NO SERIOUSLY: “Rockin’ in the Free World:” The Irony Continues
Several years ago, somewhere ten miles or so east of New York City, on the side of the Long Island Expressway in Queens, a billboard for the city’s only classic rock station, Q-104, read, “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World.” The billboard was facing west but was meant for the commuters heading east to the suburbs of Long Island. It’s purpose was to get them to tune in during, for what was for some, a long and brutal journey home, fighting time, as well as traffic. It’s strategy was simple. It encouraged the readers of the billboard to continue living a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle whenever they could, despite the fact most of them had been cemented into jobs long ago. If nothing else, they could still rock out in the car if they chose to, under the illusion that what they were doing still celebrated their freedoms as Americans. We, after all, live in the land of the free and in a free world, you can do anything you wish. If you want to rock out to Bad Company while driving home in a BMW, after an afternoon of getting chewed out by your boss, feel free. This is the United States of America. There are no restrictions on what an individual chooses to do. That is what seperates us from the rest of the pack: freedom.
Unfortunately, this was not the point Neil Young was looking to articulate when he wrote “Rockin’ in the Free World” in 1989 for his album, ironically enough, titled, Freedom. Q-104’s intepretation was strictly surface level and Young’s lyrics were used in order to serve the purpose of advertising, in order to draw in listeners, as well as money. Like Springsteen’s song, “Born in the USA,” “Rockin’ in the Free World” was mostly known for its imfamous chorus and the lyrics to the verses were generally ignored by the masses. As I’ve already mentioned, the song was released in 1989, just after the first George Bush took office. References to two popular phrases associated with Bush dominate the third verse of the song:
We got a thousand points of light for a homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand
The first phrase, “a thousand points of light” comes from a speech Bush made in 1988, in which he was talking about his administration’s dedication to community service:
“I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the
community organizations that are spread like stars
throughout the nation…I will go to the people
and the programs that are the brighter points of light and
I will ask every member of my government to become
involved.”
-President George H.W. Bush, 1988
When Young sings about this promise the President had made, there is a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, as if he doesn’t quite believe that Bush will actually be asking “every member” in the U.S. governnment to get involved in community organizations, which of course, is a ridiculous concept. Even if he wanted to, which was highly doubtful, a president doesn’t have time to reach out to every single person working in government. That would easily take up a year of his term. Bush’s statement was extremely far-fatched, particularly since Bush was hardly the sensitive type. His “thousand points of lights” call to arms was as believable as Superman being real and the myth that cigarettes don’t cause cancer.
But Young’s criticism of Mr. Bush doesn’t stop with this first line of the third verse. In the very next line, he continues, referencing Bush’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, in which the then vice-president called for America to be a “kinder, gentler nation.” Again, Young’s line (“A kinder, gentler machine gun hand”) is riddled with sarcasm. To Young, as well as anyone with half a brain, it seemed very unlikely that Bush, former head of the C.I.A., would take on a “kinder, gentler” approach to the presidency. He most likely was going to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, who put most of the country’s eggs in the military basket, ignoring and even dismantling some of the country’s most crucial and successful social programs. Little did Young know, however, how right he would be about Bush, particularly in regards to Operation Desert Storm, in which Bush declared war against Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq. Along with the many lives loss due to the war, Bush also promised the Kurdish population of the country that the U.S. would support them if they overthrew Hussein. When the Kurdish attempt failed and many Kurds were forced to flee, Bush abandoned them, leaving them with nowhere to go, except back to the country they had left, where many of them were executed. That hardly sounds like the “kinder, gentler nation” Bush referred to in his speech.
Young continues the third verse with some other controversial images describing life in America in 1989:
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people says, “Keep Hope Alive!”
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive
Department stores dominate the American landscape like vultures on the carcass of a baby calf. Every town in America, even the small towns, have several department stores, in which citizens can spend their hard earned money on things they don’t particularly need to survive, but want because they serve as status symbols in our society. Also, land that was once open and free of construction, in which animals could roam free and man could return to nature, has been demolished in order to make room for these department stores where the hungry shell out their dough and the greedy gladly accept it. Our “purple mountains majesty” has been replaced by Macy’s, JC Penny and Sears. And if we were to continue with the idea that Young’s song is prophetic in the sense that everything he sings about has grown exponentially since the song’s conception, then we can now include department stores Target and the most villanous of department store scoundrels, Wal-Mart, on the list of culprits taking away our land, as well as our national identity.
“Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer” are a little more rare to find these days then in 1989, which is a good thing. In recent years, evidence of global warming has proved that severe changes in our weather patterns are certain to affect the world in catastrophic ways, so in small ways, citizens and some companies in America have reacted positively by “going green,” creating efficient recycling programs and no longer using some of the things that have caused this terrible burden. Stryrofoam, however, isn’t completely a thing of the past. We can still find evidence of their existence as fans drink soda out of gigantic styrofoam cups at sporting events and leftovers in restaurant are stored in a styrofoam box and given to the costumer to take home. Still, Young was pointing out these dangers in 1989, when we were just learning about the ill effects of styrofoam and other materials dangerous to the future of the Earth. He was bringing to light the need for the country to become more environmentally aware before we reached a point in which there would be no turning back and we would suffer grave consequences.
When Young mentions “fuel to burn” in this verse, he most likely isn’t mentioning it with environmental intentions, at least not in the global warming sense. The dangers of poisonous emmissions from cars was pretty much known to the general public back in 1989, although not as intensely as today. Ultimately though, Young is probably using the image of “fuel to burn and roads to drive” as a metaphor, in regards to America burning itself out, leaving pollution in its dust (though probably not in a global warming sense but a metaphorical one) and then heading on down the road, to wherever the road takes us. Young, an avid collector of cars, has always sung about automobiles and it shouldn’t be surprised that he is capable of creating such a metaphor, using cars, the destruction it causes and the movement it makes as a symbol of America in general.
The “man of the people” saying, “Keep hope alive!” is obviously Jesse Jackson, a famous African-American community leader, who once worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and also ran for the Presidency of the United States. It is unclear why Young is mentioning Jackson. Perhaps because, as important of a leader Jackson is to the black people of this country, he has also been guilty of his own prejudices in the past, more specifically by calling New York “Himey-town” during his Presidential campaign. If this is Young’s reasoning for mentioning him, it would serve as another link in the ongoing sarcastic jabs at our society in the song. He may, however, only be mentioning him because he was a crucial player in American politics at the time, one known for the phrase, “Keep Hope Alive!” And as positive that message is, it is serves in stark contrast against the other images in this verse: the ozone layer being destroyed and a President ready to declare war, killing innocent people and sending soldiers off to die. The disparity between Jackson’s imfamous mantra and the troubles America faced was somewhat unbalanced in the favor of those that looked to cause destruction. Still, as Young concludes, there’s “roads to drive,” meaning we have to persist as a nation, hopefully improve our culture and country in the process.
Jumping back to the first verse, the introduction of the song, Young lays out the palet on which he plans to paint. He begins by singing, “There’s colors on the street, red, white and blue.” Obviously, by 
mentioning the “red, white and blue,” the colors of the American flag, he is setting up the entire song, letting us know that what he is about to sing is a portrait of America in 1989, when the song was written. Unfortunately, that portrait is somewhat bleak, one in which the homeless problem in America is at a devastating height. People are sleeping in the streets, almost freezing to death. And if we are continue this theme into the second verse, we discover Young’s description of a young woman, dumping her child in a garbage can as she takes a hit of some sort of drug. Dumping babies in grabage cans was something that seemed to appear on the nighttime news almost daily back in the late 1980’s. The stories, however, were reported with a sensationalist tint, as well as a condescending tone, in which the news reporters themselves were judging the young women that were discarding their babies. Young, however, views the entire picture as a tragic one. Being a veteran of the rock ‘n’ roll world, in which he had several friends die of drug overdoses (prompting him to write songs like “The Needle and the Damage Done”), he shows some sympathy for the young woman. He even takes a couple of lines to describe how she is feeling (e.g. “She hates her life and what she’s done with it”). He then comments on the future the child will never have. Unlike most of us, who have had our chances at love and friendship, this child will never have those opportunities because his mother was a lost soul, a tragic figure, punishing herself with drugs. These images add to an already dreary painting of America, one that consistently builds as the song moves forward.
To borrow a phrase from the mathematicians, people seem to enjoy things broken down to it’s lowest common denominator. In the case of “Rockin’ in the Free World,” Young experiences what Springsteen has with “Born in the USA,” which is an audience clueless to the ideas expressed in his song. The masses only seem to recall the chorus to this song, when the chorus is only a summing up of what the verses had articulated with more specific concepts and detailed images. It’s quite possible that Young may have been inspired by Springsteen (Springsteen’s song was written years before Young’s) when he created his own “anti-anthem,” a song in which a chorus is sung ironically, juxtaposed against gloomy, hopeless lyrics. Though some may argue differently, this is far from an elitist tactic, particularly since both Young and Springsteen sing their verses quite clearly and include the lyrics to the songs on their albums. The information is there for the listener to absorb if they are interested. Unfortunately, in both these cases, many people still don’t get the joke and they ultimately and sadly become part of the joke. They sing proudly and patrioticly to these “anti-anthems” that point out the hardships and inequalities of a system and government that has failed their people. It is only to those who have been listening attentively that the irony of these pieces comes across clearly enough.
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