I didn't know it, but I was about to go through some of the most intense changes of my creative life.

It started off rather promisingly with a new record deal. Looking back from 1982 when I first got signed, to 1999 when I would start my own record company, I had a record contract a total of 5 years out of 17 -- EMI-America 1982 through '84, EMI-Manhattan 1987, and BMG 1989. So it was a nice vote of confidence which I very much appreciated.

After keeping modern technology at arm's length for most of my life, I decided to embrace it. Maybe I'm afraid of it, I thought. So in the spirit of confrontation, I jumped into the world of technology and dance music completely for the first time. Old prejudices die hard and the rock versus disco thing was very real and very deep. But I felt I had to be honest and follow the road I was on to see where it led.

Dance rhythms were there on "Out Of The Darkness" and "Among The Believers" on my second record. It was a 50-50 mix on my third. The fourth would be 100% cyberfunk, no rock in sight except for the muscle of the drums and two guitar solos.

I don't know. It was new. It was interesting. And even though my solo records were always about the songs and never much about guitar playing, I had been playing less and less live and by the time of Revolution I had come to the point where I didn't feel like playing at all.

The whole technology thing wasn't totally new to me. We had pioneered mixing samples into electric drums in 1984 (with mixed results) and would take it to the extreme on the Revolution tour, at which point we were state of the art. With the push of a button every sound of every drum in the drum set would change on every song. Plus we had customized an octopad (an electronic drum pad with 8 different sections) to trigger various African percussion, hand claps, whatever. Our drummer, Perry Wilson, played all these sounds so it kept the live feel, as opposed to playing along with tapes which is what a lot of performers are doing now.

It was fascinating to construct a record with no rules, no tradition, no limits as to what it could sound like. I started off with a lot of enthusiasm and we put the basic outline of the songs into a computer. The "we" by the way was keyboardist Mark Alexander, bass player Warren McRae and myself. I was then going to mutate all of the already semi-mutated sounds into all kinds of wild hybrids. You could use a dog bark, a train going by, thunder, anything. Record it, tune it, and the tom-tom is a garbage truck, the guitar is a waterfall. You get the idea.

After that I was going to layer percussion loops and news reports and opera and doo-wop and who knows what until it was a totally new sound, densely stacked so you'd hear something different whenever you listened to it all on top of the deepest funk and most intense rhythms we could create.

So there I was about two months in, just getting started really with the first layer, the basic outline of the songs, and I lost it. I just lost interest. It started to become an intellectual exercise instead of the artistic adventure it should have been.

I quickly finished the basics and listened to it as it was. The basic sounds were powerful, the songs were good, my Sly Stone/George Clinton/Gil Scott-Heron performance attitude served the songs well, and even though it was 20 or 25% of what I intended, it worked and I put it out.

The album was going to be about alienation, the death of the community, technology advancing faster than human evolution, and the one true American religion controlling it all from behind the curtain, economics. The record would explore the interaction and alienation that starts with the disconnect of man and his labor, continues with the political manipulation of people through their addiction to television, and ends up (as I tongue-in-cheek paraphrased Marx in the liner notes) as our total, terminal alienation from our life support systems by destroying the environment for short-term economic gain.

I wanted the alienation to be dramatized by the sound picture of the record. The voice would be the only human sound in an ocean of mechanized and cyberborn plastic, metal and fiber-optic chaos. The final record isn't as dramatic as the multi-level, densely layered work would have been had I actually finished it, but the essence of the idea is still there.

In between the lyric lines there are hints of the spiritual price we pay for all this along the way that serve as a bridge to the next and final political record.

So in 1989 I would write this record, completely embrace dance music and digital technology, do a tour of Europe, stand in front of 150,000 people in Rome, experience a spiritual crisis of identity, walk away from the tour exorcised of every drop of interest in dance and technology, question my entire existence, wake up one morning and realize I miss rock, write the only two purely rock records I've ever done, actually feel like playing guitar for the first time in a long while, get rejected by my record company because rock was going out of fashion (5 or 6 years early but correct), and wander out into the Saharan desert where I would mentally remain for 7 years.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?  (lyrics; audio)

For the first time I didn't start off with a song that sets up the theme.

This one's a bit of a summary of the questions and issues I'd been looking at for 7 years. It was time for a breather after a pretty wild ride. The anger had peaked and the success of the Sun City project made me a little more philosophical about the war we were fighting.

I didn't know much, but it was time to step back away from the passion and outline what little I did know. I couldn't exactly provide any answers but I'd started to learn what was going on in the world.

This song would ask the question, and the rest of this album and the next would answer it - or at least provide a few roads on a map that has been continuously rewritten since the 60's changed our collective consciousness.

