive. (The entire list, with 
explanations, is at nytimes.com/arts.) Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" 
(No. 4) is "a tribute to the region that liberals love to loathe," and "Der 
Kommissar" by After the Fire (No. 24) is praised for criticizing Communist 
East Germany. A few seem a stretch, like Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" 
(No. 38), called "a rocker's objection to the nanny state."

Mr. Miller said that in choosing the songs, "I made an effort for a fair 
amount of diversity" in the ages of the artists represented. But the list is 
also overwhelmingly white and male. Among the few black or female artists 
are Living Colour ("Cult of Personality," No. 18) and Chrissie Hynde of the 
Pretenders ("My City Was Gone," No. 13), Dolores O'Riordan of the 
Cranberries ("The Icicle Melts," No. 41) and Tammy Wynette ("Stand by Your 
Man," N0. 50).

Sean Wilentz, the Princeton history professor, who has also written liner 
notes for Bob Dylan, said it was no surprise that such ideas can be traced 
through rock. "Of course there's 'conservatism' in rock 'n' roll," he wrote 
in an e-mail message. "There's everything in rock 'n' roll, just as there's 
everything in America."