Back To Zero by The Rolling Stones

OK! Here's another oddball selection.

The Rolling Stones released the album Dirty Work in 1986. The LP went platinum in the US, but critics didn't care much for the album. One thing I appreciate about the Stones is their ability to borrow from current music trends and decide the right moment to introduce new sounds blended with their own powerful style. They scored big in the 70's with the LP Some Girls utilizing disco beats in some of the tracks, like Miss You. In Dirty Work, they enlisted the big drum sounds of the the new wave and blossoming big hair rock. The guitar work, as always, is inventive and highly creative. You can hear the influence of new wave bands' use of heavy and bouncing bass lines. There is an edgy funk influence in some of the guitar work, which you can hear under the heavy synthesizers of many new wave bands.

Certainly not a hit single, but a good example of The Rolling Stones ability to experiment with sounds and styles is the anti-nuclear song, Back To Zero. I have no idea why the song was on my mind when I woke this morning, but that song is today's focus.

If you grew up in the 1980's, you will remember the influence of nuclear fear in almost everything. It was a popular topic in arts and culture. Author Spencer R. Weart wrote Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Harvard 1989) and recently a follow up The Rise Of Nuclear Fear (Harvard 2012), in which he claims our world is still being ruled by irrational fear of nuclear power precisely because of how media and popular culture have created a monster in our minds. The fear of a post-nuclear-apocalypse world.

The publisher describes Weart's thesis in Nuclear Fear.

Our thinking is inhabited by images-images of sometimes curious and overwhelming power. The mushroom cloud, weird rays that can transform the flesh, the twilight world following a nuclear war, the white city of the future, the brilliant but mad scientist who plots to destroy the world-all these images and more relate to nuclear energy, but that is not their only common bond. Decades before the first atom bomb exploded, a web of symbols with surprising linkages was fully formed in the public mind. The strange kinship of these symbols can be traced back, not only to medieval symbolism, but still deeper into experiences common to all of us.

Who can name movies with nuclear bomb threats and the like?

War Games with Matthew Broderick
The Mad Max series with Mel Gibson
Planet of the Apes
Dr. Stranglelove
The Sum of All Fears

Godzilla was a mutant creature who destroyed entire cities. The lizard king was the result of nuclear bomb testing and radiation fall out. As recently as 2009 the film The Road showed us a post-apocalyptic world in which the survivors live in a dying planet. Trapped in a perpetual nuclear winter survivors scrounge for food and try to stay away from cannibals. And in 2010, The Book of Eli takes places after the bombs dropped and wiped everything out. Nuclear fear is still actively being fed to the masses and we are eating it up.

After the tsunami caused a meltdown of the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima on March 11, 2011, reaction against nuclear power was fierce all over the world. Germany's government leaders made vows to stop plans for future nuclear power plants.

Nuclear Fear is what The Rolling Stones are singing about in Back to Zero.

Give it a listen.  http://youtu.be/Il-cIKHiK9w

Back To Zero (1986)
Songwriters: Keith Richard; Mick Jagger; Chuck Leavell


Back to zero
So you wanna blow us all to pieces
Go meet your maker, head hung down
And give him all your explanations

Go ahead, throw down
Back to zero, back to nothing
Straight to meltdown, back to zero
That's where we're heading

It's a monkey living on my back
I can feel my spine begin to crack
I'm looking to the future
I keep on glancing back
I prefer to rot, I don't want to pop

I think I'll head back to the jungle, alright
Don't want to see no big bad rumble, too fright
Back to zero, that's where we're going
Back to nothing, right now, right now
No heroes, no more heroes
Back to meltdown
That's where I'm going, back to zero

My whole life is hanging on a thread
I'm the fly inside the spider's web
I'm looking to the future
I keep on glancing back
I prefer to rot, I don't want to pop

I worry about my great grandchildren
Living ten miles beneath the ground
I worry about their whole existence
The whole damn thing's in doubt

