Read to the end to understand how my choice of this song as the framework to create a plea for Assange’s freedom sent chills down my spine when I understood the 1967 Anti – Vietnam War context.

This confirmed that “Hey Joe” was absolutely the correct choice to sing a warning about the loss of First Amendment Rights, here in the summer of 2022.

Thanks to Biden’s parents for christening their boy Joseph, thus making my job easier!

Niela Miller’s original song:

“Don’t go to Town – Hey Joe”

Her boyfriend, Billy Roberts recorded and copyrighted his version, first recorded in 1961.

“Hey Joe”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmrGOXJMQj0&t=3s

Later immortalized by Jimi Hendrix,

Monterey 1967.

An interesting interpretation from the Lyrics site genius.com.

https://genius.com/The-jimi-hendrix-experience-hey-joe-lyrics

Although the Jimi Hendrix Experience preserves the lyrics of earlier versions, it is frontman Hendrix’s military service (May 1961 – June 1962) in particular that may lead to re-interpretive speculation. Considering popular discontent with the drawn-out and devastating Vietnam War, how the U.S. government handled its exhausting conflicts, and the discharge of Hendrix himself due to perceived unsuitability, “Hey Joe” lends itself to the notion of a man treated unfairly by one whom he trusted, resolving to pursue his own sort of justice outside the law. The song, from this perspective, would present a type of anti-hero who loses his temper at another’s betrayal—be it his plain “old lady” or, metonymically, Lady Liberty—and flees to where he “can be free” from persecution both legal and, perhaps, ideological. Such an interpretation also helps approach the unnamed speaker’s lack of moral reprimand of Joe’s criminal act, as they instead even end up spurring him on to “shoot her one more time” and escape to freedom.

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