Instant Karma's going to get you
A breathtaking variety of acts have come together - as Lennon might have put it - to focus attention on the ongoing genocide in Darfur, under the auspices of Amnesty International.
Peter Murphy, 24 Jul 2007
“In fact, part of the – for want of a better word – schmoozing of Yoko Ono was done when she came over in ’04, he introduced her at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and wrote a fabulous poem to John and Yoko which he delivered on the night. The story came back from some wag in the audience that Yoko was trying to persuade him to leave U2 – which you’d only hear in Dublin!”
If rock ‘n’ roll’s core impulses can be often described as narcissistic, self-obsessed and self-destructive, then Bill Shipsey sees Art For Amnesty as a way of harnessing its energy as a humanitarian force.
“In a way that’s true, rock ‘n’ roll is all those things,” he says, “but what’s at the core of Amnesty is the idea of freedom of expression. If artists and musicians ‘get’ anything, they get freedom of expression, because when they don’t have it, they can’t practise. Edge, when he was walking Yoko around the IMMA, said freedom of expression is the oxygen for an artist. And that’s what Amnesty’s been about for nearly 50 years now.”
Instant Karma – The Amnesty Campaign To Save Darfur is out now on Warner Music.
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Peter Murphy
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