Still Screaming for Change
In 1986, Youth of Today changed the lyrics for a song about fighting to a song about forgiveness. 37 years later, we still have something to learn from it.
I.
There is such a thing as consistency. There is such a thing as dedication. There is such a thing as loyalty. In the first two decades of hardcore, we all grew up with a canon of songs that venerated these ideals, and whether it was “Committed For Life,” “Nailed to the X,” or “Always (A Friend for Life),” the running theme seemed to suggest that hardcore was a lifestyle of fixed decisions. It was about taking a hard stance, as one band named themselves. At sixteen years old, I personally made a not-so-insignificant number of decisions about who I was that I believed I was making “for life” or “until death.” Fixed convictions—and more specifically, making my mind up and sticking to it, no matter the consequences and often in black-and-white terms—gave me a kind of stability I didn’t grow up with. It also gave me a sense of superiority in a life that constantly made me feel small and insignificant. Commitment was about strength, and I finally found a way to show I was not weak.
At the same time, a parallel canon of songs was growing: “Make a Change,” “Screaming for Change,” “It’s About Time That We Had a Change,” and so on. In these songs, the virtue being venerated was not commitment or fixedness, but the courage to change your mind, change your actions, change the scene, or even change the world. I knew every lyric to these songs too, but at the time, I didn’t feel they applied to me. I had already made the change, I thought. These songs were for other, less dedicated people, who had yet to make the commitments I made—to hardcore, to being a skinhead, to straightedge, to going vegetarian. Hooray for me, then. From here “until death,” I knew who I was and I knew my community would celebrate me for being “true.”
There is also such a thing as having the right idea while doing the wrong thing.
II.
One of the best things about having a 30-year-old fanzine is the ability to track changes, both in myself and in the people I speak with. This week, I reconvened with Richie Birkenhead—singer for Into Another and Underdog, as well as a former Youth of Today guitarist—for a “reunion interview” to catch up on what’s happened since the last time we spoke for Anti-Matter in 1994; that’s coming in full on Thursday. We also talked about the nature of change itself, and in the process, I remembered something about Youth of Today that happened while Richie was in the band.
Back in 1985, Youth of Today contributed two songs to a Run It! fanzine compilation 7” called Make It Work. It was early days for the band, so their identity was still forming and their messaging was, perhaps, not yet as cohesive as it would eventually become. The first song on that EP, “Take a Stand,” would become a future Youth of Today anthem. But the second one, “We Just Might,” was a bit of a turn. Whereas “Take a Stand” is a song with positive intentions, encouraging people to find their voice, “We Just Might” is, more or less, a song about justified violence—so much so that the center label of the record inadvertently adds a word to its title. It reads: “We Just Might Fight.”
Not even a year later, Ray Cappo had a change of heart. He realized that these lyrics were reckless and could have a negative impact on the scene. He believed it was wrong and he regretted the message. But instead of just retiring the song and letting it fade into obscurity, Youth of Today did something completely unprecedented: Cappo rewrote the lyrics and then re-recorded the song for their debut album, Break Down the Walls—which Richie played second guitar on. He renamed it “Time to Forgive,” and in the new lyrics, Cappo literally apologizes for the old lyrics. “I’m sorry for the bottled-up anger,” he sings. “What was it about? It’s time to forgive. I’m glad that it’s all over now!”
“As far as [those two songs] go, just as pure theater, ‘We Just Might’ is cooler, right?” Richie smirks, recalling how he felt as a kid in 1986. “Like, we all love violent R-rated films and things that are sensationalist, but also things that just give a little bit of catharsis without actually hurting anyone. So at the time, part of me lamented the change in those lyrics because I wanted to be on stage singing along to, ‘You say you want to fucking fight?!’” He laughs, then adds, “But I think Ray Cappo was incredibly brave to do that, to rewrite those lyrics. I really admired him for doing that.”
Since then, I’ve only ever heard of songs that started out one way but changed before they were released. In an unpublished part of our interview, for example, Kevin Seconds told me that the pro-gay anthem “Regress No Way” was originally a song called “No Class, No Way”—whose lyrics passed judgment on a couple that hung out in the Reno punk scene—until Jello Biafra heard it live and told him he might want to reconsider the message. But as far as I can remember, no one else has ever fully rewritten a song with lyrics that essentially denounce the original version before or since Youth of Today. This is not insignificant. For a band that once wrote an entire song with only the lyrics, “I’m proud of who I am, what I say, and what I do, I’m standing hard,” the idea of releasing a song that basically says, “I was wrong and I will not just sweep my past mistakes under the rug,” is a big deal that is worthy to remember. They showed us that “staying true” and “changing your mind” is a false dichotomy. Richie is absolutely right to call it brave.
III.
As much as I’d love to see Bad Brains rewrite “Don’t Blow Bubbles” into a song that tackles the homophobia of the original, I don’t actually want it. Not all roads to absolution must be the same. What I do want, however, is a culture that allows people to evolve without shame—whether we admit past mistakes or simply grow out of something that made sense to us at one point in our lives. I also want a culture with the courage to allow itself to evolve—even when we’re forced to reassess some of the ideas and traditions that were handed down to us—if that means creating a stronger and more sustainable community for future generations.
Part of this means thinking about commitment as more of a repetitive choice than an aging burden. When I think about my commitment to vegetarianism, for example, I don’t look at it like a choice I made when I was fourteen years old that I’m now obligated to execute for the rest of my life. I see it as a decision that I originally made based on values that are still important to me—things like nonviolence, interconnectedness, and compassion. But I also see it as an active decision I continue to make, every day, when I sit down to eat. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from eating a hamburger right now except for the decision that I repeatedly make. Allowing myself the choice to recommit every time I eat, and thinking about it that way, is a much more powerful display of conviction than feeling forced to eat a certain way because I once said I’d be vegetarian “until I die.” In that sense, no decision is fixed. Every decision is new. And commitment becomes less about strength than it does love.
What I find most valuable about the “We Just Might”/“Time to Forgive” story is that Youth of Today quite simply did not need to do what they did. But they understood that asking other people to change is meaningless if they weren’t willing to change themselves. They knew that those Youth Brigade lyrics—“I thought we all wanted something new / Why did it end up the same? / Don’t you know that it’s up to you? / You have got to make the change”—were as much about the singer as it was the audience it was sung for. Ray Cappo needed to forgive himself first before he could finally move on to change the world. He also knew that he was not exempt from his own message. Had he never let go of those ideas that didn’t work for him anymore, many of us—myself included—might not be here today.
Coming on Thursday to Anti-Matter: A 29-year reunion interview with Richie Birkenhead.
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It's interesting to me how often the essays and conversations published here sort of orbit around the things that happen as we get older. As has been observed, when something was important and formative to you when you were young, it's hard to know what your relationship to it will be when you get older. Kevin Seconds continuing to honor his music alongside making a living, Pat Flynn grappling with the death of a parent, our relationship to "origin stories," discovering the importance of being able to say you were wrong, to grow and forgive...to me, it all speaks to what happens when your life starts to overspill the confines of the subculture that helped you get through life when you were young. As someone who's a little older, but not by much, this has been really valuable for navigating the treacherous waters of middle age. Thank you.
Another great read. Thanks Norman!