Say the word and you'll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of
              (John Lennon/Paul McCartney, 1965 – The Word)

Today’s political climate does not seem the best for librarians, bookshops and avid readers. More books are blacklisted by good willing citizens in Florida and other states south of the Mason Dixon line than in the heydays of the Inquisition. Okay, in 1229 the Bible was forbidden for lay people, but despite its contents that on day-time TV would strongly at least suggest Parental Guidance, the Holy Script can still be read in the US of A, while librarians will lose their jobs over lending “The Diary Of Ann Frank”, the comic “Mouse”, “Catcher In The Rye”, “Ulysses”, “Harry Potter” and “Charlotte’s Web”. Wow, the souls of our children will be damaged so much by Harry and his fellow magicians that it will take at least four more years of Trump ranting and lying on TV to get rid of their scars.

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
… And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
              (Bob Dylan, 1965 – Desolation Row)

No wonder a city like Nashville TN has only three bookstores. The Guidance Patrol, the morality police, could come in any moment to seize the works of George Orwell, Nabokov, Harper Lee ad James Baldwin. Fast forward to Spain where cities like Barcelona and Madrid seem to have a bookshop at each street corner, where the English Bookstore is twice the size of your average Barnes & Noble and where libraries have signs put up declaring “our Books Will Never Be Banned”. Sometimes we even have a drink at the Plaça de George Orwell and discuss Ché Guevara and Angela Davis, whilst remembering what a cool guy Stokeley Carmichael was.

I stuck around St. Petersburg, when I saw it was a time for a change
              (Mikhail Bulgakov, 1929: The Master And The Margarita/Sympathy For The Devil)

When I was a kid, I got less weekly pocket money than anyone in my class, my neighborhood. And those two quarters still came with a restriction. I could only spend it on books. “Dombo” and Piet Worm’s “De Drie Paardjes” were quickly followed by Huizinga’s “Autumntide Of The Middle Ages”, “The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich”, biographies of Lenin and William of Orange, books about the Russian Revolution. The last two books I bought in my younger days, John Lennon’s “In My Own Write” and “A Spaniard In The Works”, marked my interest shifting from the Muse of Letters to the Gods of Rock ‘n Roll. I tried to worship both during the rest of my life. And that meant writing about rock ‘ roll. I quit my studies Political Science at Amsterdam University to ‘work for Bob Dylan’. I started at Hitweek, at daily paper Het Parool, scripted the popnews to be read on Radio Veronica and became chief editor of their million selling weekly of the same name. Sometimes combining that with managing artists and record labels. Promoting the Doors, Frank Zappa, Cat Stevens, Roxy Music, Neil Young and Blondie. While President of King Biscuit Flower Hour in New York in the mid-nineties I started contributing as foreign correspondent to Dutch music magazine Het Platenblad. I hesitate to confess but still today the first thing I do when Het Platenblad hits the mailbox is to read my own story and start working on the next.

So now I’m startin’ up a posse to fight for freedom of choice
To fight for freedom of speech: We’re gonna make you hear our voice
              (Anthrax, 1991 -Starting Up A Posse)

In 2013 John Densmore, the drummer of the Doors came to Nashville to talk about his book “The Doors Unhinged” and his clashes with mainly Ray Manzarek about prostituting the legacy of Jim Morrison and his band. It was only weeks after Deborah finished laying out my own memories of Fifty Years living in the Shade of Fame and getting “Rock ‘n Roll Kamikaze” printed. I swapped books with John and premiered my book at a party at record & bookstore Grimey’s Two with Dutch Americana band Skotwal providing the musical interludes. One older guy bought two copies which he both wanted signed. ‘One is for my daughter’, he explained. ‘Does she read Dutch?’, I wondered. ‘No’, was the answer: ‘But she’s a Bob Marley fan!’ Ever since, friends and acquaintances have asked me when there will be an English translation. I don’t know. Maybe I’m too lazy. Maybe it’s too much work. Or maybe I’m afraid to be sued for writing about the nazi roots of BMG or quoting the British officer that said ‘we had to put another bullet in her’ about Princess Di. Thus maybe not working on an accessible version of my “Rock ‘n Roll Kamikaze” book might well be a form of self-censorship. So that senator Marcia Blackburn or governor Ron DeSantis don’t have to do the dirty work.

Preacher man don't tell me Heaven is under the earth
I know you don't know what life is really worth
He said all that glitters is gold, half that story ain't never been told
So now you see the light, hey, you stand up for your right
              (Bob Marley, 1973 – Get Up, Stand Up)

I’m retiring from working for money so I can enjoy life. But enjoying life also means writing about what I care about. Music, climate, ethics, a world with equal opportunities.  I’d love to find a platform for my political musings. Finally picking up where I left politics in 1966. Not just writing a blog, but something in print. I’m old-fashioned and enjoy the smell of ink, the touch of paper. I realize that I won’t rest until there’s another book. Maybe I’ll kick myself into transposing “Rock ‘n Roll Kamikaze” into accessibility for my American, British and Irish friends and acquaintances. And after 10 years on the shelf that one should get a follow-up. Books are important. To quote Toni Morrison: ‘Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind’. That’s why Ron DeSantis, MassResistance, Bill Lee and Marcia Blackburn want to kick books from the shelves of our libraries.

Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword; shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man...
                (Thomas Jefferson, 1792 - letter to Thomas Paine)

From July 2021 to June 2022 alone 1,648 books by 1,261 different authors were banned. It didn’t make the USA a better, a safer country. Mass shootings and gay bashing are still national sports. We still haven’t heard apologies for the January 6 storming of the Capitol, burning books seems a bigger priority. And as long as books are getting banned we need to write more to add to our libraries. For political action. For knowledge. For reflection. For a better and fairer world.

Let’s hope the pen is mightier than the sword!