Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Spearhead

This is not Hitler saluting; he is demonstrating the height of the pile of excrement he intends to leave behind. Let it serve as a symbol for all politicians who advocate racism, fascism, misogyny and homophobia.
To listen to Spearhead in the slow, folksy version, click here
To listen to Spearhead in the faster, bluesy version, click here


This song requires a little bit of explanation.

It was the spring of 1978 and I was a student in Wolverhampton, an area of the UK with a very strongly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural community, though no one used such generous terms as those back then. Even "black" would have been a generous term, but "wog", "sambo", "coon" and "yid" were the most common. My local Member of Parliament for some years had been Enoch Powell, the hero of the extreme right, and Martin Webster and John Tyndall were dreaming rivers of blood:Wolverhampton had become effectively the national headquarters of both the National Front and the British National Party, both fascist, both racist, both rendered irrelevant when Margaret Thatcher brought right-wing politics into government the following year. I joined the anti-Nazi league, the anti-racism group, the anti-fascist demonstrations on the streets of Wolverhampton, unaware that the organisers of these protests were politically just as shameful: the International Marxist Group, Trotskyists, Maoists, revolutionaries of one naive kind or another. But we marched our protest against the racist-fascists, and we stood in solidarity with our Afro-Caribbean and Jewish and Indian and Pakistani bothers and sisters, and many of us got arrested, though sadly for my pride and my credentials I never received that honour.


Dylan’s Masters Of War and Ballad of Hollis Brown lent much to the writing of the song, plus those extraordinary sliding guitar riffs on It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding. The song comes in two versions, the slow folksy in a minor key which is how I wrote it, the upbeat rhythm-and-blues in a major that I started singing in the late 1990s; which one I prefer depends entirely on my mood. Spearhead was the name of the National Front's newspaper, and the Superman, or Ubermensch, was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s vision of the ultimate human hero, a magnificent and heroic vision that was sadly frankensteined by Hitler and his henchmen when they laid their blueprint for that Golem-like homunculus, the Arryan Master Race.



You can call yourselves the spearhead

For the coming Superman
You can pave his way with hatred
Like your brothers in the Klan
You can take the Ten Commandments
Make them shatter like the glass
You can make your plans for glory
But they will not come to pass

You can call yourselves the Master Race
You can call yourselves the light
You can make a war on darkness
In the name of all that's white
You can say the noontide's coming
You can prepare for the task
You can make...

You can shout your Fascist slogans
You can make your racist jokes
You can kneel before the Fuhrer
Like a dog kneels for a bone
You can call upon the Devil
And his whole satanic caste
You can make...

You can raise your flag so proudly
With its red and white and blue
You can raise it against the Commies
You can raise it against the Jews
You can paint on it a swastika
In its power you can bask
You can make...

You can hate a man’s religion
You can hate him cause he's black
You can say a man’s a stranger
You can try to send him back
You can paint your face so decent
But we can all see through your mask
You can make...

You can raise your arm like Moses
But the seas will not withdraw
You can reach out for the roses
But you’ll only pluck the thorns
You can plant your seeds of hatred
Like poison in the grass
You can make...

Cause we’ll fight you in the classroom
And we’ll drive you to defeat
The ghosts of Hitler’s memory
Will drive you from the streets
We’ll join with you in battle
But we’ll never join your dance
You can make...

And we’ll fight you in the courthouse
Till we bring you to your knees
We’ll fight until we’ve rooted out
Both you and your disease
We’ll send you back to Hades
In a six by three foot cask
Go on make your plans for power
They will not come to pass








If you would like to include "Spearhead" in your repertoire, either for paid public performance or to record for commercial purposes, or if you would like to re-use the recordings attached to this blog-page for commercial purposes, contact argaman@theargamanpress.com. 
Use of this song, and/or these recordings, for non-commercial purposes, is not simply permitted but invited.
Words and music by David Prashker
Copyright © 2014 David Prashker

All rights reserved

The Argaman Press

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