Stephen Stills has never been reluctant to raise his voice in song when he sees “something happening here/what it is ain’t exactly clear.” On December 5th, 1966, Buffalo Springfield recorded those now-classic, and often-repeated words, from Stills’ song “For What It’s Worth.” Although the song quickly became a protest anthem echoing across city streets and parks where demonstrations against the Vietnam War were erupting, Stills wrote the song about the protests over curfew laws that the city of Los Angeles had imposed in November 1966 in an attempt to regulate noise and traffic congestion near clubs, such as the Whiskey Au Go Go, on Sunset Strip.
Almost fifty years later, Stephen Stills has looked around him to see a similar, but much uglier, scene. Fifty years ago, protestors and police didn’t see eye-to-eye on an ordinance that would have changed urban policy and affected a small number of individuals. The protests raised far deeper questions, though, about free speech, civil discourse, respect for others, as well as the easy acceptance of violence to resolve political issues. Even more, though, each side’s refusal to see the other as human enabled each side so readily to embrace violence against each other.
Almost fifty years later, the loss of civil discourse in an election year, the steady and willing ability to avoid seeing each other as fellow humans struggling to find our way, the steady and willing embrace of violence as an almost immediate response to conflict, the readiness to see anyone unlike ourselves as a hated other, and the hatred bred by fear of others gave Stills fertile ground to write a new single, “Look Each Other in the Eye.”
The Fat Angel Sings 