At the peak of their popularity, the 1970s band Orleans was touring 10 months a year, performing their big hits Still the One and Dance With Me. But John Hall, the band's guitarist, wasn't content to stick to the bouncy tunes and lyrics about sweet romance. He also used the stage to lecture audiences about the dangers of plutonium production.
"He would take the liberty of getting on the soapbox at a lot of concerts and go on a bit about nuclear power," said Larry Hoppen, the bass guitarist for Orleans. "But you have to understand it in the context of the 70s, with the Nixon thing and the nuke thing.
"In retrospect, it was uncomfortable sometimes, but it was never so bad that a manager said, 'Hey, you've got to cut this stuff out.'"
Hall's rock friends became used to the policy wonk within. Jackson Browne remembers him talking politics backstage while packing up his guitar.
Hall was one of many political activists from that era. But when he was sworn in as a congressman on Thursday, he became the first bona fide rock 'n' roll musician in the US House of Representatives. (Sonny Bono did not play an instrument.)
The ratty T-shirts and the long hair are gone, and the bare-chested album covers have given way to dark suits, conservative ties and wingtip shoes. When Hall, 58, unfolds his lanky frame out of his Subaru Outback, he looks corporate, and when he speaks, the words spew in paragraphs on topics like the importance of renewable energy and raising the minimum wage.
But then there is that moment he plays air guitar to illustrate how facile he is with his left hand. And there are the first name references to Bonnie, Jackson and Pete (Raitt, Browne and Seeger).
"John somehow managed to keep the idealism that so many people had in the 60s and 70s, while at the same time mastering a kind of pragmatism," said Browne, who collaborated with Hall in the studio and in an anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s.
Hall, a Democrat, defeated Sue W. Kelly, a Republican who had held the seat for six terms, to represent the 19th Congressional District of New York, which stretches from the Connecticut line, through the Hudson Valley, across the Catskills and to the Pennsylvania border.
His inauguration ceremony was attended by his daughter, parents, brother and other supporters; afterward his New York delegation colleagues Nita Lowey and Elliot Engel stopped by. That day, he also helped elect Nancy Pelosi as the first female speaker of the House and tackled ethics rules and legislation.
Other entertainers have been elected to office in the US — Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger — but most have been Republicans. Hall is as liberal as the "Bring Them Home" ribbon decal on his car suggests, campaigning not only for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq but also for universal health care and reduced dependence on foreign oil.
Even in a Congress elected to bring change, his positions are a step to the left of many representatives, and he is a relative novice to politics, his previous electoral experience limited to winning a seat on a local school board and in the Ulster County Legislature. There, he helped defeat a proposal for a trash-burning facility in Saugerties, near Woodstock — a victory that some say hardly merits election to Congress.
"John was in a band and helped fight a dump, but there's a big difference between stopping a landfill and fighting issues like terrorism," said Robert T. Aiello, a Republican Ulster County legislator. "I wish him the best, but he absolutely has his work cut out for him."
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