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Near Truths
WE SHALL FIGHT THEM ON THE BEACHES: Today, right now, is the greatest crisis of our lifetime.
This is a once-in-a century event, reminding us of what scores of our forebears faced faced in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19— and how many of that same generation died or suffered terrible wounds in World War I.
How many American, Canadian and English personnel returned from the battlefields of Northern France only to face a daunting new struggle a decade later in the Great Depression?
How many of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents toiled through the 1930s worried about jobs and putting food on the table? Few of us came from old money, which would have made it possible to float above the tide of poverty and struggle.
THE NEW BLITZ: 20th-century Anglo-Americans of that post-WW1/ Great Depression generation confronted a crisis that in many ways
resembles the one we’re staring at today. Shortages and privation were the order of the day at home as supply chains buckled under the weight of the conflict. Londoners famously sheltered in place during the blitz—and were cautioned against lighting so much as a match after dark for fear of providing a target for Nazi bombers.
But who are the Churchills, the Roosevelts, the Montgomerys and Eisenhowers, the Pattons, Bradleys, MacArthurs, Nimitzes and the rest of the best and brightest to lead us in our darkest hour?
Leadership certainly isn’t coming from the White House, where our infantile emperor dawdles and preens amid the crisis, con- cerned only about adulation and re-election. (The ghosting and malevolence we now see at the federal level is reminiscent of the Vietnam era, when our leaders obscured from us the futility and terrible cost of that quagmire.) But state leaders are rising to the challenge, notably governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Gavin Newsom.
And we are seeing extraordinary resolve and commitment from doctors, nurses, orderlies and everyone else holding our besieged health-care system together. These brave, selfless humanitarians— including tens of thousands of volunteer professionals, from med students to retirees who are rising to the call—don’t even have the basic gear they need. Think, too, of the employees at your local market, who stock shelves endlessly, punch register keys until their vision blurs and bag up acres of groceries for panicked customers, then stagger home to bed. These are among our heroes on the frontlines today.
THE WORLD STAGE: One of the most important economic engines of our industry is being devastated by this global event. The touring business, which has generated tens of billions of dollars to support artists, managers, agents, lawyers and concert promoters, is also the economic lifeline for countless other professionals: road and con-
struction crews, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, as well as those who work in the arenas, preparing food and taking tickets. Consider the manpower required to make Coachella or Glastonbury function every year and all the families fed by those workers. And consider all the indie bands whose livelihoods come almost exclusively from touring. When that is taken away from them, what recourse do they have? The reach of the live business is enormous, and it’s mind-bog- gling to ponder how many lives will be uprooted by this pandemic.
THE HOME FRONT: The MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund and its participating donors, including Amazon Music, SiriusXM/Pandora, Spotify, Facebook, Tidal, YouTube Music and the Michael Jackson Estate, have pledged to distribute millions of dollars to those most in need across the music community. Nashville’s Music Health Alliance, the CAA Foundation and Rihanna’s CLF, among other organizations, have also answered the call. These ground-level philanthropic efforts
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