Overview

New World Order: War #1 (also known as the "Noam Chomsky 7"") was a 1991 promotional 7" to protest the Persian Gulf War, released by Maximum Rock & Roll magazine.

Idea

Tim Yohannan of Maximum Rock & Roll called Brett up and said Bad Religion should do a single. Brett: "(...) that's true, that's a good idea, but I don't want people to think that Bad Religion is trying to capitalize on an issue like this. So we came up with the idea of doing a non-profit single through Maximum Rock & Roll, who is very well respected internationally, so that's how we did it."^[1]

Brett: "(...) I was appalled by (the Gulf War). I thought it was pornographic. And I thought the least I could do, since I had an audience, and since I've always strived to make my lyrics relevant, was to speak out against that...while at the same time, I tried to write a song that was general enough to serve as an anti-war song in general and not be dated."^[2]

Noam Chomsky: "Back in 1990, I got a letter from a punk rock group called Bad Religion. I liked the name. So, they asked me to talk for eight minutes about the invasion of Iraq. At that time, you couldn’t say a word about it, literally it was banned like North Korea. So I thought, okay. They sent me a tape and somebody had a tape recorder, so I took the tape and I talked for eight minutes and mailed it back to them. And in a little while they sent me a forty-five inch record with my eight minutes on one side and what they called an anti-war song on the other. I couldn’t make head or tail out of the anti-war song, so I sent it to a friend who had a fourteen year old daughter, and she sent me back a lengthy disquisition on the meaning of the song and where it fit in popular culture and so on. But I later discovered– when I give talks people wanted books signed, for years, the main thing that people wanted signed, all over the world, was that record."^[3]

Recording

The songs that Bad Religion recorded for this 7" were recorded bi-coastally. The band recorded the music for "Heaven is Falling" and sent the 24-track tape to Greg Graffin. To guide it to how they wanted it to sound, Brett sang a scratch vocal on it. Then Greg went into a studio and recorded the vocals. He then recorded with a drum machine, guitar, bass and his vocals for "Fertile Crescent" and sent the tape back. The rest of the band then recorded the music around his vocal, overdubbing Greg's recordings.^[4]

Release

When the record was released in 1991, the Persian Gulf War was already over.^[5]

References