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Since I started writing here almost exactly 10 years ago (my first piece, a holiday post about The Roches’ Christmas album published as a guest ran on December 18, 2011), I’ve written more than 400 posts (plus a few special pieces, like our annual “Top Posts” collection), but I don’t think that I’ve ever created one like this. I’m also not sure that I’ve ever written a sentence with two parentheticals, but I probably have.
What’s so special—or at least different—about this post? It’s about a song that I never heard until I decided to write the this, by a band whose name I recognize, but I don’t think that I could name a single song that they released. For the Leftovers theme, we’re supposed to look back on the previous year’s themes, and write something that would have fit in one of those. It’s a tradition here, and a good one, because it not only is appropriate for the post-Thanksgiving slot, it allows us to revisit ideas that we might not have been able to get to before, because of work, or life, or general ennui. (It also gives us a break in thinking up themes during the holiday period—especially now that, after all these years, it has become increasingly hard to think of something clever for the Christmas period that hasn’t been done already).
But that’s not what I did here. In looking back at the themes that I only wrote one post for, I vaguely remembered some unwritten ideas—I thought about writing a Woodwinds leftover about obscure prog-rock band Gryphon, which featured crumhorns—but I decided to go in a different direction. (As you will see below, though, I still mention prog-rock and woodwinds.) For out 1971 theme, I wrote about the Fillmore venues, but I didn’t write another piece for that theme. So, what were memorable things that happened in 1971? (not my 10th birthday party, which I don’t remember. Sorry, Mom.) Well, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began to publish sections of the Pentagon Papers. In short, these documents demonstrated that the U.S. government had long been lying about many aspects of the Vietnam War. Now, I’ve written once before here about Vietnam, and I mentioned in that piece that my senior thesis in college was about television’s coverage of the war, so I thought that a piece about the release of the Pentagon Papers might be interesting.
Like today, in 1971, American democracy was under attack. There were marches in the streets over the war, civil rights and other issues. It wouldn’t be long before a president and his henchmen tried to subvert the democratic process, for which he was impeached. Even as a kid in those days, I could sense the uncertainty, distrust and division.
What became known as the Pentagon Papers was a report commissioned in 1967 by Robert S. McNamara, then the Secretary of Defense, on the political and military involvement of the United States in Vietnam from World War II to 1968. The conclusions of the report were explosive, and it was classified, so that it would not be seen by the general public.
Daniel Ellsberg, a government consultant, gained access to some of the classified documents and leaked them to the Times in June of 1971. What happened next was complicated, and included court injunctions, a senator using his immunity to enter part of the Papers into the Congressional Record, other newspapers publishing the papers, more court proceedings, and ultimately, the Supreme Court upholding, 6-3, the right of the press to publish, and the high standard necessary to obtain a prior restraint. Justice Black wrote in his concurring opinion:
Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
That’s something that we need to keep in mind today, when some politicians have tried to bully or force the press to stop doing this critical job.
Ellsberg was indicted on charges of stealing and holding secret documents. But a mistrial was declared when it emerged that the Nixon administration ordered agents to illegally break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist and attempt to steal files; that representatives of the Nixon administration approached the trial judge to offer him the FBI directorship, and, believe it or not, other irregularities.
The Post, a pretty good movie about all of this, came out in 2017, directed by Steven Speilberg, and starring some lesser known actors like Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, (and Matthew Rhys as Ellsberg) did a good job of explaining the situation, the risks that the various newspapers took, and the importance of their willingness to take the risks. I’d recommend renting it.
Oh, yeah, this is a music blog, not a history or politics or law blog. Or a movie blog. There’s a song being featured here—“Thank You Daniel Ellsberg,” by Texas band Bloodrock, which emerged from Fort Worth in the late 1960s. Generally referred to as a “hard rock” band, their second album, 1971’s Bloodrock 2 hit no. 21 on the Billboard Pop Album Chart, and they released two more albums with this lineup. But the band’s guitarist, Lee Pickens, and singer, Jim Rutledge, left the band, to be replaced by vocalist/woodwind (aha!) player Warren Ham, and the band’s sound shifted more toward prog-rock (aha!), jazz, and pop (although the band’s third album actually contained a Soft Machine cover. Of all things.)
The first album with the new lineup, 1973's Passage, contained our featured song, which is a bluesy number that does exactly what the title says. Here are the lyrics, in their entirety:
I wanna thank you Daniel Ellsberg
For all the notes that came from you
I said I wanna thank you Daniel Ellsberg
And maybe Louis Packwood too
For scheming out all the schemers
You now have set a trend for you
I wanna thank you Danny boy
For what you said
For what you said and done
I said I wanna thank you Danny boy
For what you said and done
You've stricken from all the pages
But you don't know that you're the one
I can’t figure out who Louis Packwood is. Any thoughts?
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