Kill for Peace

Annotation

The Fugs, a garage rock band formed in New York in 1964 by "beat" poets Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders, took their name from the euphemism for "fuck" used by Norman Mailer in his book The Naked and the Dead. The group also featured Pete Stampfel and Steve Weber (of the band The Holy Modal Rounders), and Ken Weaver on drums. The group hit the road in the fall of 1965 on an anti-Vietnam protest tour, doing concerts with Country Joe & The Fish and Allen Ginsberg. The song "Kill for Peace" (ESP-Disk' # 4508), which appeared on their second album The Fugs (ESP-Disk' # 1028) (below), mocked the US government's logic of going to war for peace and freedom. The song later appeared in the magazine Broadside # 75, October 1966 (p. 13). The song also featured on The Best of Broadside 1962-1988 in 2000. Sanders said that the inspiration for the song came from a letter, which read "pray for peace", which for Kupferberg, "sprouted the idea for a modification".1 In 1965, The Fugs signed to the New York based label ESP-Disk', owned by Bernard Stollman. Sanders described the royalties received under their record deal as "one of the lower percentages in the history of western civilization".2 Furthermore, the band claimed to have not actually received any royalties. Stampfel recalled a conversation, in which Stollman claimed that "the contract says that all rights belong to me. You have no royalties ever, ever, ever. The publishing is mine. You don’t own the songs anymore. We don’t owe you anything".3 These accusations were backed by Tom Rapp of the band Pearls Before Swine, who said that "we never got any money from ESP. Never, not even like a hundred dollars or something. My real sense is that he was abducted by aliens, and when he was probed it erased his memory of where all the money was".4 Stollman claimed that "the government closed my business because of our opposition to the war...in Vietnam".5Sources1Rolling Stone: Kill for peace the fugs (archived copy)↩2The Fugs: The History of the Fugs↩3openlettersmonthly.com: Dignity conviction and mrs stollmans checkbook↩4openlettersmonthly.com: Dignity conviction and mrs stollmans checkbook↩5openlettersmonthly.com: Dignity conviction and mrs stollmans checkbook↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Kill, kill, kill for peace / Near or middle or very far East / If you don't like the people or the way that they talk / If you don't like their manners or the way that they walk... / If you don't kill them then the Chinese will / If you don't want America to play second fiddle... / If you let them live they may subvert the Prussians / If you let them live they might love the Russians... / Kill 'em! kill 'em! Strafe them gook creeps! / The only gook an American can trust / Is a gook that's got his yellow head bust / Kill, it will give you a mental ease...a big release

Notes

ESP-Disk' 4508A, Fugs-logo label, ESP-Disk', 180 Riverside Dr., New York 10024, N.Y.; "Kill for Peace" (Tuli Kupferberg), copyright © 1966 United International (ASCAP), time 2:07; vocal Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg; arrangement The Fugs; recording director Dick Alderson. [From the record sleeve and labels]

About the artist

Satirical rock band formed in 1964 on the Lower East Side, New York City, by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg; their antiwar songs include Kill for Peace (1966). [Source: Wikipedia]

Themes

Anti-War

In collections

Garage Rock Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]