On Sat, 27 May 2006 22:41:16 -0700 (PDT) mike larkin
<mike_larkin2001 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/arts/music/25brockweb.html?_r=1&pagewan
ted=all
>
> Conservative Top 50
>
> Published: May 25, 2006
> Following is National Review's list of its top 50
> conservative rock songs, with the magazine's
> explanations of its choices.
>
>
>
> 7. "Revolution," by The Beatles.
> "You say you want a revolution / Well you know / We
> all want to change the world . . . Don't you know you
> can count me out?" What's more, Communism isn't even
> cool: "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao /
> You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow."
> (Someone tell the Che Guevara crowd.)
>
John Lennon discussed that song in his 1971 interview with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn which can be found at: http://www.counterpunch.org/lennon12082005.html
There he said:
"TA: In a way you were even thinking about politics when you seemed to be knocking revolution?
JL: Ah, sure, 'Revolution' . There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'. The original version which ends up on the LP said 'count me in' too; I put in both because I wasn't sure. There was a third version that was just abstract, musique concrete, kind of loops and that, people screaming. I thought I was painting in sound a picture of revolution--but I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was anti-revolution.
On the version released as a single I said 'when you talk about destruction you can count me out'. I didn't want to get killed. I didn't really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to get picked off. I just thought it was unsubtle, you know. I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't go around shouting about it. That was how I felt--I was really asking a question. As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game.
At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness. It was therapy that stripped away all that and made me feel my own pain."