- Joined
- Jan 12, 2017
For What It's Worth had nothing to do with the Vietnam War or with any sort of violent riots or anti-government clashes, though. Not to the extent that people generally expect, anyways. It was written as a response to the Sunset Strip curfew riots in 1966. The Sunset Strip had started to get congested in the evenings because of the young kids hanging out around the local music clubs, and the city was getting pissed off at all of the noise and traffic jams, so they imposed a curfew of 10PM and ordinances against loitering, because no one wanted smelly hippies laying around the place all night.
Kids, being kids, refused to listen, threw a shit-fit and started acting like feral hippies. About 1,000 people showed up, made asses of themselves, and then Stills wrote a song about it. The entire song is dedicated to a fucking temper tantrum from a bunch of hippies who were told to quit stinking up the place and hanging around in the street all night, so honestly it is very appropriate for the current situation, but the irony of it is completely lost on these people.
Ohhhh that makes sense. My history teacher didn't tell us this when we were going over what was happening in America in response to Vietnam and she included this song on the '60s playlist she played for us one day.
But the DNC still embarrassed themselves and still made a crummy cover to go with it.