It’s Labor Day, the national holiday Grover Cleveland signed
into law after the Pullman Strike, where striking railroad workers were dispersed—more
than 50 died—by U.S. federal authorities during the boycott of the Pullman
company. The first Monday in September was chosen, rather than May 1,
International Workers Day, to avoid collusion with communists and socialists
who celebrate that day. So the day has always been kind of a sop to the
working-persons of North America (Canada celebrates in September too). Honest,
hard-working people who would never undermine capitalism—and its chief toady,
the U.S. government—to achieve their ends. Nah, give ’em a day off work
instead. Panem et circenses, folks.
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| yes, that's Yoko Ono as a witch |
And with that kind of jaundiced intro, what could I choose
but a rather jaundiced tribute to the employed masses earning to breathe free:
Mick and Keith’s rather ambivalent tribute: “Salt of the Earth” from Beggars Banquet. It’s an album full of
an interesting range of affiliations—with Lucifer, with the “street fighting
man” of the youth riots of the Sixties, with factory girls and underage,
sexually adventurous girls, with gospel (the prodigal son, from swine to fatted calf),
with Dylan (“there’s a tramp sitting on my doorstep”), with country (“down in
Virginia with yer cousin Lou”), with the blues with no expectations, and with
the blues with a row to plow (“land on me tonight”)—that concludes with today’s song.
The song leads off with a verse sung by Keith Richards, and
that sets the tone. Keith generally sounds kind of boozy when he sings, and he
sounds like he’s ready to tie one on for the people: “Let’s drink to the
hard-working people / Let’s drink to the lowly of birth / Raise your glass to
the good and the evil / Let’s drink to the salt of the earth.” It was Christ who gave the working people the
“salt of the earth” epithet, and sharing a libation, in memory of thee, as it
were, suits well enough. The “lowly of birth” retains a sense of aristocracy
since it carries more significance than simply “poor,” as we would say in the
U.S. It means those with no means.
Mick takes over and bids us “say a prayer for the common foot
soldier” and his wife and his children, thinking of his “back-breaking work,”
who “burn the fires and still till the earth”—the imagery and diction is going
for something a bit dated. The workers of the world tended to be in factories
by the time Labor Day or International Workers Day was founded—though it’s
interesting that the farmers mainly stood with the strikers against the
railroad, though they too suffered. So let’s keep those earth-tillers in the
picture.
The bridge, which gets used twice (this is a
longish, sprawling song by the standards of the time, clearly showing ambitions
that would culminate on the next album in one of the great, sweeping rock
anthems of all time: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”—and if that’s not a
mantra for the lowly of birth, then I don’t know one), points to the “swirling
mass” who “don’t look real to me, in fact they look so strange.” Particularly
from the rear of a limo. We could say Mick stays in character of some mogul who
has a moment of empathy but can’t go quite so far as claiming kin—but we could
also say it’s the point of view of one who comes “from above” that crowd and is
well on his way to rock royalty and celebrity shenanigans. Then again, even
Jesus saw the “salt of the earth” and “the poor” as Other to himself.
Then comes the verse I tend to think most highly of (and,
yes, 1968 was an election year in the States—a presidential election year,
while this year is a mid-term, but important mid-term, election): “Spare a
thought for the stay-at-home voter / Whose empty eyes stare at strange beauty
shows / A parade of gray-suited grafters / A choice of cancer or polio.” We’ve
already been told that the workers “need leaders but get gamblers instead.”
Another telling line about where this tribute is coming from. The “wavering
millions” don’t know what’s good for them; they don’t have leaders who give a
shit about them; they don’t have a voice. Their vote is pretty worthless: “a
choice of cancer or polio.” That verse stays with me because I’ve always felt
it summed up my dad’s view, pretty well. A “stay-at-home voter” and a lifelong
worker, he seemed, by the time I was around and aware—post JFK, in other words—to
have given up on the parade of gray-suited grafters and the strange beauty show
which electoral politics became, even more than before, in the TV age.
“Salt” is an interesting book-end to the side that begins
with “Street Fighting Man,” a song about the need for action in the streets,
even as the singer demurs from taking action himself (“what can a poor boy do / 'Cept sing for a rock’n’roll band / 'Cause in sleepy London town / There’s just
no place for a street fighting man”). No, guess, not, and no need to join the
forces in Paris or elsewhere, I suppose. But the point of the song is causing “disturbance”
by whatever means. “Salt of the Earth” likewise doesn’t advocate anything in
particular, but the two make clear the perspective of the Stones via Jagger:
they’re not leaders, and they don’t have answers, they think it all “looks so
strayyyyyynge.”
In any case, the song is one of the grandest the Stones
cranked out in their fertile 1966 to 1972 period, with Nicky Hopkins on piano and
a choir singing along too. It’s all very grim, in its way, but also kinda
uplifting in an ironic way, and true to life and of its time. Let’s drink!
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