The Music of the Chicago 7 (Is Better Than The Film)
Aaron Sorkin helms a fine film that thoroughly misses the point, but in the absence of another big-budget ensemble telling, the Chicago 7’s musical legacy offers some interesting perspectives on that radical moment in American history
The second biggest Sasha Baron Cohen film of October, Aaron Sorkin’s Trial of the Chicago 7, is said to be pretty timely.
That’s according to The Guardian, The Times, Refinery29, The Daily Beast, Slate, USAToday, The Atlantic, Esquire, IGN, and Eddie Redmayne himself. It’s certainly striking in some aspects – namely, the images of baton-wielding cops beating down on protestors – but those similarities are largely aesthetic, the imagery more pressing than the substance itself. The trial was one steeped in the empowered New Left, their fierce anti war sentiments, and the reactionary conservatism of the forces that pursued them on conspiracy charges; extrapolating these big ideas requires true nuance – something Chicago 7 lacks.
The film has garnered acclaim for Sorkin’s signature style, which spotlights wordy tracts and sweeping speeches, but behind his command of courtroom tropes and rousing grandstanding lies an unshakably idealistic liberalism. It’s as much a feature of Sorkin’s oeuvre as the ‘walk-and-talk,’ with his beliefs invariably taking centre stage in most of his political projects: think The West Wing, The Newsroom, The American President. In helming The Trail of the Chicago 7, Sorkin dilutes the radicalism of the defendants, skips over some of the most fascinating details, and contrives a conclusion that betrays the facts. Rewriting history for a film is not inherently problematic, but Sorkin’s changes turn a story of revolutionary fervour into something nigh-antithetical: a defense of American institutions.
The film certainly has its technical merits. The performances are strong and the protest sequences occasionally thrilling, but that basic craftsmanship cannot compensate for the film’s most potentially telling misstep: the way in which it uses music. The bands that play in Grant Park are anonymous, their sounds a bland approximation of the ‘60s psych-rock that sprung from the counterculture, and the needle drops throughout barely make an impression. It’s an unfortunate absence, because the music that swirled about the Chicago 7 tells a story in and of itself – and it’s better than the one that made the screen.
Even before the trial, the 1968 DNC demonstrations were making a cultural mark. Amongst the earliest musical mentions of the confrontation at the Democratic National Convention – which we now call the Chicago Police Riot – came on a curious bluegrass tune by one Jim Hartley. There’s little to say of Hartley, who seems to have opened and closed his career with “Tellin’ It Straight in ‘68 (Parts 1 & 2),” a banjo-heavy track that’s closer to a speech than a song.
A six-minute treatise on all manner of stances, Hartley throws his support behind George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama and third-party presidential candidate, who achieved fame through his high-profile racism. It’s no surprise that, given his support of a staunch segregationist and ‘law-and-order’ politician, that Hartley described the protestors as “commies.”
“The Mayor stopped the riot, and his policemen kept control
So the commies called him Hitler, and the newsmen damned his soul
In the capital of our great nation, they burned and looted with pride
The policemen had to stand and watch, ‘cause their hands were tied…”
It’s a curiosity for a few reasons: firstly, because the track is so contemporaneous that it functions as campaigning, and secondly, because it takes an unusually conservative view when compared to much of what followed. That said, Hartley’s disregard of the protestors was at least indicative of something: a national telephone poll conducted at the end of the 1968 DNC found that 71% of respondents believed the security measures against the demonstrators were justified, and 56% approved of the way the Chicago Police Department handled them.
A closer look at the Chicago Police Riots came on 1969’s The Sound of Dissent, an avant-garde record that fused field recordings and interviews with psychedelic rock instrumentation. The brainchild of Jack McMahon, it presents an unannotated (but undoubtedly more sympathetic) glimpse into the moment.
The riots shift into focus when an anonymous Wisconsin delegate takes the stand at the nearby DNC. “Mr. Chairman, most delegates to this convention do not know that thousands of young people are being beaten on the streets of Chicago,” he announces, the room erupting with chaos as he presses on, “and for that reason, and that reason alone, I asked for the suspension of the rules for the purpose of adjournment for two weeks, at 6pm, to relocate the convention in another city of the choosing of the Democratic National Convention and the Presidential Candidates––.” The presiding member screams with Chris Farley-eqsue fury in response: “Wisconsin is not recognised for that purpose!”
We then fade into the thick of it – bangs, pops, distant clashes. “There goes a big blast of tear gas,” says a reporter, “right at the crowd, the crowd that tried to retreat… I can’t see… I gotta get out of here,” he admits. “I can’t cover this story anymore,” he mumbles, “the gas is too strong, I can’t see!” As he retreats, somebody offers advice: “hang on, don’t rub it in, man, that makes it worse!” They head towards a gas station in search of water, though that itself is a trial. “I can’t see. Where am I going?” asks the reporter. “You’re hanging onto me, and I can see fine.”
