Great Moments on Video №4: Jefferson Airplane - Uncle Sam's Blues

(Woodstock, August 17, 1969)

Jefferson Airplane - Uncle Sam’s Blues

(Woodstock Festival, August 17, 1969)

Musical anti-war manifestations do not help out that much per se in times of war, certainly not if you decide to force-feed yourself a strictly serious diet of war-is-over-if-you-want-it anthems and little else. But taken in small, intelligent doses, they can at least occasionally provide the equivalent of an adrenaline shot, just to keep you going through the day — and with everything we’ve been through so far in 2022, it would be strange to not include at least one strong anti-war performance in this «Great Moments on Video» series.

So, naturally, when you think of memorable anti-war protests captured on film, your mind almost inevitably goes back to Woodstock, which gives you plenty of choice — the problem is, my own favorite performances at Woodstock usually have little to do with concentrated protest and more to do with simply getting carried away by the moment, be it The Who or Santana or Ten Years After or Sly & The Family Stone. When it comes to actually raising one’s voice against Vietnam (specifically) or the militaristic haze in general, you have a variety of approaches and they all suck, one way or another, or at least have their serious drawbacks. You can have your Country Joe McDonald ("gimme an F!") – too sing-alongey, much too corny and blunt in its cheerfulness, not to mention musically insignificant. Or you can have your Ritchie Havens ("hey, look yonder, tell me what you see marching to the fields of Vietnam?") – way too much drama and theater without telling it exactly the way it is. Joan Baez? Like everywhere she goes, she sounds like a member of the Pioneer Youth movement, way too close for a former victim of the Soviet educational system to take her seriously. Jimi? ‘Star Spangled Banner’ is a classic and a fantastic piece of music, but as an anti-war performance, it is way too metaphorical, and we need something more direct here, delivering a straightforward punch rather than an intellectual hint.

Thus, surprising as it may be to some, I unequivocally choose this performance of ‘Uncle Sam’s Blues’ as played by Jefferson Airplane — to be more precise, select members of the Jefferson Airplane, presaging their side project of Hot Tuna — as the single best anti-war performance at Woodstock, not to mention my favorite live performance by any members of that band, and a great, great example of how to properly exploit the potential of the 12-bar blues form within the format of a rock band. (Technical note — the performance was not included in the original Woodstock movie, only appearing in The Director’s Cut from 1994, but I suppose that’s pretty much the only version of the film that people watch nowadays anyway).

For as long as I have been writing musical reviews, I have seen many people around me scoff and sneer at the 12-bar blues genre for its alleged stereotypical simplicity, limitations, predictability and boredom. (The chief culprits, of course, were always the white boy bands springing up in the 1960s and 1970s — those same people would always be wary about putting the blame on Muddy Waters or Robert Johnson, even if black guys in the 1930s and the 1950s abused and recycled the 12-bar formula on a far more casual basis than their white disciples would decades later). It is perfectly true that there is a ton of deadly boring blues out there — yet it is also true, I believe, that no other form of popular music can convey the feelings of either utmost despair or cold-faced, unimaginably deeply-rooted, quietly pissed-off anger better than yer good old 12-bar blues when it is done just right. Just like Otis Rush, for instance, recorded some of the most heart-broken songs ever heard by human ear, so did Jefferson Airplane on that early morning of August 17, 1969, use the blues form to record the festival’s most powerful anti-war statement.

‘Uncle Sam’s Blues’, whose title and a few lines of which owe their existence to a completely different recording made by Hot Lips Page in 1944, was a regular feature in the Airplane’s setlist around 1969-1970, during which the regular singing voices of the band (Grace Slick and Marty Balin) would take a break and cede the spotlight to guitarist Jorma Kaukonen; as this was largely a showcase for himself on vocals and guitar, as well as for Jack Cassady on bass, the performance did indeed presage their upcoming parallel career with Hot Tuna, and the song itself would also quickly cross over into the Hot Tuna repertoire as well. And as good as Jorma could be within the folk-pop or psychedelic spheres of the Airplane’s agenda, I think it is safe to say that his true heart always belonged to pure blues, folk, country and other «rootsy» places of Americana — so during this performance, he is being fully comfortable within his own element.

Even so, I have heard other live versions of the song, the way it was played by the band in 1969 (there is this version from the Fillmore East, for instance, or this one from the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco), and none of them have the same level of intensity and sense of purpose as the Woodstock version. Perhaps it is some added sense of «destiny» from playing at such a clearly epochal event before such an unimaginable mass of people. Perhaps it’s a result of being properly stoned — or, for that matter, of not being stoned at all (whatever they smoked during the day must have dissipated by the time they took to the stage in the early morning hours). Perhaps it’s the luck of having Nicky Hopkins, the greatest piano session man of all time, surreptitiously beef up their sound in the background (you can catch a couple brief glimpses of him banging away at the piano — just because he had the luck to be seated next to Grace Slick doing nothing, as the camera keeps lovingly hugging Gracie in vain hopes of capturing a single smile).

In any case, whatever be the reason, the Kaukonen Airplane was really on fire that morning — not a blazing, mile-high bonfire, but rather like a strong, torturing, tooth-clenching inflammation inside the brain. The song is taken at the perfect tempo: not too fast (like they play it at the Fillmore East), not too drearily slow, and, most fortunately, with no «danceable» time signatures like they would choose for it in the Hot Tuna setlists; this is something where a proper reaction would be like the one chosen by Grace — stand, watch, listen, think, and keep your emotions stopped up like in a hot water bottle. There is nothing particularly «understated» about the performance — and absolutely nothing excessive, either.

