Blows Against The Empire - Concept

Concept

The album is a narrative concept album that tells the story of a counter-culture revolution against the oppressions of "Uncle Samuel" and a plan to steal a starship from orbit and journey into space in search of a new home. The original vinyl release is divided into two album sides. "Mau Mau (Amerikon)" launched Side One, a counter-culture manifesto and call to arms. In the context of the narrative, this is the free music being performed in the park, drawing everyone together.

"Put your old ladies back into bed,

Put your old men into their graves,

Cover their ears so they can't hear us sing,

Cover their eyes so they can't see us play."

"Get out of the way, let the people play,

We gotta get down on you,

Come alive all over you,

Dancing down, into your town."

It celebrates late-sixties counter-culture, depicting people celebrating mind expansion and free love, "We'll ball in your parks, insane with the flash of living...calling for acid, cocaine and grass." They've had enough of the military, domestic and abroad, "You unleash the dogs of a grade-B movie star Governor's war...so drop your fuckin' bombs, burn your demon babies, I will live again!" They condemn the divisive strictures of conservative society, and dream of finding a Utopia.

"The Baby Tree", written by Rosalie Sorrels, is about an imaginary island where babies grow on trees and are collected by happy couples when they fall. The scene develops over the remaining album side, in "Let's Go Together" and "A Child Is Coming," that a couple is among the gathering in a park outside Chicago the night before the hijacking, tripping on acid as dawn approaches. She reveals that she's pregnant, and predictably they resolve to free their child from the government's "files and their numbers game" by joining the hijackers. In this setting, "The Baby Tree" can be seen as their acid-induced daydream about pregnancy, and so fits neatly into the narrative. The allegory of "Let's Go Together" and "A Child Is Coming" symbolizes Paul Kantner and Grace Slick's romantic relationship and Slick's pregnancy by Kantner, which would result in the birth of their daughter, China Kantner, the following year.

Side Two is an integrated suite of songs which opens with "Sunrise", Grace Slick's allegory describing the breaking dawn the couple was awaiting, while also symbolizing the dawn of an Utopian civilization, freed from conservative mores and violent influences. "Sunrise" leads directly into "Hijack," in which the revolutionaries storm the transport to the orbiting starship and head off into space, boarding the ship by the end of "Hijack" and leaving orbit in "Home." As the story progresses with "Have You Seen the Stars Tonite," hopes and misgivings are revealed. After the ship's engines and systems are readied in "X-M," "Starship" relates a mutiny fought for control of the ship, to determine whether to surrender and return or to continue. Eventually the idealists win control and the ship is flung by gravity sling-shot around the sun and out of the solar system.

By Kantner's admission, the underlying premise of the narrative was derived in part from the works of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, particularly the novel Methuselah's Children. Kantner went so far as to write to Heinlein to obtain permission to use his ideas. Heinlein wrote back that over the years, many people had used his ideas but Paul was the first one to ask for permission, which he granted. Blows was the first rock album to ever be nominated for a Hugo Award, in 1971 in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation. In voting, the album garnered the second most votes for the award, losing to "No Award", which received the most votes.