And "Alabama" Was Such A Lovely Tribute To George Wallace

Shorter Verbatim John J. Miller: “The last time Young grabbed my attention was shortly after 9/11, when he come out with a song called “Let’s Roll.” I really, really wanted to like it. But it’s hard to get around the fact that it’s a plodding number. He could have written another “Rockin’ in the Free World”–a song that captured the spirit of 1989, as the Iron Curtain was falling, and a song that really rocked–but he stumbled badly with “Let’s Roll.””

Yes, who can forget that song’s great celebration of the Iron Curtain falling. I believe this is this verse they originally planned to sing during 7th inning stretches after 9/11:

I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away,
and she’s gone to get a hit
She hates her life,
and what she’s done to it
There’s one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world…

Yeah, I think that must have been co-written with Lee Greenwood…anyway, I’m not sure if this is as egregious as George Will turning “Born In The U.S.A.” into a love letter to Reagan, but it’s up there…

(Via Edroso.)

UPDATE BY ROB: I don’t think that this discussion could possibly be complete without John Gibson’s contribution.

UPDATE BY SCOTT: I see from comments that the Derb needs a history lesson aboit the Neil Young/Van Zant “feud.” I’ll turn it over to Patterson Hood:

And out in California, a rock star from Canada writes a couple of great songs about the
Bad shit that went down
“Southern Man” and “Alabama” certainly told some truth
But there were a lot of good folks down here and Neil Young wasn’t around

Meanwhile in North Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd came to town
To record with Jimmy Johnson at Muscle Shoals Sound
And they met some real good people, not racist pieces of shit
And they wrote a song about it and that song became a hit

Ronnie and Neil Ronnie and Neil
Rock stars today ain’t half as real
Speaking there minds on how they feel
Let them guitars blast for Ronnie and Neil

Now Ronnie and Neil became good friends their feud was just in song
Skynyrd was a bunch of Neil Young fans and Neil he loved that song
So He wrote “Powderfinger” for Skynyrd to record
But Ronnie ended up singing “Sweet Home Alabama” to the lord

And Neil helped carry Ronnie in his casket to the ground
And to my way of thinking, us southern men need both of them around

The other thing is that the Derb’s correspondent really seems to thing that Bush and the war remain so enormously popular that “the rest of the country” will be outraged. Talk about a dreamer of pictures…