I don’t know if piloting a car at 407 mph is an act of heroism, but The Beach Boys laud Craig Breedlove in “Spirit of America”.
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“Along Came Jones” is apparently about Jones being the hero, although it’s oddly silent about any of his actual heroics.
Plus, Major Tom became a junkie in later life.
Drug and alcohol use are contraindicated during critical space missions. His relics were religiously venerated by a cult of cat people, though, in spite of his failings.
He was a leper messiah who fell to earth.
RIP, David, we miss you.
What about the guy in Rush’s 2112? IIRC he tried to reintroduce the guitar to the common folks, but was thwarted by the Priests. Or perhaps “martyr” would be a better term.
While the Celtic epic of Zep’s “No Quarter” has the exact right mood & atmosphere, the heroes are nameless. However, the 1st track of Zep’s 7th studio album “Presence” offers this vaguely “real” legendary hero …‘‘Achilles Last Stand’’
Leon Trotsky, Lenny Bruce, Elmyr de Hory, Sancho Panza, Shakespeare and Nero.
Does John Barleycorn count as a hero?
Whoever Bette Midler was addressing?
If grain can be a hero. Or a martyr. He does prove the strongest man at last, although through one could say devious means.
Couple numbers by AxCx (NSFW) mentioning Mother Teresa.
You could basically take the entire catalog of Sabaton and be done. The vast majority of their songs are about war heroes.
No one’s mentioned Ira Hayes, memorialized in The Ballad of Ira Hayes, sung by Johnny Cash
Does Lee Shelton count at least as an anti-hero? (Lloyd Price, Grateful Dead, Nick Cave, The Clash, Amy Winehouse…“Stagger Lee” has been covered dozens of times.
I thought of similar folk songs, like the many versions of “Joe Hill”, but I think you can’t call them rock and roll songs.
Not sure about “hero”, but they were certainly welcomed home as heroes - the nine of them who survived (one man died during incarceration). Not named but unambiguously identified.
There were six men in Birmingham
In Guildford there’s four
That were picked up and tortured
And framed by the law
And the filth got promotion
But they’re still doing time
For being Irish in the wrong place and at the wrong time
The Birmingham Six and The Guildford Four, all wrongly convicted (after - shall we say “flawed” - police investigations) of IRA pub bombings, all eventually exonerated.
j
Likewise, my first thought was Black 47’s “James Connolly” about the 1916 Easter Rising but I don’t think it really qualifies as “rock & roll” even in a pretty flexible sense of the genre.
We fought them to a standstill while the flames lit up the sky
'Til a bullet pierced our leader and we gave up the fight
They shot him in Kilmainham Gaol but they’ll never stop his cry
“My name is James Connolly, I didn’t come here to die…”
Which of The Divine Miss M’s songs are you referring to? I’m thinking it might be Wind Beneath My Wings, but there may be another.