In the comments on Songbook #5, I was reminded that Bono said he wrote the central verse of U2’s “New Year’s Day” with Solidarity’s struggle in mind. My reply there lays out the erotic and political elements any full analysis of that song would address, and why the Solidarity connection is not the key to the song, nor entirely “what it is about.” But #5 only considered a single verse, one representative of how rock espouses pacifism(when it does), or more accurately, of how it espouses “anti-war-ism.” That espousal is also the topic of this essay.
