Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Social Unconscious

Eric Andersen

A lecture given in Athens (15th March 2019) in the context of the course: Introduction to Group Analytic Psychotherapy, organized by the Hellenic Network of Group Analysts (He.Ne.Ga)

Hello, and good evening. I am Eric Andersen, a writer and performer, touring musician, and recording artist from New York who has recorded more than thirty albums of original material. I now live in the Netherlands. I wish to thank Kostas Moroyannis for his kind invitation to join this gathering tonight in Athens and giving me this unique opportunity to address such an unusual subject: “Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Social Unconscious.” Unusual for me at least.

I am an artist and not a scientist. Being a writer, my creative, mental, and emotional solutions usually come by way of synthetically-reached methods, not by way of analysis. For example, by taking two or more disparate or opposing elements, ideas, or components, an artist can generate solutions through the process of combining and synthesizing differing parts to construct something new and original. Call it a third way, a third entity, or even a “third mind.” Not by using analysis to deconstruct a problem and trying to reassemble the broken pieces of the original thing in the attempts to make it whole and functional again.

It is an honor to be here but I want to warn you in advance that I am not an analyst. Full disclosure: The observations you will hear from me contained herein this speech are from my personal experience and sprouted out of an artist’s mind.

I was asked to give this speech by Kostas after meeting him through a mutual Danish friend at my birthday in Athens one year ago. The subject he suggested I speak about was on the topic of “Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Social Unconscious.” For me this topic was daunting and presented some deep uncharted waters to navigate. It is also my very first speech ever. I had heard like everyone else in this western civilized world the Freudian terms ego, id, and superego. But the concept of “social unconscious” was vague, new, and elusive to me. Not a term heard in my musical world. And despite the articles sent to me citing Foulkes, Hopper, Dalal, and others, the term “social unconscious” defined and described by experts seemed to change and alter over time.

From what I gather the concept of the social unconscious is a collective entity that does not possess a mind of its own. That much is agreed. But what it is and means exactly remains subtle, shifting, and elusive. For me the social unconscious remains more of a feeling or sense of something of a vaster unaware than anything you can touch, see, smell, or exactly define. Still, it exerts a powerful force on society acting to provide some kind of cohesiveness. Unconsciously, you feel its unwritten rules.

I connect it with the idea of “Truth” versus “Reality” because the social unconscious appears to be continually under the sway of ever-shifting atmospheres of new and emerging cultural realities while absorbing and moving heavily like a slow cloud.

Though not a scientist, I discovered through my own writing and reading of life and literature that Truth with a capital “T” and so-called “reality” are two distinct and separate things; two entities that often get confused with each other. Unsubstantiated facts, or non-facts, can be used to manipulate perceptions that in turn create a manufactured consensus called “reality,” that is often substituted for truth. As the late Patrick Moynihan, a U.S. Senator, once put it, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