I love the subtle nuances at the start — like when the ringing intro guitar suddenly shuts up for a couple of seconds at 0:10 to let Cassidy’s bass make its «contrarian» entrance all on its own, then plays a quietly threatening melody with such clever use of sustain and vibrato before switching to a series of abrupt rapid-fire licks at 0:36 at the end of the perfect intro. I love Jorma’s singing voice on this one — unnerving, mechanically «emotionless», unfaltering from start to end, refraining from any unnecessary ad-libbing, and with just a tiny touch of that epic feel through a little echo running from the mike. Note how he lets himself get «out of control» only once — at the very end of the song, with that little roar at 4:09 on the "well, I want to kill somebody!" closing line. That’s almost scary, all this perfect staying in moody, quiet, shell-shocked character from top to bottom and your allowing yourself to get briefly «emotional» on that particular line and that line only.

The full impact of the Airplane’s performance is perhaps better felt if you compare the song to its sources. Hot Lips Page’s original, recorded in early 1944, was anything but an anti-war tune at its core, despite featuring the verse that would partially make it over into the Airplane’s reinvention: "Uncle Sam ain’t no woman, but he sure can take your man / Women wringing hands and a-cryin’ all over the land" — the verse that is traceable even further back, all the way to Blind Lemon Jefferson’s ‘Dry Southern Blues’ ("Uncle Sam was no woman, but didn’t he draft your man? / Tell me them good-lookin’ womens on the border raisin’ sand") and maybe even further back to the years of World War I. The rest of the song, though, is expectedly quite patriotic, with sneering references to «Fritz and Tojo» and the like — it was, after all, specifically recorded to cheer up US soldiers overseas.

What Kaukonen and Casady did here was latch on to that one particular verse and invert the message in accordance with it, brilliantly attaching the branches of modern-day reality to the roots of old-timey tradition. Now the lines that hit even closer to home than the gap-bridging "Uncle Sam" reference are "well, there’s 40,000 guys in the service doing something they just don’t know what for" and, of course, "if I wanna kill somebody, won’t have to break no kind of law", the first one of which Jorma delivers with the appropriate sneering cynicism and the second with so much artistic conviction, you might suddenly become mildly wary of that big swastika around his neck. (Not that he put it on specifically for the purposes of the song, of course; based on Jorma’s own explanations, he got it from a Navajo pawn shop and didn’t think too much about it — cutesy-ly typical of the innocence of the Sixties). Anyway, replace "40,000" with "300,000" and Uncle Sam with Uncle Volodya and suddenly you realize that the world hasn’t truly progressed that much since 1969 — perhaps even the opposite, given how, with the horrors of the World Wars receding further and further back in history, the idea of people killing each other "they just don’t know what for" once again becomes normalized in those parts of the world which, one might have idealistically thought, would have made such normalization impossible because of their own tragic history...

...but let’s return to the actual performance for a bit more, it’s just that good. You might note that the official version included in the movie is about a minute shorter than the audio version on the soundtrack (in fact, there’s some poor quality bootleg footage that captures the whole thing) — this is because Michael Wadleigh largely cut out the first solo, and I don’t exactly blame him. For one thing, it’s a little bit more meandering and unfocused than the second one, and for another, I actually love how the skillful audio and video edits made it seem as if Jorma is leaving the second verse "open", replacing the third vocal line with an angry lead guitar phrase instead — which, for that matter, is a classic part of the blues idiom as practiced by everybody from Big Bill Broonzy to Albert King and Eric Clapton over the years. It’s in the "words simply cannot express how down in doo-doo I really am" ballpark, and it’s a great effect.

I really love that second solo, though, and how the video splits the screen in two, focusing on Kaukonen’s fingers and Cassidy’s intense, strained face while the guitarist and the bassist are trying to outdo each other in the «stormy» department — plus there’s Kantner adding his own lead lines in the background, and some amazing piano runs from Nicky (of whom I always wish we’d see more, but the greatest session man of the decade was also one of its most elusive men when it came to filming). Not so sure why the camera stays so much on Grace Slick — I wish I could say this was fulfilling some artistic purpose (e.g. Grace Slick standing in for the «Average Girl In The Audience Taking In And Silently Endorsing The Song’s Message»), but more likely it’s just because this is, you know, Grace Slick, and there can never be too much of Grace Slick on camera even if she isn’t actually doing anything. (Like, Nicky Hopkins is genuinely killin’ it right behind her back, but it’s so much nicer to have the opportunity to look at Grace Slick while Nicky is killin’ it, right? I mean, we can hear him just perfect, ain’t that enough?).

Anyway, to conclude this — if it’s an anti-war message we’re after, it’s hard for me to imagine a more crushing attitude than the one displayed here. There’s silent rage and simple, but intelligent accusation that addresses and touches every listener on a personal level — the idea is not to make us all feel better through some ridiculous «Fish Cheer» ritual, but to make each of us a little angrier by using a perfect form of music to amplify a perfectly rational message, so well-worded despite all the laconicity. No overplaying; no theatricality; no hyperinflated «stage rage». No illusions — in this particular performance, I mean, not the entire Airplane stage act from their Volunteers epoch — that change can be easily achieved through a bit of onstage propaganda; just a bitter, cynical constatation of the status-quo that leaves your senses a little more sharpened and your mind a little more aware of the perversity of the situation. And besides, it’s just a goddamn good example of slow 12-bar blues played exactly the way it should be.