19 April 1973
The protagonist of this massive early-’70s US hit isn’t returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam or protesting the proposed felling of trees for Dublin bus corridors. He’s just been released from prison, the second verse makes clear. Don’t panic, though. While our late-’60s pop felons, like Tom Jones in ‘Delilah’ and the similarly sentimental ‘Green, Green Grass Of Home’ or the Bee Gees in ‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’, were murderers about to swing by the neck, Tony Orlando’s three-year stretch suggests a lesser order of criminality: not having a TV licence, perhaps.
Being responsible for ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree’ should surely carry stiffer punishment. This is bubblegum pop written as country cornball and cabaret light entertainment, from the two-step bass rhythm and ukulele-adjacent guitar right down to the sappy ending. As with all truly bad pop records, its catchiness is a function of its evil: may you be cursed to hear it ringing in your mind’s ear forever. Speaking of evil and curses, there’s a tiny bit of US-centric spice with Tony’s climactic use of the word “damn”, something a dang-darn American audience of the time may have otherwise considered a taboo word on a mainstream pop record. On which point, how come the whole damn bus is cheering the outcome anyway? Are they glad the oak tree wasn’t felled for their bus route? Has Tony been boring all his fellow passengers with his story the entire journey? Or was he on the phone with his speaker up full volume? Hanging’s too good for him!
Protesting the felling of trees is one thing, but ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree’ had a second life in America during the 1979-80 Iran hostage crisis, as a song and gesture in support of imprisoned US embassy staff. It was also an early-’80s campaign song for exiled Philippines opposition leader Benigno Aquino; you may remember that shocking TV footage of him disembarking from the plane on his 1983 return to Manila, followed by the sound of gunshots as he was assassinated outside, allegedly by the Marcos regime. How such a twee ditty can become closely associated with two such brutal and traumatic events… well, nothing of the ’70s pop universe’s gravitational pull to tastelessness surprises me any more.