There are many powers in this world that use the weapons of money or politics to promote only their sole own self-interests. By manipulating perceptions repeatedly, new “realities” can be constructed by way of creating new consensuses of perceptions spawning legions of followers for an idea or for a consumer product. For example, through repeated, bombardment advertising one brand of car or soap can seem better to buy than another. Or society’s leaders can use fear to proclaim and vilify certain segments of society to make some parts socially acceptable and others not. Marcel Proust observed that the only thing more difficult than obeying the rules is to impose them on others. That doesn’t stop people from trying. Groups depend on their allegiance to the familiar, so constraints on one group’s followers can rub against an opposing group’s followers and create conflict. The feeling of belonging to a group is important and can offer a convenient excuse to judge others who live or believe differently, the mentality of “Us” vs. “Them.” For example, in America, Mexicans have been singled out as rapists and killers. Or Jews, Muslims, African or Native Americans, and Hispanics are deemed to be bad people because they seem different, they look bad or could threaten another groups livelihood. So, one solution is to isolate and eliminate them. These so-called “realities” are created by the process of manipulation of societal perceptions through repeated beating of the advertising and propaganda drums. If enough people believe something to be true then that “new reality” becomes their “truth.” This is achieved by manipulating a group’s basic assumptions and replacing them with a new consensus of perceptions that seem “true,” but are not grounded in any objective truth. Consensus offers a way to confirm one group’s sense of identity and reinforce their insecurities by using the machinery of anger, fear, and false hopes. Everything is relative. And everyone remains locked up in their own ideological silos, as Michiko Kakutani points out in her recent book Death of Truth. These isolations are a dangerous dynamic that opens up opportunities for hatred and violence. Another danger zone is vitriolic language. What was once considered extremist is now mainstream. How does it work? Like stage magic, psychology, manipulation, and propaganda drum up excitement, creates perceptions, and paints a picture of a desired result. If you can get enough people to agree on something it can begin to seem real and true. A manipulated, socially agreed upon, perception or agenda becomes the new consensus. Fake is real and false is true. This manufactured consensus is suddenly the new “reality.” But reality is not truth. It usually isn’t. But how easy it is to confuse the two. Facts can be messed with, underplayed, exaggerated, or blatantly manufactured. The desire to believe is a powerful social yearning whose purpose is to provide people with ingenuous explanations and solutions. Many long for uncomplicated answers to complex social questions and situations. Simple down-to-earth answers are easier to manufacture than trying to dig deeper, unearthing evidence, to discover the truth through facts and reason. Many groups prefer to be spoon fed information to reinforce their pre-concepts of social realities, to see life in black and white, never realizing that black usually wins. Since few are actually physically present at any given premise, illusion and deception are easy to project. Round-the-clock news and social media doesn’t help either by bombarding our brains to distraction with its constant stimuli but rarely taking the time to open doors to any meaning. After one outrage or disaster strikes the next headline breaks and we are lost spinning inside a kaleidoscope of disconnected information. Is this what the so-called “Post Truth” era feels like? Where nothing is true and everything is permitted. Therefore, it is my belief as an artist (and not as a group psychoanalyst), and based upon my own observations and experience, that these constantly changing, perceived, quote “realities,” make up the stuff that constantly feeds the social unconscious. Or, perhaps the social unconscious is merely this: A constant narrative like the latest rock music trends, news flashes, or social media posts that continually lash us forward with its digital whips of the internet.

Like the social unconscious, taste in rock ‘n’ roll music is also a creation that produces its own perceptions, consensuses, and realities by way of listeners who band together wanting to be entertained by sounds, beats, and songs that feel new, have a common ground, and strike them as true. Perceptions multiply around a distinct trendy musical genre and allow a consensus to grow, expand, and make a group popular. But times move on and musical tastes change with generations. And what seems fun to one generation represents a threat to another. While today a moot question, remember back in the day when the argument was whether you were a Beatles fan or a Stones fan? No matter which side you were on, rock ‘n’ roll both then and today, can represent fun and innocent escape. Innocent for some, perhaps, but not innocent for all. Rock ‘n’ Roll can also be the threatening music of rebellion and represent an attack on the status-quo. So, instead of a smile, the social unconscious faces a sneer. So, just as music can unite generations, it can divide them at the same time.

I see rock ‘n’ roll as tribal music. A vehicle for new identity and a strategy to escape from the constraints of the super-ego. New rock music is created by the communicators of the tribe for the tribe. And the tribe creates the energy to give back. They feed off each other as a form of synchronicity. Rhythms, lyrics, chanting choruses, and music were created for the audience to provide identity and escape and celebration.

Let’s remember that one of the most important and powerful emotions that an individual or a group can feel is safety. That can mean safety in numbers. Music could provide the vehicle and wings to escape their parents. Here is how: Experiencing the musical majesty of a U-2 concert while hearing their anthem-like songs, being sonically lacerated by Goth or Heavy Metal bands, or seeing the Grateful Dead shows watching fans get high on drugs and music, demonstrating their feelings by dancing and swaying to ½ hour-long trance-like guitar solos. Then some prefer the excitement and sense of belonging to a community at a Springsteen show, or the rebelliousness the Rolling Stones created in their fans who are either hearing the music for the first time or older fans who are connecting to their past rebellious selves allowing the music to act as the vehicle. Young fans feel the rockers are communicating behavior signals to them and at times, speaking for them. Part of the purpose of this modern tribal music is to provide the glue of identity, a safe non-judgmental place to belong and provide the wings of escape. Rockers give voice to the voiceless: To link arms as a group, to not feel lonely when being alone, or to take musical strolls down memory lane not always aware of the tacit understanding how the music holds them all together: To connect themselves to themselves, to each other, or to the times in which they live. In the case of the Grateful Dead some fans were known to devote their whole lives following them around in old VW buses from concert to concert. They referred to themselves as a “family” or more familiarly as “Deadheads.” They always knew who the others were and regularly met one another at the band’s traveling shows. Many were easily identified because they often wore rainbow colored tie-dye clothing, becoming a cultural phenomenon. Imagine a Woodstock Festival rolling place to place like a Tivoli and forever on wheels. I saw shows, knew dedicated fans, and witnessed this.

