Song Interpretations
Flags of Freedom, Neil Young
August 19, 2007
"Flags of Freedom" appropriates a streamlined version of the tune for Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom". (Neil Young's version owes much to the melodic "Chimes" by the Byrds on Mr. Tambourine Man). The similarity stops with the tune. Neil Young's song is a straightforward narrative of a military march down the Main Street of some small town, while Dylan was never more elusive and suggestive than in "Chimes of Freedom". Dylan's chimes are celestial.. and they toll, finally, for:
..the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
..a pretty broad swath of human beings!
This is not the first time that Young has made strategic use of a Dylan tune. "Days that Used to Be" (from Ragged Glory) has a tune strongly reminiscent of Dylan's "My Back Pages".. and recognizing that, the lyrics to "Days that Used to Be" sound as if they are directed right at Dylan:
I wish I could talk to you,
and you could talk to me
'cause there's very few of us left my friend
From the days that used to be.
Dylan thus becomes a distant interlocutor.. someone whose music stands for an ideal to which one aspires, but who stands aloof from the present. In the brief video documentary on the making of the song, Neil Young casually brushes off the Dylan reference in "Flags of Freedom": "It sort of sounds like Bob Dylan so I mention him.." But I think Dylan has a more important role than that.
The song opens with a parade down Main Street:
Today's the day our younger son
Is going off to war
Fightin' in the age old battle
We've sometimes won before
Flags that line old main street
Are blowin' in the wind
These must be the flags of freedom flyin'
The voice does not stay consistent throughout the song, but right away we are inducted into the point of view of a local family.. a family that believes in the American past. The soldiers marching off to our newest war are understood to be "Fightin' in the age old battle/ We've sometimes won before". There is no irony there. American struggles throughout history are grouped together into a single struggle against tyranny or evil.
The flags lining main street are said to be "blowin' in the wind".. and within a song that borrows a Dylan tune, there can be no innocent references to "blowin' in the wind". Dylan's song points to repetitions of injustice.. and lends a measure of hope to the idea that such injustice will come to an end someday. Young implies a new lyric for Dylan's song: "how many times must the soldiers go to war, before they march no more.. the answer my friend is blowin' in the wind.."
Church bells are ringin'
As the families stand and wave
Some of them are cryin'
But the soldiers look so brave
Lookin' straight ahead
Like they know just where they're goin'
Past the flags of freedom flyin'
We move now into a third person description of the march: "the families stand and wave". Young uses this second stanza to reinforce the confidence with which the soldiers are going off to war. The soldiers are secure in their sense of the justice of America's great war. There is of course sorrow at the departure of the soldiers to a dangerous zone, but there are no doubts here.
Sister has her headphones on
She hears the music blasting
She sees her brother marchin' by
Their bond is everlasting
Listening to Bob Dylan singin' in 1963
Watching the flags of freedom flyin'
She sees the president speakin'
On a Flat-screen TV
In the window of the old appliance store
She turns to see her brother again
But he's already walkin' past
The flags of freedom flyin'
The parade scene is complicated by these two stanzas describing the actions of a sister of one of the soldiers. The first stanza takes a moment to get one's mind around: this girl is "blasting" Dylan's music from circa 1963 (which was the height of Dylan as protest singer). There is a disconnect between the music she is listening to and the patriotic event of a military march. Another disconnect lies between the original setting of this political music and the sister's consumption of the music through headphones. A year or so ago the image of a girl listening to music on headpones was a common media images:
Despite the presence of Dylan's songs in her head, the music is rendered unmeaningful, unfelicitous, unreferential in this patriotic setting. We are struck by how little Dylan's music means to the sister.. and that indifference defines the challenge of modern political music.
The second stanza is oddly technological too, as she watches the president on a flat-screen TV in the window of the old appliance store. We know who the president is, of course, since the very next song on Living with War is calling for his impeachment. The juxtaposition of George W. Bush and Bob Dylan is entirely unexpected. She is listening to Dylan while looking at Bush, but instead of dwelling on that strange superimposition Young's interest is dominated by the technological scene: a flat-screen TV playing in an old store on Main Street. Neither protest music nor political rhetoric are able to penetrate the technological mediums and provide meaning for the scene.. and when she turns around her brother is gone.. off to Iraq.
Have you seen the flags of freedom?
What color are they now?
Do you think that you believe in yours
More than they do theirs somehow?
When you see the flags of freedom flyin'
Young uses the bridge to give ask some critical questions. In concert with Crosby, Stills, and Nash the American flag gave way to the Mexican flag at this point.. and then a whole series of other national flags. The point seemed to be that other countries are free too.. and that other legitimate patriotisms exist beside our own. This is an odd point to bring up in a song that calls to mind the Iraq war. It is not as if Young is draping the Iraqi or Egyptian or Saudi flag in the background. The point here careens toward immigration and xenophobia.. and the certainty that America is right and its actions true.
The final stanza repeats the first stanza, which places us back in a local point of view at a military parade. The obvious direction for Young with such a setting would have been to sing about war and the questions it raises. Instead Young's attention has been taken by the Main Street American scene.. and he paints a picture of disconnection and strange technological mediations. He is asking us to consider not the war, but our own closed view of the world.
more song interpretations:
My Sweet Lord, George Harrison
The Village Green Preservation Society, The Kinks