Back to zero, that's where we're going
Back to nothing, that's where we're heading
Straight to meltdown, that's where we're going
Back to zero, right now, right now

If we are don't want ya goin'
Yeah, we're going nowhere

Back to zero
Right now, right now, right now
Back to zero
That's where, that's where we're heading
Back to zero
Back to zero

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It might also be important to recognize what was happening in the band at the time. Mick Jagger had released his first solo project. This was a sore subject with the band, especially Keith Richards. Throw on top of that, Charlie Watts was strung out on heroin. He didn't play drums on most of the cuts. Jagger recorded his vocals after the band laid down the music. He wasn't even with them during the majority of the creation of the LP. Add to that the fact that there were only three bonafide Jagger-Richards compositions. The rest were ghost written or loosely co-written by Chuck Leavell. The icing on the cake occurred when Ian Stewart, one of the founding members of The Rolling Stones, died of a heart attack before the LP was completed in post production. 

It was a bad time for the ruddy bad boys of London. Perhaps the meltdown inspiring the song isn't just about nuclear fears. Perhaps nuclear fears is just a metaphor for the meltdown between Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones.

Read the lyrics as addressing government leaders like Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. These men led the two superpowers with most of the world's nuclear weapons pointed at one another. Sting released a song during this time period called, Russians. It came out the summer prior to the Stones' Back To Zero. Sting, too, was singing to the world superpowers, which we feared would bring the world into nuclear annihilation. 

Now read the lyrics again, but this time as directed from Keith Richards to Mick Jagger, who was threatening the stability of the band by focusing on a solo career. 

There's no doubt that the song is expressing nuclear fears with images like our great grandchildren having to live ten miles underground, but I think the lyrics would have also spoken to anyone who felt like their life was hanging by a thread. Sometimes our present makes our future look bleak. We fear what the world is becoming. We fear for future generations. 

I am sitting in the midst of the weather hype being called "snowmageddon" or "snowpocalypse." A polar blast is bringing sub zero temperatures throughout the Midwest. Memphis, Tennessee was colder yesterday than parts of Alaska. Insane weather! We fear global warming, and the further deterioration of our way of life, as nature reacts to melting polar caps, rising seas and intense storms. Are we heading into a new ice age? Will the environment become unlivable? Will we have to go underground or even off planet in order to survive? Sci-Fi films have already picked up on our contemporary fears. 

I'm sure as the Rolling Stones struggled with their future, their past seemed a whole lot more promising. But they made it through. We made it through the 1980's. The Soviet Union dissolved. The Cold War ended. Russia and America are allied in many cases of international security. The future is rarely as bleak as our fears lead us to believe. 

The song talks as if going back to zero is a bad thing. It's losing everything and having to start over again. There are not a few success stories that come from great failures. Edison failed at inventing the light bulb 1000 times before he got it right.

“I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say I discovered their are 1000 ways that can cause failure” ― Thomas Edison

Colonel Sanders went completely broke at age 65 before achieving success with his Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain. Going back to zero isn't the end. We shouldn't fear it, nor should we live recklessly and bait it either. Instead we should commit our way to the Lord.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight. (Prv 3:5-6)

Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.

Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
For those who are evil will be destroyed,
but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land. (Psa 37:3-9)

The Hebrew people knew the faithfulness of the Lord. They allowed their trust in God for safety and prosperity, to speak louder than their fears. So the next time your world begins to frighten you, remember that God is faithful to all who trust in Him. Call upon the Lord and be saved. Even if you have to face great difficulty, like going back to zero, the Lord is with you and will walk you through it. Do not fear losing what you have. Fear God alone.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (Mk 8:35-36)

Jesus, keep our hearts set upon you and your kingdom. You are our future. The whole world is heading toward Your divine rule. Teach us to be obedient as we celebrate your love and your might promise of life. Let us not fear what they fear, but have faith in You, the Savior of the world. Amen