100 Songs: "I Am A Patriot" (Three Versions)

It's interesting that in the last ten years or so two members of the E-Street band have arguably become more famous for their roles on television than their prominent place in Springsteen's band.  Drummer Max Weinberg is now known for being Conan O'Brien's Paul Schaffer, while Steven Van Zandt (who, somewhat annoyingly, isn't related to Townes Van Zandt or the Skynyrd Van Zants) is better known as Silvio Dante, Tony Soprano's consigliere than he is as either Springsteen's guitarist or as solo artist Little Steven, leader of the Disciples of Soul.  (Although at least they are still known as members of the E-Street Band.  Creed Bratton had two gold records with the Grass Roots in the 1960s, and I suspect that a lot of people think that the references to the band on The Office are just a joke.  Which makes it funnier, in a way).  

After Van Zandt left the E-Street Band in the mid 80s (an occasion marked by the song "Bobby Jean" on the Born In The USA album) he fronted the Disciples of Soul, an act that now is only barely in print.  On their second album, Voice of America, they recorded "I Am A Patriot", the one song that they are remembered for.  The song might be described as "Blue Eyed Reggae" (I'm not sure that I've ever seen the term before, but I have little doubt that I'm not the first person to think of this phrasing.  It's just how people who talk about music think.), a protest song, but not protesting anything in particular, a sort of statement that patriotism isn't an exclusive domain of the right.  

I became familiar with the song from a Pearl Jam bootleg I bought in high school.  As bootlegs go, it's an amateur production, really more of a mix cd of live Pearl Jam covers created by someone who bought a CD burner a year or two ahead of the curve.  It's inexplicably titled Five Horizons, despite "Black" not making an appearance.  The track listing doesn't include any mention of when or where the songs were recorded, and messes up at least three titles (The Beatles' "I've Just Seen A Face" became "Calling Me Back", Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" was merely "Free World" and "I Am A Patriot" was truncated to simply "Patriot"), and it's actually kind of amazing that the creator bothered to print out a picture of Eddie Vedder for the actual disc, rather than simply scrawling the title on with a sharpie.  But none of that mattered.  It was a Pearl Jam cd that no one else had, kind of like my Japanese import singles.  At the time, I probably had no idea who Steven Van Zandt was, since I didn't become slightly obsessed with Springsteen for a few more years, and didn't have HBO to watch the first episodes of The Sopranos.  I remember a couple of years after I first heard Pearl Jam's version of the song, it made it onto the airwaves.  After 9/11, a local radio station- it had to be 96.1, given whose car I was in when I heard it, played the song, in what was probably one of the last death throes of independent thought on a commercial rock station.  (It's not the first time that an unofficial Pearl Jam track made it onto the radio like that.  The band's biggest single, their cover of "Last Kiss", was initially only a fan club single, but when DJs kept playing the song the band released an official version).  

Pearl Jam's version of the song is notable for it's simplicity- just Eddie and a guitar, with none of the backing vocals or reggae instrumentation of Little Steven's original.  In fact, it seems likely that the song was performed by Eddie alone on stage, either before the show or as the first part of an encore.  Eddie's vocals are almost tentative when he begins singing "And the river shall open for the righteous", and he eschews any trace of a fake Jamaican accent or phrasing, unlike Steven or Jackson Browne in his 1989 version of the song.  In the second verse, Eddie changes the line "I was walking with my sister" to "I was walking with my girlfriend", which disrupts the line's parallel to the first verse's "I was walking with my brother", but does make the following line "she looked so fine, I said 'Baby's what on your mind?'" less creepy.  (In other live versions of the song, Eddie has changed the line to "I was walking with my boyfriend", presumably to add that much more "protest" to the song.  Throughout the song, Eddie remains subdued, not hesitating, but not shouting either.  The closest he comes is when he declaims "sure ain't no Republican either" (in some versions, it becomes "sure as fuck ain't no Republican either") but it maintains a slightly humble air that is missing from either Van Zandt or Browne's version.  

But after listening to the original version, and Jackson Browne's version, what I like most about Eddie Vedder's version of the song is that he sings it in his own voice, without a trace of a fake Jamaican accent (although Jackson Browne only occasionally slips into Jamaican readings of lines, mostly in the rhythm he brings to the "river opens for the righteous" part.)  It might just be me, but when singers try and fake accents, it always irritates me.  There is no earthly reason why Steven Van Zandt should mention "de lions".  (I'm sensitive to this at the moment because of Roger McGuinn's version of the Irish folk song "Whiskey In the Jar", where he uses an wince-inducing Irish brogue.  It makes one long for James Hetfield's growl in Metallica's cover of the Thin Lizzy version of the song, and whenever one is thinking fondly of 1990s Metallica while listening to a Byrd., things have gone wrong).  Eddie's version reveals that the song is at its best when it's been stripped down to its barest essentials, free of attempted Reggae, and merely allowing the lyrics to "run free like the lions, set free from the cages".