For What It's Worth
(価値があるのかわからないけど )
Hi all,
Thank you for joining me for this week’s song, For What It’s Worth, music and lyrics by Stephen Stills, performed by Buffalo Springfield.
If you’d like to hear the song before you read the background, I’ve included a YouTube video below the article.
Below, you’ll find my interpretation of the lyrics. I’ve written the lyrics in italics. As with most everything, there are many ways to interpret things. I invite you to leave a question or comment at the end.
For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below.
The background and the song
(762 words)
Los Angeles, 1967. Teenagers driving cars, going to the beach, listening to music, and generally doing what teenagers do.
Since 1966, teenagers had been coming to find excitement on the Sunset Strip, a section of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Most of them were high school students aged 15-18. Los Angeles had coffee houses* such as the Fifth Estate and Pandora’s Box, and these were the places that young people liked to go in the evenings to be with their friends and listen to rock bands. The young people were friendly, not aggressive. They dressed in jeans, Madras dresses, love beads and had long hair. They were called “teenyboppers”. Older teenagers, 18-21-year-olds were allowed to go into clubs such as Whiskey a Go Go, the Galaxy, and Gazzari’s. These clubs served alcohol, although teenagers could not buy alcoholic drinks.
As more and more young people came to the Strip, they created problems for rich customers of high-priced restaurants. The young people stood around on the street, especially outside the club entrances, hoping to see famous singing groups or musicians going in or out. Customers complained to businesses, and businesses filed complaints with the city. The police started to patrol the area.
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
There was an old curfew law from the 1880s, and the police now used it, arresting anyone under 18 for standing around on the streets after 10:00 pm. More and more teenagers were arrested.
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
“What’s going down” was another way to ask, “What’s happening?”
From September 1966, police began sending hundreds of officers into areas of Los Angeles and put hundreds of young people into police vans. The young people were taken to police stations, but were released when their parents came to get them. In November, some of the youth started to organize protests against the arrests.
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
One evening, 3,000 young people, and adults who were watching, gathered along the Sunset Strip. There were so many people that they caused a traffic jam. Bus drivers shouted at the young people, and a few of the youth climbed on top of the buses and danced.
After 10:00 pm, the police used their batons aggressively to make the crowd disperse. They also had guns drawn (heat is another word for guns). The crowd began to run away. At one end of Sunset Boulevard, police were ready for a riot. They arrested 50 people.
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
The media portrayed the event as a “riot” by out-of-control teenagers. The police claimed outside agitators caused the violence. The Los Angeles Free Press was the only newspaper to print what really happened.
In the days that followed, the city decided to take away the licenses of the clubs. They also decided to tear down the Pandora’s Box.
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
“The man” means anyone in authority. Take you away means to arrest you.
The recording industry executives realized that shutting down the clubs affected their fans. They sent representatives to view the next protests. The representatives saw for themselves how the teenagers were beaten and arrested by the police for standing on the streets.
Over the Christmas holiday, the protests were cancelled and a “truce” was called. However, on New Year’s Eve, police raided gay bars in the nearby Silver Lake district. This added fuel to the fire.
In February, 1968, the protests in the streets began again. The protests attracted people to the Strip, but now, many of them were average adults, wearing long hair, enjoying the music and their friends. Later that year, police switched their focus to the Black Panthers** on the other side of the city.
The protests and arrests continued for another 10 years, but businesses got used to seeing these “hippy” people come and go.
The main issue in this case was whether people have the right to congregate peacefully. This right is still being tested in cities around the world.
VOCABULARY
boulevard 大通り
aggressive 攻撃的
complain 文句する
filed complaints 苦情を申し立てる
beware 注意する
curfew 夜間外出禁止令
arrest 逮捕
resistance 抵抗
baton 警棒
riot 暴動
hooray 万歳 、フレー
claim 主張
agitator 火付け役
representative 代表
be beaten 殴られた
truce 休戦
raid 踏み込み
congregate 集う
Notes
*In the 1960s, people in cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles would go to a “coffee house”. These were not coffee shops or cafes. They were places where people went to talk, to listen to music (usually live music by singers who were hoping to become famous), and drink a cup of coffee. They were often loud, but they were popular, especially with younger people. The stage was sometimes just one part of the room. Musicians were paid with tips that people would leave in a bowl.
** The Black Panther Party was a political organization that worked to improve black communities in the U.S. through social programs, education, and the establishment of health clinics. They also insisted on protecting themselves from police violence, and openly carried weapons.
Sources
Davis, M., & Wiener, J. (2021). Riot Nights on Sunset Strip. In Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the sixties (pp. 349–365). Verso Books.
Guardian News and Media. (2016, November 11). “Anarchy on Sunset Strip”: 50 Years on from the “hippie riots.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/11/sunset-strip-riot-hippie-los-angeles Accessed 2 Aug 2023.
The Story Behind For What It's Worth:
(The captions are mostly accurate.)
Film: Riot on Sunset Strip (1967) (In English, no subtitles)