As a cloud grows and shrinks, musical notes disappear and vanish. And just as tastes in music change so does the social unconscious. It is transitory. As any old Deadhead will tell you, fans grow up, have kids, pay bills, and fall back into the same social unconscious swamp as did their parents. Time passes but people keep their memories. So, everything espoused culturally (favorite bands) will, in some shape and form, continue to exist. It will be up to their kids to rebel, create, change, or contribute to alter the precepts of an ever-changing social unconscious that is always heading towards a new and uncertain future.

I was fortunate while in high school to see Elvis Presley perform in his gold suit when I was sixteen. I was managed by the Beatles manager Brian Epstein before he died and I got to see the Beatles up-close. I saw stadium rock shows of the Rolling Stones, U-2, the arena punk band the Clash, Bob Dylan’s song-poetry, and the musical trance band the Grateful Dead. I co-wrote a song with the Grateful Dead called “Weather Report Suite” and Bob Dylan recorded my civil rights song called “Thirsty Boots.” But one of the last major musical trends I remember was hip hop. And in Norway, I was surrounded by the rap music of Eminem, Foxy Brown, and Tupac with my pre-teen kids.

Each style of rock music speaks to a new generation and becomes its voice. Drawing from my own rock ‘n’ roll experience I perceived and experienced rock music, its beats, and songs as the new purveyor of the ancient archetypical tribal tradition. For me, it was no longer Frank Sinatra and the big swing bands like Duke Ellington of my parents’ era. Rock music possessed power and was personally enabling with its musical beats and grooves and sometimes rude, unkempt, and unruly attitudes. Elvis’s wild dance imagery in the film “Jailhouse Rock” was not the posed images of the Von Trapp Family and Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music.” We soon learned that some individual rock songs could challenge or irritate the status quo by peeling off the skin of the mutually agreed and tacit understandings that comprise the social unconscious. Song examples from my generation would include the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” Lou Reed’s “Dirty Boulevard,” John Lennon’s, “Working Class Hero,” or Patti Smith’s “Piss Factory.” This new kind of tribal music could temporarily offer an escape from the constraints of the individual’s internalized super ego (read: parental societal rules) and the all-pervasive social unconscious. Things were changing even in the fifties. As Chuck Berry aptly put it, “What mom and dad don’t know, the little girls understand.” This implies there were multiple simultaneously operating socially unconscious situations within the same framework called society. In the case of rock ‘n’ roll, it is a generational teenage “us” vs. “them” scenario and dynamic.

Eras come and go. Music ebbs and flows. As I mentioned before, the generational effect weakens as the group’s participants grow up, splinter off, have babies, and pay bills just as their parents did. In short, they are absorbed and become more like their parents. Apparently, there is a larger societal social unconscious that changes less rapidly. Music as a generational expression could be solely a Western phenomenon. In African, or some Asian and South American cultures, tribal music has a transgenerational unifying effect–operating between generations contained within its own social, musical continuum. It’s all about the tribe. In those cases, the kids, parents, and grandparents all grew up with and liked the same kind of music.

So far, I talked about the unifying, identifying power of music, for certain groups or generations, including transgenerational like tribal music in Africa. Conversely, music and art can also or stir the general social unconscious and cause anxiety. So, now I want to look at this other side of the social unconscious coin. Music can unite but can also cause anxiety and rile up the group or the larger society. Artists might tap into a black hole in the social unconscious, something that is denied or collectively wanted to be forgotten. As such, music (or other art forms) can create anxiety. As I said one of the most important emotions is the feeling of safety. In my book, it ranks right up there with water, food, shelter, and love. If music is an expression of what you believe or feel, music can also make you feel comfortable and safe. If it brings up things we are not secure with, it might create fear.

