ABWH - Birthright (Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA 1989)

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For me, this was an ABWH high-spot, indicating a potential new direction for the band. Jon (Anderson) gave the song an unusually coherent lyric, delivered with passion and sincerity. In 1954 the British Government conducted nuclear tests at Woomera in South Australia, among other places. A test site was established at Maralinga in 1955. Before the tests could begin the Maralinga Tjarutja, the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land, were forcibly removed.

The subject matter of ‘Birthright’ has much in common with Australian band Midnight Oil’s politically-charged 1987 single ‘Beds Are Burning’, about returning land to the indigenous Aboriginal people. The group brought political and social injustices into the cultural mainstream through their music and lyrics, and leader Peter Garrett went on to become an environmentalist and activist, then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts in the Australian Government.

In the old days Jon used to bang a tambourine very loudly when he was singing. It’s volume was aided and abetted by the gain on the vocal mic, cranked up high of course, to the point where it was a whole lot louder than my weedy snare drum. Here, he moves from claves to maracas. We never discussed his percussion choices or performance skills – maybe we should have done. Looking back now we could have been more imaginative, but here, at the beginning of this video, with what sounds like a digeridoo sample, his clave playing is perfectly suited to help evoke the aboriginal scene. I don’t care if all you have to perform is a single triangle note; if you don’t give that note everything you’ve got, and it’s not exactly right, you’re letting everyone else down.

There’s a lot of music experience up there on stage: A, B, W & H, Milton (second guitar), Jeff (bass), and Julian (second keyboards). No one’s going through the motions up there; everyone’s engaged. All seven of us have spent our entire working lives on some stage somewhere, with some others, trying to make the music - and our performances of it - better today than it was yesterday. And we’ll do the same tomorrow. And we love it: it shows.

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