A slightly belated celebration of President’s Day

“America is rock and roll.” — Alfred Howard

Did some of you find it hard to feel the love for President’s Day this year? Well, remember: the reason it exists is because we Americans, as a nation, couldn’t choose between Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday.

Washington is pretty great, but I’m a Lincoln guy myself. You probably know this photo:




As various people have pointed out, this particular picture was photoshopped.  A real ’62 Strat would have a maple fretboard and a single ply pick board.  Also, it’s absolutely not true that Keith Richards gave Lincoln this guitar– Richards was always a Telecaster guy, and anyway he was just a little kid back then.

That said, it’s worth taking a moment to contemplate Lincoln’s musical career.


We don’t think of Lincoln as a southern boy, but people forget that he was born in Kentucky and spent years there as a session musician before moving to Illinois.  So he came by that bluesy sound honestly.  And hey: Creedence was a bunch of guys from San Bernardino who got big making twangy songs about Ole Times Down The Bayou while Tom Petty, the bard of Los Angeles, was from central Florida.  American performers have been reinventing themselves since forever.

But anyway, Lincoln’s big break came when he was invited to join the American Whigs.  Okay, yes, everyone was in the Whigs at some point.  The Whigs had more members than Santana.  It was Henry Clay on guitar and Daniel “Black Dan” Webster on bass for over twenty years, so the sound remained fairly consistent. But otherwise, whoo.   Only completists can list all their lead singers. Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, “Rough and Ready” Taylor, Harrison…

(Let’s be honest:  Harrison would be completely forgotten except that (1) he was lead singer when the Whigs recorded “Tyler Too”, which is still an earworm even today, and (2) he died six weeks into his first tour, thereby becoming the Whigs’ Syd Barrett.  A bunch of their later songs reference him, including “A Bowl of Cherries”, “The Ten O’Clock Line”, and of course the tribute album Grouseland.)

So Lincoln was just another backup guitarist.  But he was playing backup to Henry Clay, and Clay was an incredibly talented performer.  Later Lincoln would absolutely copy a bunch of Clay’s favorite riffs.  Of course Lincoln would eventually find his own sound, but the Debate album is just one Henry Clay chord change after another, and you can still hear it right into “Inaugural I”.



Now the Whigs never quite made that big breakthrough. They had some really good musicians, a bunch of good albums, pretty influential in their time.  Webster’s bass line on “Room At The Top” has been sampled to the point of cliche, and American System is still foundational. But somehow they were never the hit machine you might expect. “Too many songs about railroads,” one critic said, and that’s cruel but not untrue. 

But there’s a straight line from the simpler ‘folk and oldies’ Whig rock to the more aggressive, no-compromise rock of The Republicans and then the explosive concert-filling mega-hits of UNION.  Many argue (and I’d agree) that the turning point came with “Emancipation”, which was viewed as wildly experimental at the time. It’s part of the canon now, of course.  But it really did mark a departure, and fusing that with the old Whig sound led to something truly fresh and new.

— Speaking of The Republicans:  these days it’s pretty hard to imagine that they were ever cool.  Just as with The Rolling Stones or Coldplay, there are endless arguments about when they last put out something worth listening to.  (Personally I would say 2003.  Dubya is a pretty bad album, and like Tusk or Sandinista! the fact that it’s a double album just means it’s bad longer.  But somehow right in the middle you have “PEPFAR”, a hauntingly beautiful piece of world music that has absolutely deserved all its critical praise.)  

But like Lynyrd Skynyrd or Ratt, the current Republicans have nothing in common with their original lineup.  These days they’re like Journey or GWAR — a brand, not a band. It might seem strange to compare Lincoln to Oderus Urungus, but think about it: the Republicans in the 1850s, like GWAR in the 1980s, were a crazy new sound.  They were wild and often offensive but also creative and really interesting.  The 1860 Republican platform and This Toilet Earth are both fearless, boundary-challenging works.  But if you look at GWAR today, well, it’s a bunch of aging rich guys smirking their way through performative acts of violation and nastiness so they can rake in cash and adulation from their cult of fanatic followers.  Just as GWAR today has very little in common with the GWAR that Dave Brockie founded in an abandoned bottling plant in Richmond, Virginia in 1984, the Republicans today have very little in common with the Party of Lincoln.

So when you listen to their old stuff, like “Free Soil, Free Men” or “Homestead Act” or “Must and Shall” or, really, any of the tracks from A House Divided?   It’s just a completely different sound, because it’s a completely different band. But if you can listen to that music for itself, without being colored by what came after… well, it still rocks pretty hard, and you can see how it changed everything.

Anyway, the Republicans got rid of John Fremont (a super high maintenance diva, difficult even for a lead singer), then nearly broke up over whether to embrace or reject the new hardcore John Brown sound (they did, and it’s all over A House Divided), and then finally united behind Lincoln as UNION.



Now, when we think of UNION, we think of its classic configuration:  Grant (bass), Sherman (drums), and Seward (backup singer, keyboard).  But that group only lasted 20 months and three albums.  Before that, UNION went through musicians almost as fast as the old Whigs had.  Most of these guys are only noted by nerds and completists:  Joe Hooker?  Simon Cameron?  Alexander Pope?  About the only one still remembered even slightly is Ambrose Burnside, and that’s because he was the inspiration for Lemmy’s signature look.

So UNION didn’t achieve its classic form until late ’63.  Turning Point is a great album — “Four Score And Seven” got endless air time and remains an absolute banger.  But that’s George Meade on drums, not Sherman.  (If you listen for the drum line, it jumps right out.  Meade is a very solid technical drummer, but he just doesn’t burn like Sherman.)  And those weird slow tracks from On to Richmond, where the chorus keeps repeating but the beat never drops?  Stuff like “Penninsular” and “More Training”?  George McLellan.

But once UNION had achieved its final form, well, it was just one hit after another.  From the Glory Road album we have “Father of Waters”, “Appeal Against The Thunder”, “This Hallowed Ground”, and “If It Takes All Summer”.  Then Terrible Swift Sword has “War is Cruelty (Hard Hand of War)” — that’s the one with Sherman’s fiery drum solo — “Damn The Torpedoes”, “No Peace In Tennessee”, and “Christmas in Savannah”.  And finally, Never Call Retreat: “Let The Thing Be Pressed”, “Unconditional Surrender”,  and “Inauguration 2 (Malice Towards None)”.  It’s an astonishing accomplishment.  Even the B-sides, like “Don’t Change Horses” and “No Wrong Hereafter”, could chart.


Obviously you can’t tell even a short version of Lincoln’s story without mentioning its melancholy end. After Lincoln was cut down like John Lennon, UNION was forced to stagger on behind Andrew Johnson.  There’s no way to soften it:  Johnson was to Lincoln what Gary Cherone would later be to Hagar and Van Halen.   Grant’s solo career… well, even his biggest fans begin with ‘not as bad as everyone says’.  Seward would basically become a session musician, though he would have one last hit with “Alaska”.  And as to Sherman, it’s entirely appropriate that the one track he’s remembered for is “Will Not Run, Will Not Serve”, which is about rejecting fame and walking away from the whole scene.

Still: despite the sad end, Lincoln’s career was pretty amazing.  So people have had reason to celebrate President’s Day in the past!  Perhaps we may again one day. 

So crank up some good American music, whether blues or anthem rock.  Think on good times past, and hope for better days to come.   And… lift a beer to a Kentucky boy who went all the way and paid the price:  Abe Lincoln.