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.'"
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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."
Raitt, who organized Musicians for Safe Energy (MUSE) with Hall in the 1970s, said that early on, the group relied on his ability to think and speak on his feet.
"John was the brains in the outfit," she said. "While we were all educated and informed and motivated, in terms of explaining the nuts and bolts, John was always very intellectually astute and articulate, as well as being incredibly facile on the guitar and very plugged into that creative muse."
And even as he was writing tunes with stick-in-the-head melodies and sappy lyrics, Hall was turning out songs about the environment — "Power" — and the economy — "Plastic Money."
"His big hits are very sweet, but he's also really written songs about what he believes in," Browne said. "It will be interesting to see what creative power he'll be able to bring to the political business."
Hall was advised to play down his past in the campaign. He rarely appeared in anything less formal than a suit. His statements were deliberate and careful.
Which makes it hard to explain how he ended up singing a duet of Dance With Me with Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. In the segment, which ran a few weeks before the election, Colbert teased Hall about how pleased he must have been that President George W. Bush had used Still the One as a theme song for his 2004 reelection campaign. Hall said that he had a lawyer draft a formal complaint.
Colbert persisted, saying what a fitting song it was for the president because, "we're still having fun and he's still the one." A few minutes later, Colbert asked his guest to harmonize. Hall demurred, saying that his advisers had told him to stick to political issues. But when Colbert chided him, "I say go with what you know," Hall was soon singing. The clip, widely circulated on YouTube, helped make the long-shot race competitive.
Hall, who won a crowded primary for the Democratic nomination, began with a campaign fund of US$57,000 to Kelly's US$900,000. But having famous friends didn't hurt.
"I didn't have Exxon or Mobil, but I had Jackson and Bonnie and Pete," Hall said. Their concerts in the Hudson Valley area not only raised money — Browne's netted US$100,000 in two days — but also generated publicity.
Hall, who is usually serious and low-key, became emotional when talking about the relationship between music and politics.
"Jackson sang a song, Waiting Here for Every Man," Hall said, his voice catching as he referred to Browne's For Everyman, "which I remember from his first album, a song that struck me as being about the lethargy and apathy and fatalism of most Americans while they wait for someone to please sort out this mess."
The campaign was intense. At one point, a flier circulated with the message: "John Hall, wrong for America." It featured Hall from his rock days, long-haired and bare-chested.
The day before the election, voters were swamped with automated calls featuring Bush, who urged them to re-elect Kelly.
"I was going to say thank you," Hall said of the phone campaign. "Of all the campaign blunders, it was the most significant."
Now Hall has gone to Washington. A few days after his election, he attended new-member orientation, with lectures on everything from staffing district offices to finding housing. The new members picked up tips like: If you find a pair of comfortable shoes, buy one pair for Washington and one for home.
Between orientation sessions and apartment shopping, he has been back in his district, on "listening tours." At a recent holiday fair in Putnam County, he segued from discussing post-traumatic stress syndrome with a police officer who had been at the World Trade Center to wetlands management with a woman from a conservation group, and stopped to buy a T-shirt with the message "The One with the Most Guitars Wins" for his wife.
Hoppen said that people might underestimate his former partner.
"People may figure he's just a rock star and he lucked out because of the general tide, and they're wrong," Hoppen said.
Raitt said she sees him in the mold of Bill Bradley, the former New Jersey senator. "Of all the musicians I know that have been activists," she said, "the best suited for the job of actually going to Congress is John."
Browne's take: "A guitar player for Congress, it makes all the sense in the world to me. Musicians organize the world in certain ways. John's idealism comes from the same place his music does. It comes from joy."
Still, the night before his election, Hall said, he and his wife rented the movie The Candidate, starring Robert Redford. "When he wins, he says, 'What do we do now?'" Hall said.
"You get the feeling, the look, the personality, the few catchphrases, the buzzwords, the talking points. But then you have to get down to the complexity of actually having to govern."
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