What makes a song timeless? Give me some water, if I’m rocker Eddie Money, because I just shot a man on the Mexican border. Or might as well have.
If you’re Ozzy, that may be a shot in the dark.
There are refugees, (so many are children and we’ll walk you through that later), or could be called foreigners in some contexts, not only trying to cross over at Mexico, but Canada. And in all parts unknown surrounding the Ukraine. And all over Africa and its various enclave boundaries. And more. The context can even be framed by the old Statue of Liberty now crumbling with its stone-shown justice. Bring me — or at least have us tolerate — your tired, your hungry, your poor, your naked in need of clothing at least between photo shoots, your huddling masses waiting in desert areas for a possibly last cup or chalice of water and once getting past the more immediate need to be hydrated then resume their quest to be free, your most disenfranchised, your voting-rights robbed, your cell-phone-taken-back yet again as others come about by the parent company or corporation, etc. And the Title-shown need whether you call it 42, as today, or 142 or 242, is not going away.
What to make of it? Let’s go back 1,000 years, or make it 2,000 years. Or least when it thus was written and so should be done.
So OK, what did Jesus Christ have to say about — stereotypically — having over for dinner and maybe staying for breakfast the impoverished and reeking of dirt and more Mexican farmer with no teeth to eat with anyway? Be a good Christian family and live that scenario out.
Anyway, back to what Jesus said. (He was a man of complexity and you would not like him when he is righteously angry. And some things riled him more than others).
Leading the list was not to do to those little ones — of all ethnicities: And for he, or she, who would harm one of those children it would be better if a millstone were placed around their neck and they be cast into the sea. At least their boat got that far. And as has been written before on these pages, war always affects children worst. And the crux of this rant: Jesus was almost that irked when any of God’s people, especially the powerful and those with means it could be argued, hardened their heart and did not help out the foreigner in need, or being discriminated against.
OK, these days the situation with our and their borders — both sides of them — it has been wisely said by many different people the situation is messy and layered and complicated, and there are more than ten fingers to be pointed at possible culprits. To address such a situation it becomes all the more important to have words to live by, whether coming from the lips of Jesus, or Mohammad, or Buddah, or Ghandi, (OK maybe we’ll take a pass on Crowley). And not all such sages need to be religious figures, but I’ll take them over politicians. (There could be a referendum on paying more heed to the band of Baldwin brothers. But in my home state, Tammy Baldwin might have more merit, and common men and women. And from the mouths of babes).
Now my main thrust. Maybe we should Listen more to the Likes at Large of Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler, and their Ironman hero-villain. There is an Easter egg here to be found in this ultimate messianic anthem, of a slain savior who rises from the dead then returns to earth to finish his work.
Biblical themes run through it, and one of them stands out as being maybe a tale of these times. I do believe that early in the song, there is a reference to the parable of the good Samaritan: “Is he live or dead, has he thoughts within his head. We’ll just pass him there, why should we even care.” This stanza seems to be linking the critically injured man in the ditch, to the lack of aid given to a messiah who is put to death. Two remaining important events in our history. OUR history, whether we be religious or not, downtrodden and downgraded Samaritan or high-falutin pharisee.
Underscoring as far as justice is a just-seen a Metallica in-concert video played out in Moscow in 1991. What were rank-and-file Russians subjected to around that time by their government, at the very least lacking freedom?
The song was Creeping Death, the deliverer, and we’ll let the first line tell the tale: “Slaves, Hebrews born to serve …” THEY were then the foreigners. There are so many parallels here, only starting with faulty pharisees and pharaohs. The crowd was getting riled up, more by each chorus, hundreds of thousands of them, some of them standing under U.S. flags, and the words were not even as aggressive and brutal as the guitar, in-your-face demanding justice (for Hebrews and Huns alike) and nothing less, screaming for vengeance. The chant grew much more bold by the syllable, “die, die, by my hand, die, die first-born man …”
As I watched this crazy scene just as if there, one thought kept creeping into my mind, as there was so much that could be gained by these ideals but ironically, there was one suddenly underclass that (also) was excluded from this parade … the lines of military police standing with hands at their sides and trying to stay stoic with their gaze. What about them? What if this mosh pit turned into a mob? These men, invariably very young, sometimes were caught in the middle of warlike politics, so was their service completely conscentual, or contentious conscription?
These policemen had to have been scared to death! What if the fans would all gather in their whipped frenzy and march on THEIR capitol. No dozen tanks could have stopped the surge.
The power of music. Especially potent metal.