REVOLUTION  (lyrics; audio)

The revolution begins here.

By here I mean the General, the Soldier, the Strategist, the Architect of this revolution is right there staring back at you when you look in the mirror.

There will always be the question of how much genetic inclination, early environment, and circumstance (not to mention the possibility of fate or karma) have to do with one's destiny. But to some degree at least, your destiny is shaped by how much responsibility you want to take for it.

While stating the theme of the album, this song 's already got a bit of comic relief to it which, coming this early in the album, emphasized my new more relaxed attitude.

The basic idea is that modern revolution is fought on two fronts. In your own consciousness, and in your living room nightly on television (and increasingly on the internet), contradicting both Mao ("Sorry Mao ain't gonna come from the barrel of a gun") and my friend Gil Scott-Heron ("the revolution will not be televised").

In spite of my new found, and probably temporary, casual attitude about all this, there still exists an element of fire-drill panic concerning the damage being done internally (mentally, emotionally - the need to evolve) and externally (the planet as an extension of our physical bodies).

The simple fact is that after the consciousness-raising, chemically altered, confrontational 60's and 70's, we woke up hungover in a world that for the first time was controlled by a truly mass media. We're playing catch-up, trying to adapt strategies to combat the newly organized controlling forces that shape our lives. Until we do, we will remain confused and frustrated and never be able to assist the third world that should be adopting modern, pollution-free technology instead of being forced into an unnecessary 19th-century-style industrial revolution that will destroy what's left of the world-wide ecology.

You want the truth? You'd better not take anybody's word for it. You can't trust the television, radio, the newspapers, politicians, teachers, rock and roll, the clergy, if you can name it - you can't trust it. Books are your best bet but even then you have to double and triple check your sources. We have to read a lot of different things and/or talk to people with opposing views and then decide for ourselves.

The fundamental tenet of this revolution is realizing, accepting, and embracing the fact that everyone and everything on this planet is alive and connected. Understanding that is the hard part because there is no tradition of that sensibility in Western education. The deeper you go inside yourself to find the truth, the closer you come to the common ground of the collective consciousness. Living one's life accordingly, embracing and fully experiencing the moment, will follow in time and eventually feel totally natural, but it's going to take a minute.

EDUCATION  (lyrics; audio)

The education process in our schools has never been great but, even by society's questionable standards, it's been getting worse for 30 years.

Education should be about creating an environment for children to explore many disciplines without limitations and then encouraging each individual to follow where they choose to go. Discover and encourage a child's inclinations. There will always be the basics that children should learn regardless of their level of interest such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, but it's the teachers' job to show the practical application of the information being taught.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that history class was so boring since all I've done since leaving school is study history! While the old cliché is true that childhood is the worst time to try and educate somebody, more advanced teaching skills would be a great help. Of course truly accurate history should be taught and kids would find that a lot more interesting. Computer experience is absolutely essential these days but it shouldn't replace basic math skills which exercise "muscles" in your brain which aids the thinking process in ways beyond what two plus two equals.

We're not reading enough because of television. Children naturally have a short attention span to begin with and modern television with its faster and faster edits reinforces that short attention span to a dangerous extreme. Dangerous as in permanent. Putting aside any value judgment on the content of television, the very act of watching it is a passive activity and it puts part of your brain to sleep. Reading books on the other hand is interactive. It makes you think, conjuring images and interpreting what is being said.

In the war against attempts by external economic forces to control one's life, education is our most essential defense.

BALANCE  (lyrics; audio)

There are a few song titles that stand out as essential statements of what is most important to me. "Solidarity" and "Freedom" come to mind and "Balance" is another one.

Of what little I might think I know, balance is the key to realizing one's potential and living as satisfying a life as humanly possible. That I know. Of course, my life is completely out of balance in a hundred ways but it's something I'm always shooting for.

This is one of my favorite songs and favorite lyrics.

It is a direct bridge to the spiritual themes I would explore on the next record.

LOVE AND FORGIVENESS  (lyrics; audio)

I don't have a lot of songs laying around but I had one called "Our Father's Wars" I half finished about Ireland and I used the idea in this one.

Generational prejudice and hatred just punishes and poisons each new generation of children and the chain of war never gets broken. Of course this comes from a man whose main motivating force in life has been anger. Now there is a difference between emotional anger and an educated, righteous anger but ultimately we're generally better off not passing along that anger, righteous or not, to our children.