I belonged to the Greenwich Village protest singer-songwriter scene of the sixties that produced Phil Ochs, Lou Reed, and Bob Dylan. Our music was of the second variety, not written for strictly entertainment purposes. This music mirrored a new culture under an expanding war, racial conflict, and turbulent emerging culture. These songs agitated people by pointing out the faults of the Vietnam War and evils of racism and the growing power of the Civil Rights Movement, the burgeoning feminist movement, the emergent drug culture, as much as our songs opened doors to people’s feelings with new kinds of freedom, the sexual revolution, and love songs. There was also a lot of high profile deaths that shattered the country’s sense of safety and security in the sixties ripping the fabric of the social unconscious. I’m talking about the mounting death tolls in Vietnam, southern state race murders, and the insane killings of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Dag Hammarskjold, and Martin Luther King. The continual violence punctuating society in the early-to-late-sixties was almost verging on the paranormal. How does that phenomena measure in the social unconscious?

No matter how you look at language and life, words have a life of their own. Words matter.

The American poet Ezra Pound once famously declared, “Literature is news that stays news” and another insightful adage closer to rock ‘n roll, “Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance… poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.” In other words, when the movement of dance dies, the music follows, and then the poetry will die. He also proclaimed, “Artists are the antennae of the race,” suggesting that poets see what’s coming over the horizon before anybody else does. That can be true and often is the case. I feel it’s been true in my case. Like being my own modern-day Cassandra, I feel sometimes I am my own oracle–that I am writing my own future.

The late novelist William S. Burroughs, who wrote the controversial visionary novel Naked Lunch, was a workaday, prophetic futurist. His book was banned and joined a succession of forbidden books like James Joyce’s Ulysses, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl.” These bans were eventually overturned by the U.S. courts.

In 1970, Burroughs predicted the concept of fake news in a recently published book called The Revised Boy Scout Manual: An Electronic Revolution. He suggested that if you want to bring about mass panic and throw the world into turmoil start by disseminating “Fake News,” (his invention and term) then manipulate the media to foment hysteria and bring about chaos. Burroughs was a brilliant writer and outsider, in addition to being an expert on mind altering substances and drugs. Remember, the year was 1970 and before the birth of the internet. Looking around the media landscape these days, he definitely was not lacking antennae.

These can be the very qualities of prescience that some artists have that can make them fall a bit outside of society for two reasons: 1). Because they sort of permanently escape the superego: they go against that which is expected.
2). The antennae of the artist can make you feel almost too much and the conflicts that come with it can lead to an escape in drugs, shared psychotropic elixir group rituals, and other mind altering or addictive substances.

In my case, after a long crippling depression and paranoia in 1964 I took my first LSD trip in Cambridge, Mass., the home to MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The Swiss-invented Lysergic acid diethylamide was not well known or widely available to the public in the early sixties. Our doses were secretly sourced from MIT and was of CIA grade-quality, having been developed there and used for the CIA’s experimental and nefarious intelligence purposes. How the twelve-hour lysergic acid trip experience brought me back from the brink of madness and provide me some existential relief was when an inner voice whispered, “Look around, man. Let go, relax. We’re all in the same boat, so what is there to be afraid of?” So, when I looked around at the vibrating, unifying colors of life itself, I saw. There was nothing to be afraid of. I landed on the path to healing. Of course, others have reacted in the opposite way. Happily, in my case, it worked because I was too poor, living the life of a starving writer-musician, and could not afford psychotherapy. But the use of drugs and mental illness of artists and non-artists are big subjects which will not be discussed here; for example, the loneliness of the artist as an outsider. Or the discussion of depressions caused by chemical imbalances of the brain like those found in bi-polar conditions. I just want to point out that tapping into the unwanted, black holes of the social unconscious comes with a price to pay.

There are songs, lyrics, and music that are made to get under the skin of the more secure regions of the social unconscious. Songs that rattle the cage of society’s safe surroundings and make people uncomfortable of situations they may be aware of but would rather not see, or care to admit to, as to their existence. Songs that makes people antsy and uncomfortable.

Citing just one example, there has been a struggle involving the re-education of post-war Nazi Germany to reconcile itself with its aggressive, murderous Nazi history with the present. I dealt with these issues first-hand when writing up an album about the Nobel Laureate German writer Heinrich Böll, which included an original song I wrote dealing with denial of the post-war Jewish situation called “Silence.” I worked with his family and his son René took me to the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne. That was a wake-up call.

