Harvest for the world isley brothers songs
I played drums as well as guitar on Harvest. And we’d ventured into politics with Fight the Power.
But when the younger brothers came into the lineup in the 70s, we had our first No 1 album with The Heat Is On. The Isley Brothers had been going since the 1950s and set a very high standard with songs such as Shout. I played them the song, and both of them looked at me with their eyes wide, like: “Where did that come from?” I was still down there playing when Marvin and our brother-in-law Chris Jasper came in. The last verse was: “Dress me up for battle, when all I want is peace / Those of us who pay the price, come home with the least / Nation after nation, turning into beast.” The Vietnam war had just ended, and a lot of people had paid a heavy price, but the song was more a message of hope and celebration than protest. The rest of the song came pretty quickly. Pete Seeger’s Turn! Turn! Turn! – a 1965 hit for the Byrds – had used a biblical passage, from Ecclesiastes: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven … ” Harvest for the World was a reference to a line – “Send labourers into the Lord’s harvest” – from the gospel of Matthew. Almost as soon as I started playing, I thought of the words: “All babies together, everyone a seed / Half of us are satisfied, half of us in need / Love is bountiful in us, tarnished by our greed / When will there be a harvest for the world?” I pretty much had the first two verses just like that. I’d just bought a new 12-string acoustic guitar and took it into our basement in New Jersey to try it out. As a songwriter, inspiration can strike at any time.