"Rockin' in the Free World" is a song by Neil Young, released on his 1989 record Freedom. Two versions of it appeared, bookending the album.
According to Neil Young's biography Shakey, while on tour in the late 80s, Young and Frank "Poncho" Sampedro watched the Chinese demonstrations on TV. Sampedro commented that the tour should just "keep on rockin' in the free world." Then Young asked if he could make a song out of it.
Released several months prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, because of its chorus, which just repeats the phrase "Keep on rockin' in the Free World", it became a de facto anthem for the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The lyrics of the song do, however, contain more than a hint of criticism of the Bush administration. The line "We got a thousand points of light / For the homeless man" refers to Bush's famous use of the phrase "a thousand points of light " in a call for volunteerism. The following line "We got a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand" is a cynical take on another phrase of Bush's: during the 1988 U.S. Presidential campaign, Bush called for "a kinder and gentler nation".
The song received extensive radio play again shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, probably owing both to its celebration of 'life in the free world' and for the lines "There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead / Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them", which was clearly taken as a reference to terrorism; the particular use of the word Satan was seen as reflecting the Islamist of the phrase "the Great Satan " to refer to the United States.
However, in Young's lyrics, the man who says "Don't feel like Satan / but I am to them" may well be a crack cocaine user. The first line of the song, "Colors on the street / red, white, and blue", while certainly intended to evoke the colors of the U.S. flag, can also refer to gang colors. The next line after the one about not feeling like Satan is "So I try to forget it any way I can" followed immediately by "Keep on rockin' in the Free World", which may well refer to crack cocaine ("rock"), especially coming from the very drug-conscious Young. The second verse is about a young, drug-addicted mother who abandons her baby in a trash can, then takes a "hit".
It also appears during the end credits of Michael Moore's documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11. Pearl Jam regularly cover the song during live performances.
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Last updated: 05-23-2005 14:25:52