“Silence”
(From my writer’s album Silent Angel: The Fire and Ashes of Heinrich Böll. Words and music by Eric Andersen)

Silence – from the cellar down the hall
Silence – it’s running down the walls
Silence – never sorry when it calls
Doesn’t disappear at all
It just rolls up like a ball
Pretending to be small
And then buries you in a fog
Silence… Silence

They died inside death camps
But don’t talk about Jews
We were starving in our country
We Germans suffered too
Though we heard the Jews went somewhere
Did we give our fuhrer thanks…
When he dressed the kids in uniforms
And fed them to the tanks
But karma always sends the bill
You can’t take nothing back
We knew our homes would be destroyed
We could be sure of that
We learned to live like gypsies
We Germans wandered too
We knew we would pay dearly
For what we did to all the Jews

Chorus
Silence – from the cellar down the hall
Silence – it’s running down the walls
Silence – never sorry when it calls
Doesn’t disappear at all
It just rolls up like a ball
Pretending to be small
And then buries you in a fog
Silence… Silence

Schoolbooks in the kitchen
History climbs the stairs
TV shows and magazines
It was always in the air
In schools we heard about the Jews
And the guilt we had to bear
We paid our reparations
To keep the silence always-near
Hitler promised our salvation
Here’s to the master race
Children, church and kitchen
He threw it in our face
Then put us in his cross-hair
For any battle he could choose
He tried but don’t you dare forget
He killed our people too

Are we angry to our leader
For taking us to war
Are we angry to our leader
When the bombings brought the horror
Are we angry to our leader
For not finishing the job
Are we angry to our Fuhrer
Cause he didn’t go fa enough
Remember the old Jewish man
Who survive the holocaust
Who didn’t share his suffering
Spared his children from the loss
Silence can be gift-wrapped
To hide the misery
To a life and better future
Not – “Work can make you free…’’
“Nicht arbeit macht dich frei…”
Words to make you die!

Along these lines is another song I wrote warning of the rise of racism and fascism in the world called “Rain Falls Down in Amsterdam” I wrote this song several months after the Berlin Wall fell and the song talks about skinheads and the rise of nationalism and racism. Bad fearful and hateful feelings that suddenly crawled out from under the rubble of the fallen wall. I sang it three times in a row at a Potsdam club outside Berlin with half a room full of drunken skinheads. They applauded the song like the rest but they couldn’t speak a word of English and didn’t have a clue what I was singing about. During the music break they were sprawled out drunk on the grass singing old Nazi war songs. We saw and heard them from the second- floor dressing room even as the echoes and truth of WW II’s bloody horror ran down the bullet scarred walls of 1989 East Berlin; Was any lesson ever learned or heeded from that ancient maxim: Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. But who is listening? My song “Amsterdam” was written the same year when Gert Wilders and Viktor Orbán were twenty-six years old, Marine Le Pen was 21, and Frauke Petry only 14. Songs like this don’t get always cheering crowds in music stadiums but it is my belief that they serve an important function in informing society’s decisions and actions on how they see and handle their nation’s future. Exclusion or inclusion: Which will it be? Beyond merely preaching to the converted, words, art, and song have the power to open eyes and wake listeners up.

RAIN FALLS DOWN IN AMSTERDAM ESSENTIAL TOUR 2018

The rain falls down in Amsterdam
The streets are wet and black
Midnight’s like November
By the glow of a cigarette
The girls on hash in station square
Looking stupid from the drugs
When Marlene heard the boots march
There were reasons to be dumb
Shiny helmets in the shadows
Those trains that ran at night
Those hiding in the cellars
Those eyes afraid of light
Something beneath the border’s
Pouring poison in the well
the creature has uncoiled
and he’s crawling up from hell

HERE COMES NINETEEN-FOURTEEN
NINETEEN THIRTY-TWO
THOSE CATTLE CARS AND YELLOW STARS
IT’S RIGHT BACK TO THE ROOTS
IT’S OUT THERE IN THE OPEN
IT’S CRAWLING, ON THE MOVE
THE CAGES HAVE BEEN BROKEN
AND THE BEAST IS RUNNING LOOSE

Those canals and cozy houses
Those reflections in the lights
You can almost feel it moving
The monster in the night
He’s looking with his yellow eyes
He’s out to settle scores
In the dim medieval distance
Feel him breathing down your pours
In Salt Lake and in Denver
The Beast can smell the flames
He’s sending hate out in Marseilles
Typing out your name
You can feel the windows shatter
As the time is drawing near
Kristall Nacht has come to town
Welcome home to the house of mirrors

