On November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall fell—uniting East and West Germany. This iconic moment was televised as the nation watched on. Even though I was a mere child when the wall fell, I always relate it to music. Perhaps that’s because I can still hear MTV’s Kurt Loder reporting on the event in his “Week in Rock” segment. (I’m not sure if he really did, in fact I’ve searched the web to see if my memory serves me right, and I’m not sure, but I digress…let’s talk about some music.) Nothing seems to rally up the masses like a good rock song with a solid chorus and gnarly political message. The year that the Berlin Wall fell, there was a certain song that seemed to be constantly playing on the airwaves.

In 1989, Neil Young released “Rockin’ in the Free World” in his album, Freedom. The song was basically about how displeased he was with the Republican administration at the time, particularly George H. W. Bush. As with many great sounding rock songs with deep meaning, only the chorus is heard by the general public, and “Rockin’ in the Free World” soon became the “de facto anthem” for the fall of the Berlin Wall that year same year. What’s that, you’re too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall? Wait, you don’t know how great Neil Young is? Ok, whippersnapper, you might have heard “Rockin’ in the Free World” covered by Pearl Jam—they often play it at their live shows. It’s on a few of their “bootleg series” live albums out there. If you still don’t know what I’m talking about, check out the music video on YouTube.

Seriously, it’s great, right?

This is something that I just learned, thanks to Pop Culture Universe: did you know that only a few days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nirvana played various sold out gigs in Berlin? They were pretty new and unknown back in 1989, so I thought that bit of information was pretty cool.

For those of you that are really too young to have first-hand memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall or would just like more background, ABC-CLIO has put together a collection of free resources to explore this event in the latest installment of History and the Headlines. Click here to access this free resource site—check out essays, audio clips, images, and reference entries to get you on your way to understanding the history that lead up to the wall peacefully coming down in 1989.

What is your most prominent memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall? Did you watch it on TV? Did you hear about it on the radio? Do you have a piece of it on your bookshelf? Leave a comment—let’s start a conversation!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.