Commentary: Don't know much about music? Try politics

August 27, 2008 Sure, the song features a repetitive chorus that bristles with stone-washed, fist-pumping simplicity, but in true Bruce tradition it is -- if you bother to listen to the lyrics -- also an unabashedly angry portrait of a frustrated Vietnam veteran questioning a country he feels abandoned by. Reagan's failure to grasp that the song's seemingly upbeat refrain was really an ironic shout into the void infuriated and bewildered rock 'n' rollers everywhere, but ultimately it didn't matter -- it sounded uplifting and patriotic as long as you weren't paying attention. After all, Tom Petty threatened to sue George W. Bush in 2000 for turning his defiant hit "I Won't Back Down" into, we can only assume, a musical refusal to raise taxes or stop butchering the English language.

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