On a Monday morning in August 1969, an Army veteran stood on a muddy stage in upstate New York and turned the national anthem into sirens and falling bombs. Half the country heard a protest. He said he thought it was beautiful.
Tim and Andrea take on the white Fender Stratocaster Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, and the bigger question it raises: when someone performs “The Star-Spangled Banner” their own way, is it a protest or a love letter? Andrea, a fellow lefty, connects quickly with a guitarist who played a right-handed guitar upside down. From there it’s the Stratocaster itself, Hendrix’s early years in Seattle, his time as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne, and a festival that ran so late most of the crowd had gone home before he played. Then the heart of the episode: the anthem as a performance, with Tim firmly in the “don’t stray too far from the music” camp and Andrea on the side of the artist. They cover José Feliciano’s 1968 World Series version, which was booed and kept off the radio, and Whitney Houston’s 1991 Super Bowl anthem, which Andrea heard in person at the “Wide Right” game, a memory that still stings for a Bills fan. They also run through the famous botches, Roseanne Barr included, and close with how the guitar ended up at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, plus a quick detour into whether Paul Allen owned the Seahawks.
One song, a thousand ways to play it. Protest or love letter? You decide.
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