According to the songwriter, we’re both wrong and it’s actually about American cultural hegemony threatening to erase Australian-ness.
I’ve heard directors talk about how audiences seem to have gotten some aspect of their storytelling all wrong. Dunno it if was Roger Ebert (sounds like something he’s said) or basically any Professor talking about film: If It’s Not in the Film, It Doesn’t Count.
A couple for-instances: JK Rowling said Dumbledore was gay. I didn’t read any of the books but saw most of the movies and those who have read both say this “fact” is in neither medium.
Directors cannot (or should not) rewrite or retcon how audiences should view their films after release. George Lucas insists that Han Solo never shot first (at Greedo) in the first Star Wars and that deservedly led to a backlash from fans and critics who felt the original scene spoke for itself. It establishes Han Solo as a badass and a bit of a rogue, who wisely has his gun at the ready under the table.
I dunno if Colin Hay was smokin da zombie, yet that video is incredibly cheerful and his “character” and those he meets are delighted to see eachother and sing praise and pride in their country. If he wants to make hay (pun intended) about how we all got that song wrong, I suppose as his lawyer I could cite 2 lines:
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder? Oh, yeah
You better run, you better take cover
Yet he’s grasping at mid-air to connect that somehow to Americanisation.
I he wants to equate that with Midnight Oil, their album “Diesel & Dust” had just come out when I lived in Melbourne in 1990-1991 and “Beds are burning” is certainly about the highly unfair treatment of the Aboriginals.
The time has come to say fair’s fair
To pay the rent, to pay our share
The time has come, a fact’s a fact
It belongs to them, let’s give it back
The only change I saw was climbing Uluru (Ayers Rock) was banned and unless Australia politically goes off the deep end like the USA, there’s not going to be any laws that say you must call it “Ayers Rock” (like the Denali/McKinley thing).
Also tourists were chipping away at it for souvenirs, and similar to how Hawaii says “Bad juju to take volcanic rock” the visitor center has many letters where people send their rock chips back and express their regret and bad fortune since taking a piece of the rock. Unfortunately, it can’t just be glued back on.
Perhaps some acreage has been returned to the Aboriginals yet there was no big movement to “give it back” in any quantity.
I’ve got a didjeridu and a real Mornington Island hunting boomerang. I didn’t know it before going there, but the ones that “boomerang on you” (i.e. return) are considered toys. This one is actually made from the bend of a tree branch so the grain runs up and down it. Rather cool (and made of some hardwood so it would be quite effective at bonking game on the head)
Finally, if I were in a pub anywhere in Australia and told the bartender I wish to “shout the bar” (buy everyone a drink) and played “Down Under” I can guarantee you every one in the bar would happily sing every note of that song.
Then I have to say … he’s a piss poor songwriter.
Considering the Australian singer is the one traveling and complaining about where he goes. And he’s the one culturally appropriating reggae into his down under song.
Still, FU Colin. Say what you want, I still like the song! And I’ll interpret it how I want. So there!
Depends what you mean by ‘real band’. The story goes that they were created by Malcom McLaren as a publicity stunt.
Colin is actually Scottish originally and has a distinctly Scottish accent which surprised the hell out of my when I saw him perform a few years ago. His family emigrated to Australia when he was 14.
It’s the devil talking, remember. And this view was in the zeitgeist of the time. It is kind of like saying school shootings may be the fault of the shooter, but also to some extent the fault of a society where they have been normalized.
Nitpick: art thou. (Or am I being whooshed?)
Don’t know how I managed to miss this thread - loved it. Informative and entertaining.
I’m going to take the minority view (I think). Sympathy starts off majestically, but falters in the middle and never recovers. For example, I just don’t think this is good
I shouted out “Who killed the Kennedys?”
When after all it was you and me
and
Just as every cop is a criminal (etc)
is worse.
I’ll go with flawed masterpiece.
j
I think I see what you mean, that turning morality on its head has been a lyrical cliché at least since “Fair is foul and foul is fair”, but I think in the song it makes sense, in fact it’s the essence of the song. I haven’t lived through it, when “Sympathy” came out I was a few months old, but 1968 really was a year when things seemed topsy-turvy, and it captures that zeitgeist perfectly.
In the Spring of 1970, not long after the song came out, I was in the lobby of McCormick Hall at MIT watching a bunch of Somerville police infuriated that the doors were locked so they couldn’t come in to beat us us. (It was the woman’s dorm, by the way.) Why were they there? A bunch of non-MIT people marched on the railroad tracks near MIT (military industrial complex) and since the cops couldn’t beat them up they came on to the innocent campus to get us.
Every cop is a criminal was hyperbole, of course, but the attitude didn’t come from nowhere.
FWIW, someone has kindly stripped out Jean Luc Godard’s dreadful vignettes from One on One just leaving the bits showing the Stones rehearsing and recording “Sympathy for the Devil”.
Thank you for that! I’ve been waiting 55 years to see that clip.
I notice Mick singles “who killed Kennedy” (singular) confirming what was mentioned above.
So this is my first time realizing this, I’ve never done the maths to realize it was recorded before RFK’s assassination, which is kinda dumb on my part, I had a long period obsessed by 60s era stones.
That has to be one of the darkest reasons for changing a pop songs lyrics (theres a thread idea…)
Fair point. You could argue that it’s an example of the Hill Street Blues effect (as in, you show a young person Hill Street Blues and they say “So what? It’s just like every other cop show.” Nope - every other cop show is like it. There’s a difference.)
j
Barry Manilow changed the name of the song “Brandy” to “Mandy” so it wouldn’t get confused with the #1 single of the same title by Looking Glass.
That’s all I got.
I always thought that bit was quite clever as it introduces a bit of ambiguity. This the devil speaking after all (none of the other things he says are good things), so is the countercultural idea that all the cops are criminals and sinners saints bad or good?
Not a pop song, but the line from Chill Wills about “having a good time in Vegas with this stuff” from Dr. Strangelove was changed from “having a good time in Dallas” after the assassination.
Slim Pickens
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Well, if you’re casting Chill Wills, that’s the definition of slim pickins. 
Shit. I knew that was wrong.