HERE COMES NINETEEN-THIRTY-TWO/HERE COMES DEJA VUE
THOSE CATTLE CARS AND YELLOW STARS/WAS THERE SOMEONE THAT YOU KNEW/ IT’S OUT THERE IN THE OPEN
SOMETHING’S SMELLING BAD
THE CAGES HAVE BEEN BROKEN/AND THE BEAST IS RUNNING MAD

Firebomb those houses
Burn those refugees
Be the crowd and do your work
Applauding silently
Round up all the gypsies
Go sell them on the trains
Can’t you smell the smoke now
Drifting in the rain
Jews, better draw your curtains
Better lock your doors up tight
They’re snarling up in Rostock
In the beer hall belly nights
The Fourth Reich’s coming, baby
It’s written on the page
In Rome, Berlin, and Stockholm
The beast has left the cage… cho: snarl and a growl…

THE FIRE AND THE ARM BANDS
THE IRON-ARM SALUTES
POINTING TO THE SCAPEGOATS/WAS IT ME OR WAS IT YOU?
IT’S OUT THERE IN THE OPEN/DON’T JUST STAND THERE HOPING
THE LEASHES HAVE BEEN BROKEN
AND THE DOGS ARE ON THE LOOSE

I have been here thinking
How lucky I have been
I never touched the barbed wire
Never saw the monkey grin
No rifle ever smashed my face
No bare electric shock
But I’ll confess up all I know
Who I am and who I’m not
To see retired killers
is to see the lion yawn
the skinheads do their dirty work
for the cloak-and-dagger pawns
the dark eyes will be waiting there
when the borders they are crossed
so keep your filthy swastikas
and shove your iron cross

HERE COMES NINETEEN-FOURTEEN
HERE COMES DEJA VUE
THOSE CATTLE CARS AND YELLOW STARS
IT’S RIGHT BACK TO THE ROOTS
IT’S OUT THERE IN THE OPEN
IT’S CRAWLING, ON THE MOVE
THE CAGES HAVE BEEN BROKEN
AND THE BEAST IS RUNNING LOOSE
CAN‘T YOU SMELL THE BLOOD NOW/CAN’T YOU SMELL THE TRUTH
THE RAIN FALLS DOWN IN AMSTERDAM

In conclusion, music can be soothing, it can unite people and take away fear. But should it only soothe and put society asleep? Simultaneously, music and other art forms can bring out and strengthen the awareness of things that should not be forgotten, of uncomfortable truths. Wakeup calls–that things should not just dissolve and simply become part and join the cloud of the so-called “social unconscious”.

One of my most well-known songs from 1964 is “Thirsty Boots.” In this song, I tried to raise awareness of the civil rights movement in America. To reach people with this message and avoid a reaction of fear and rejection my approach was to not write a protest song but a song that would be more affirmative. It is a loving and positive song, an homage to a civil rights worker coming back from the voter registration drives in Mississippi.

I would like to conclude my contribution with this song, that sort of combines the unifying inclusive spirit, and enhancing awareness.

THIRSTY BOOTS by Eric Andersen

You’ve long been on the open road
You’ve been sleeping in the rain
From dirty words and muddy cells
Your clothes are smeared and stained
But the dirty words and muddy cells
Will soon be judged insane
So only stop and rest yourself
Till you are off again

CHO

So take off your thirsty boots
And stay for a while
Your feet are hot and weary
From a dusty mile
And maybe I can make you laugh
And maybe I can try
I’m just lookin’ for the evening
And the morning in your eyes

But tell me of the ones you saw
As far as you could see
Across the plain from field to town
Marching to be free
And of the rusted prison gates
That tumbled by degree
Like laughing children one by one
Who looked like you and me

I know you are no stranger

Down those crooked rainbow trails,
From dancing cliff-edged shattered sills

To slander-shackled jails.
The voices drift up from below

As the walls are being scaled.
Yes all of this, and more my friend,

Your song shall not be failed.

Eric Andersen

Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Social Unconscious

“Silence” (From my writer’s album Silent Angel: The Fire and Ashes of Heinrich Böll. Words and music by Eric Andersen)

THIRSTY BOOTS by Eric Andersen

“Silence”
(From my writer’s album Silent Angel: The Fire and Ashes of Heinrich Böll. Words and music by Eric Andersen)