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

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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