Stones' song sparks controversy
2005-08-15 10:10
New York - You'd have to travel far back in time to find the last time a song by the Rolling Stones sparked controversy, but the 60-something rockers have done it again with Sweet Neo Con, a tune that takes a swipe at United States conservatives.
The song is part of A Bigger Bang, to be released September 6, which the Stones say is their first studio disc with totally new material in eight years.
An excerpt from the song was published by Newsweek magazine this week, which described the Stones' hard-hitting lyrics as "political".
"You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite, You call yourself a patriot, well I think you're full of s---," the lyric goes.
US vice-president Dick Cheney, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice are three well-known members of Bush's inner circle considered by political analysts to be leading lights of the neo-conservative movement.
But many, including influential English review New Musical Express, have ventured the opinion that the song is specifically about US President George W Bush.
Rolling Stones in denial
The band denies it, but ambiguously so.
Said Stones publicist Fran Curtis to The Washington Post: the song "is not about nor does it mention Bush or his administration."
"Yes (there's) a little bit (of controversy)," Stones front man and song-author Mick Jagger laughed in an interview on Thursday on CNN television.
"It's not an attack on President Bush. It wouldn't be called Sweet Neo Con if it were, he said.
But "it certainly criticises policies he espouses. It was really (a disagreement) I had with some Republican friends of mine. We disagreed and we argued about Iraq," he said.
The lyric does specifically mention the US services firm Halliburton, once led by vice-president Dick Cheney, and now a beneficiary of contracts in Iraq.
The bad boys of rock
Sweet Neo Con has had a rejuvenating effect on the images of the Rolling Stones, seen as the bad boys of rock and roll back in the 1960s and the antithesis of another boy band of the era.
"The Stones were subjected to intense police and press harassment for drug use and all-purpose degeneracy, whereas the Beatles, who were in private life no less fond of marijuana, sex, and alcohol, were welcomed at Buckingham Palace and made Members of the Order of the British Empire by the queen," it says.
But the years have not passed in vain. Jagger is now properly called Sir Mick Jagger since his knighting in December 2003.
And Keith Richards, another aging "enfant terrible" of the group, seems a bit worried by the current controversy.
"It's Mick's song. I said to Mick, 'Well, Mick, you know, it's pointy pointy!'"
"My only thing about this song is, the album's cool," Richards added, urging people not to be "sidetracked by some little political storm in a teacup."
"I think he's a bit worried because he lives in the US," Jagger joked in a dig at his band-mate.