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
You can find David Prashker at:
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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