‘Attica State’: The prison riot that inspired a John Lennon protest song
In January 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared on the David Frost Show in New York City, where they followed a live performance of their protest song ‘Attica State’ by inviting studio audience members to engage with them about the topic, and that was seen as a gutsy decision.
The Attica Prison Riots, which took place just months earlier in September 1971, had created a firestorm of outrage and controversy, further polarising Americans in a time when Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War had already pushed things to a boiling point. The incident began as a major uprising among more than a thousand inmates of the prison in the small town of Attica, New York, who were rebelling against what they described as unjust, inhumane treatment by the warden. This resulted in the prisoners taking charge of the entire facility on September 9th, along with 42 prison employees hostage.
Over the next several days, intense negotiations were held between government officials and the rioters, with agreements made about certain concessions and changes, but when the inmates still refused to give up the hostages unless warden Vincent Mancusi was removed from his position, an impasse was reached. To resolve the matter, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, with the A-OK from President Nixon, opted to send in a wave of outside police officers to storm the prison and retake control from the inmates.
Naturally, the operation proved to be a horrific disaster, as the police opened fire on crowds of inmates and correctional employees alike, killing 29 of the former and ten of the latter, with the surviving rioters facing the wrath of vengeful prison officers, leading to an even worse outcome than the one they’d known before.
Sickened by the news of the event, John Lennon wrote ‘Attica State’ within a month of the tragedy, where the verses went: “Media blames it on the prisoners… But the prisoners did not kill / Rockefeller pulled the trigger / That is what the people feel”, and when John and Yoko sang the chorus, “We’re all mates with Attica State”, on Frost’s talk show, however, some members of the audience were less than amused.
One woman, whom Frost invited to explain her displeasure directly to the musicians, claimed that the song made it seem like “nobody was responsible for this except the establishment and Rockefeller. The prisoners who went on strike had nothing to do with it? They are now martyrs?”
Lennon shook his head. “We’re not saying they’re martyrs,” he said, “We’re like newspaper men, you know? Only we sing about what’s going on instead of writing about it”.
The protesting audience members, which was an extremely small minority of the mostly pro-Lennon crowd, weren’t sold on that argument, claiming John and Yoko would be singing a different tune if the inmates had killed one of their own family members.
It was a very interesting, if brief, interaction, nobly encouraged by Frost, that forced Lennon to back up his political views without merely receiving the usual cheers from his like-minded fans. Was he a “newsman” like the folk singers of old, as he claimed, or an out-of-touch millionaire? As ever, the American public was split in their assessment.
