Hello everyone ! Welcome on this blog ! Today I will present you a famous protest song of the 60s : For What It's Worth, by Buffalo Sprinfield. Enjoy !
The lyrics
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over
there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop,
children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's
wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from
behind
It's time we stop, hey, what's
that sound
Everybody look what's going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's s time we stop, hey, what's
that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always
afraid
You step out of line, the man
come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what's that
sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Video
Buffalo Spingfield is a band of
the 60s, from Los Angeles, who had a really short musical carrier.
Released in 1967, For what it's worth is their only hit.
Ranked 63rd on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest
Songs of All Time, it is considered as an important protest song in
the USA, we can hear it in famous movies, like in Forrest Gump for
example.
Lyrics analysis and context
Let's start by taking a look at
the title: For what it's worth is a kind of question to people
like “do we really need to go that far?”. Even if the title is
not mentioned in the song, it's like a call to people to show them a
sort of disproportion between what people do and how the government
answers. The legend says that Stephen Stills, the member of the band
who wrote the song gave it to the band telling them: “I have this
song here, for what it's worth, if you want it.”.
The song starts with “There's
something happening here”, it sets up the atmosphere of the song,
there are changes, something new and not really good. This is
actually an allusion to what the government did a year before the
released of the song. They changed the law about the curfew and
closed bars and night clubs to prevent young people to hang out late
at night.
We understand that the song
targets the young people, those who are concerned by this law. The
words “young people” are said and the chorus calls them
directly:“hey children”. The third stanza shows that young people
were not passive and demonstrated. There were “a thousand people in
the street” to fight for their freedom. We can link this to an
event that happened a year before the song was released. Indeed, in
the summer of 1966, in Los Angeles, happened what we call the Sunset
Strip Riots. This is a period after the decision to change the hour
of curfew. Among the demonstrations that took place, few members of
the band assisted to one of them, in a night club, the Pandora Box.
Teenagers came to claim their rights and the police answered roughly.
The song actually evokes something violent: “there's a man with a
gun” and “battle lines”, what makes think of a conflict. By the
way, the end of the song shows that people don't feel safe in the
world they live. There is “paranoia” and they are “always
afraid”.
With the time, people thought the
song was about Vietnam war, as it was happening in the same time. But
the real inspiration of the song came from this riot in LA. We can
link it to another song, written few years after, by another member
of the band, Neil Young. Ohio is also about fights between
students and police that led to the death of 4 students.
No comments:
Post a Comment