Freedom is a word that turns up with embarrassing frequency in rock-and-roll songs. How we love to free-associate about freedom. On occasion, we're good for a 'Chimes of Freedom' (at least Bob Dylan is), but if we're honest, the freedom musicians are most interested in is our own. The reason I am climbing on this slippery soapbox called 'freedom' today is that I'm being given a presidential medal by that name'an honor I'm receiving mainly for the work of others, among them my bandmates and our fellow activists'and it's got me thinking again about the subject. When we rock stars talk about freedom, we more often mean libertinism than liberation, but growing up in the Ireland of the 1960s, the latter had its place too. We were mad for freedoms we didn't have: political freedom, religious freedom, and (most definitely) sexual freedom. Rock and roll promised a freedom that could not be contained or silenced, an international language of liberation. The freedom songs of the folk singers...
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