What about anger against injustice and prejudice? This stuff does get complicated…

NEWSPEAK  (lyrics; audio)

(From George Orwell's 1984)

The lyrics pretty much say what I want to say on this album as literally as possible. I tried to clearly state the issues and questions I had on the previous three albums, but on this one I shifted the emphasis from asking questions to trying to answer a few. It didn't feel appropriate to assume characters to dramatize the issues in a local or regional context. This album is an overview or afterview of what I was learning.

One of two songs dedicated to the media.

SEXY  (lyrics; audio)

The other media song. Sexy is a term journalists use to describe an event or issue that they know an audience will tune in for. Scandals, plane crashes, wars. Shit like that.

The presence of the media made a big difference in the outcome of the struggles of liberation in the Philippines, Haiti, and in terms of sheer publicity, South Africa. The really bad guys running this planet are all vampires. Expose them to the light and they run for cover or die. Unfortunately once the cameras leave, things revert at least part way back to the way they were. But the media, when it wants to, or can get away with it against their corporate parents' best financial interests, can play a very positive role in global politics.

Obviously this song was written before the changes in Haiti and South Africa but Native American issues continue to remain below all media radar.

LEONARD PELTIER  (lyrics; audio)

And speaking of which, Leonard Peltier's case remains among the most outrageous, embarrassing, and frustrating in the history of the American justice system.

The story is outlined in the song and the book I recommended in the album notes, Peter Matthiessen's In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, is required reading for all the incredible detail.

The revolution of thought that raged in the United States in the 60's spilled over into the 70's. The focus of "national security" by the FBI and other government agencies, in the form of COINTELPRO ("Counterintelligence Program") and other operations, moved from destroying the Black Panthers and slowing down the civil rights movement wherever possible, to destroying the American Indian Movement (AIM) which was essentially Native Americans demanding the U.S. government honor its treaties regarding Indian sovereignty.

AIM espoused the values of traditional Native America. Among the issues that were controversial then (and still are) as far as the government was concerned were land claims, mining, access to sacred sites, language preservation, traditional education, prejudice, lack of justice in the courts, and other fundamental rights Indian people have never had.

Leonard ended up the sacrificial lamb of a corrupt and failed government policy. He's still in jail in spite of witness coercion, falsified and withheld evidence, etc., etc., not to mention the exoneration of the other two guys held for the same crime.

The names at the end of the song are those who were murdered by government sanctioned goon squads. Virtually no one has been arrested, indicted, or otherwise held responsible for their deaths.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY  (lyrics; audio)

Liberation Theology was a movement within the church that believed it was God's work to help and defend the oppressed rather than turn their backs and blindly support the oppressor.

The Pope opposed this movement and there was quite a bit of controversy about it in the 80's.

I'm singing my best version of a combination of Gil Scott-Heron and Sly Stone and it's one of my favorite vocals.

DISCIPLINE  (lyrics; audio)

Discipline is the missing piece of the puzzle. We have been an economically comfortable society since the 50's. The World War II generation were the last group of disciplined citizens and they built modern America. But perhaps, as I'll try and explain in the next couple of paragraphs, when I use the word discipline I should add flexibility as an essential yin/yang complimentary component.

The disciplined World War II generation had a lot of trouble adjusting to the revolutionary consciousness expansion of the 60's and the country has never quite recovered. The men that fought the war and built the infrastructure of the country had great pride in whatever work they did and lived in a simpler, more consistent and understandable world. Black people and women had their place, the government was respected, everybody went to church and were most likely Protestants or Catholics, and even the Jews were alright as long as they didn't try to join the country club.

As worship of God and Country turned to questions and criticism, consciousness-altering drugs and rock music, and civil rights, the World War II generation lost their cool, and ultimately, lost their bearings. Once you experience an earthquake, it profoundly affects your most basic sense of security and you never trust anything you thought you could depend on quite the same way ever again. They shook their heads and walked away. Their inflexibility and inability to pass along their discipline to a new generation with a liberated consciousness was a huge setback to the country.

The United States should be paradise on earth. Poverty, homelessness, prejudice, education as propaganda, etc. should have been vanquished long ago. But we lost our discipline. Liberation is a hard thing to contain. It is by definition a way of breaking down barriers, breaking the rules, reaching beyond previous limitations. That's all good but our unified sense of purpose went with it.

When you combine all that with the explosion of the media as Big Brother and television as the ultimate narcotic we end up with a generation of spoiled brats that won't let their parents have an uninterrupted conversation, don't have the patience to read a book, and aren't getting the guidance and nurturing they need.

What is this revolution about? Revolutionary realization that all things are alive and connected, Education without limits or prejudice, Balance in all things, Love and Forgiveness, Discipline, Focus, Dedication, Patience, and Righteous Determination.

In other words, all the basics both you and I know about but don't have the discipline to put into practice.

Little Steven
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