If that record thrust audiences into the thick of it, it did so with field recordings, prizing authenticity over musicality and melody. If anybody in the United States had the ability to fuse both incisive observations and attention-grabbing arrangements, it was protest singer-songwriter Phil Ochs, who’d performed in front of the 1968 DNC. His reaction to the violence was so stark that it prompted a crisis of confidence, with Ochs calling it “the final death of democracy in America as we know it: the total, final takeover of the fascist military state.” His subsequent record – 1969’s Rehearsals for Retirement – features his tombstone with a place of death: Chicago, Illinois, 1968.
That album found Ochs embracing elements of rock into his folk oeuvre, but they’re nowhere to be seen on “William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed,” a baroque arrangement that commemorates the moment whilst centering the demonstrators themselves. WhileIf that song was surprisingly reserved, Ochs chased it with a sardonic critique of the many that didn’t show in Chicago, claiming that only “5,000 of the 300,000 showed up.”
“Oh, where were you in Chicago?
You know I didn't see you there
I didn't see them crack your head
Or breathe the tear gas air
Oh, where were you in Chicago?
When the fight was being fought
Oh, where were you in Chicago?
'Cause I was in Detroit.”
A joke though it was, what happened in Chicago stayed with Ochs for the rest of his life, and in 1969, he returned to the city to take to the stand in the trial itself. He’s just one of many witnesses that don’t appear in Sorkin’s film, alongside artists such as Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, and Country Joe McDonald, comedian Dick Gregory, writers Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer, and figures such as Timothy Leary and Cora Weiss.
These transcripts are certifiably insane, and Ochs’ time on the stand was no different. In testimony tinged by his signature humour, Ochs defined “guerilla theatre” – the central ethos of the Yippies – as creating “theatrical metaphors for what is going on in the world outside.” He recalled helping purchase a pig for Hoffman and Rubin’s 1968 performance, in which they nominated ‘Pigasus The Immortal’ for President, and he explained his whereabouts in the moments prior to the police riot. These stories show Phil Ochs as more than just a songwriter: he was an activist and a bard, intimately involved in the civil rights struggles that characterised his music. He was not permitted to sing as he did on August 27th, with Judge Hoffman resolutely against any such performance.
Similarly, when Arlo Guthrie sang six words from “Alice’s Restaurant,” the court responded with a curt response of “no singing, no singing, no singing, sir.” In Judy Collins’ examination, an attempt at singing was met with greater force from Judge Hoffman: “I forbid her from singing during the trial, I will not permit singing in this Courtroom.”
“Well, your Honor, we have had films,” responded Kunstler. “I think it is as legitimate as a movie. It is the actual thing she did, she sang "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," which is a well-known peace song, and she sang it, and the jury is not getting the flavor.” In defense of Ochs, he levelled that the song he played on the day “reflects on both the intent of Jerry Rubin and the mood of the crowd,” but Judge Hoffman himself said he was “not prepared to listen.” It’s no surprise – these are songs of peace and change, and in pursuing charges of intent to riot, they made for inconvenient truths.
“This is a trial in the Federal District Court,” objected Schultz as Ochs moved to sing, “it is not a theater.” In one sense, the co-prosecutor was correct, but in another, he was surely wrong: the District Court was a theatre, and the defendants knew it. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were especially prone to lampooning the ridiculous charges, and they took enormous pleasure in doing so; while Sorkin pays lip service to some of these moments, it feels like an afterthought. It’s telling that, for all the film hinges on the chant of “the whole world is watching,” we don’t once see any external coverage of the event. If we did, we might’ve seen Ochs perform “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” on the steps of the courthouse following his testimony, an image beamed across the nation.
By diluting their radical antics, abbreviating moments like Bobby Seale’s three days of restraint, fabricating offensively incongruent moments like pacifist David Dellinger’s right hook, and presenting the titular 7 as simply politically discrete, Sorkin drains the rebellion from their defiance. He turns a legendarily raucous trial to one that simply veers off course, always ready to be redirected towards some shrewd legal argument. He finds the 7’s salvation in some conventional courtroom gotcha – Hayden’s implied pronouns – and grants them as close to a conventional victory as the story can afford, contriving a moral triumph to close it out and cutting to a series of postscripts that dull any further details.
Justice? Four postscripts from The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Indeed, Judge Hoffman did act unconstitutionally, a fact accepted even as the trial ensued. The appeals court later found that he had refused to allow jury members to be screened for biases, and his use of contempt charges worried legal scholars, but Judge Hoffman was far from alone. The charges were untenable, Bobby Seale’s indictment was outright laughable, and the FBI was found to have monitored defence lawyers Kunstler and Weinglass’ offices.
