Also, he wasn't "talking" about freedom; he was singing, and what makes the singing "heavy" is the way he was singing. There is a visceral kind of singing as done by Richie, by Big Mama Thornton, by Janis, by Joe Cocker, by Koko Taylor....by a lot of blues singers, that is about being real before anything else. This visceral quality has as its baseline an ache that is both an expression of suffering and a revolt against it. And in the revolt is the intimation of freedom.
I don't do this kind of thing well. Perhaps Chuck Grimes can elaborate.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dennis Claxton" <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>
>Does this sound like's he's singing about choosing commodities? Joanna
It doesn't and he wasn't. But I think the song also exemplifies how easy it is to talk about freedom and get away with sounding heavy. He did make the song up on the fly, having been given the task of keeping a gazillion people happy until other acts arrived. He had to play 3 hours. Repeating Freedom over and over to a bunch of hippies wasn't a hard sell.
He also played at the Tibetan Freedom Concert. What does freedom mean in that context? It is a word people use without thinking about what it means, no?
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