That’s the same FBI that, at the very time of the trial, were running covert operations against many left-wing activists. It was that COINTELPRO program that led to Black Panther Party co-founder Fred Hampton’s murder (depicted in Sorkin’s film), and it wasn’t until 1971 – when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, an activist group, burgled an FBI office in Pennsylvania – that the program was made public, nominally ending nearly two decades of extrajudicial surveillance and espionage. The program was retired, but the game stayed the same.
At the close of his picture, Sorkin vindicates the system and lays blame at the feet of the wretched judge and his injurious allies. There’s a heartfelt dedication to the fallen soldiers of Vietnam, a standing ovation of popular support, and a reluctant acceptance of the prosecutor as to the fault in the case itself – none of which reflect reality. In real life, Schultz was resolute, the ovation didn’t happen, and the case ended in less than glowing circumstances.
In the room for sentencing, the defendants were permitted to speak on their own behalf. Dellinger declared that “whatever happens to us, however unjustified, will be slight compared to what has happened already to the Vietnamese people, to the black people in this country,” and Davis, unable to identify his peers in the jury, turned “to the jury that is in the streets,” whose “verdict… will keep coming for the next long five years that you are about to give me in prison.”
“I sit there and watch television, and I hear Mr. Foran say the system works,” waxed Hayden, inviting him to Cook County Jail, where the five had been remanded. “Maybe you could televise us sitting around the table with the roaches running over our wrists while we watch somebody on television, a constitutional expert, explaining how the jury verdict demonstrates once again the vitality of the American system of justice.”
“I said it is not that the Yippies hate America,” offered Hoffman amongst his signature comedy, “it is that they feel that the American Dream has been betrayed.” Rubin concluded with a powerful critique of the system: “I am glad we exposed the court system,” he said, “because in millions of courthouses across this country blacks are being shuttled from the streets to the jails and nobody knows about it.”
When Judge Hoffman interrupted Kunstler’s closing remark, he quipped that “Your Honor has succeeded perhaps in sullying it, and I think maybe that is the way the case should end, as it began.” The five defendants, convicted of ‘conspiring with intent to riot,’ were then led to jail. By the time they were freed by an appeals court a week later, the guards had forcibly cut their long hair – apparently by order of Judge Hoffman himself. There was no audience as they were escorted from the courtroom; no clapping and whooping; no Vietnam dedication or judicial vindication. It was not a victory for either side, but it was certainly a loss for the Chicago Seven.
That takes us back to the music. It was after the trial that most of the musical tributes were laid, and that’s no surprise. Graham Nash’s “Chicago,” a cut from his solo debut, remains the most famous of the outright dedications, opening with reference to Bobby Seale’s inhumane treatment:
“So your brother's bound and gagged
And they've chained him to a chair…”
The outrage surrounding the trial, and the iconic images of violence, repression and racism that it brought forth, became rallying points for a culture scorned. Nash’s song calls for action as it details the challenges that the Chicago 7 – and the greater demonstrators – faced in ‘68 and ‘69, closing with a heartfelt urging: “won't you please come to Chicago, no one else can take your place.”
In the eyes of the poets and the protestors, the fight was far from over. In 1970, Bobby Seale released "Gagged And Chained" (The Sentencing Of Bobby Seale For Contempt), a “dramatic, historical re-enactment” of his courtroom experiences released during the New Haven Black Panther trials. The so-called ‘Seattle Seven’ were dragged before a court for the very same charges in 1970 and, though it was declared a mistrial a fortnight later, the defendants served three months in prison on contempt citations.
In the eyes of the singers and songwriters, it was only just beginning – tracks such as “49 Bye-Byes / America’s Children," "The Chicago Conspiracy," "Chicago Seven,” and “H20 Gate Blues" all reflect on the event as a cause for action, not celebration.
In the eyes of Phil Ochs himself, it was a moment of great personal change. He fought disillusionment in the years that followed and, after the murder of a close friend in a US-backed coup and an attempted robbery that damaged his vocal cords, slipped into alcoholism. His health deteriorated and he took on a new persona, ranting to friends about FBI plots against him. Irritable, homeless and diagnosed with bipolar, he took his own life in April 1976. Biographer Michael Schumacher would later write:
“By Phil's thinking, he had died a long time ago: he had died politically in Chicago in 1968 in the violence of the Democratic National Convention.”
It wasn’t until years later that his FBI file came to light – Ochs was under surveillance until his death. The organization kept nearly 500 pages on a man who never committed a federal crime. He was far from the only one.
In manufacturing his own middlebrow end to a watershed trial, Sorkin tries to champion both the rebels and the structures they defied. It’s a naive, idealistic take that misses the true timeliness of the tale: the reason why the Chicago 7 are ‘timely’ is not because of how they beat the system – it’s because of how the system beat them.