The first notes heard Sunday night on “The All-American Halftime Show,” Turning Point USA’s conservative counterprogramming to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance, were the screams of an electric guitar on “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
That performance, led by Spencer Waasdorp of the country-rock singer Brantley Gilbert’s band, had all the usual hallmarks of an unbridled, can’t-tame-me rock ’n’ roll reinterpretation of the national anthem, with blue notes bent until they cry, improvisatory melodic flights and some flashes of searing feedback.
But it was a striking contrast to Jimi Hendrix’s famous rendition at Woodstock in 1969. Nearly 57 years later, that performance, in the waning, daylight hours of the festival, is still astonishing. Hendrix begins by tuning his Fender Stratocaster to the anthem’s opening notes, and then sends it through wave after wave of psychedelic transformation, with sounds that can be violent, painful, erotic and, perhaps, questioning. The bombs seem to burst in air, and we hear a quotation from “Taps” before Hendrix wraps on a final wash of feedback.
That performance was a climactic moment in the 1970 film “Woodstock,” capturing the festival’s — and a generation’s — mix of hedonism and idealism. And in the context of protests against the Vietnam War, Hendrix’s radical version of the anthem has long stood as an act of musical reclamation by the left.
“You finally heard what that song was about,” wrote Al Aronowitz, a journalist and key rock scenemaker of that era. “That you can love your country but hate the government.”
At “The All-American Halftime Show” — which was partly a tribute to Charlie Kirk, the pugilistic right-wing activist who founded Turning Point USA and was assassinated last year — the electrified national anthem also functioned as a patriotic reclamation, this time for the right. After the anthem, Gilbert introduced his song “Real American,” which features lines like “We do it for the heroes overseas” and “We got them good times on ice / And Old Glory’s on a can / And everything’s made in the U.S.A.”
Turning Point USA and its headliner, Kid Rock, had promoted “The All-American Halftime Show” as a response to the Super Bowl’s halftime show, which for the first time was being performed largely in Spanish, and had become a political flashpoint amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. A week before the game, when accepting a Grammy Award, Bad Bunny declared, “ICE out.”
Turning Point USA had promised on its website that there would be “no ‘woke’ garbage” at its show. “Just TRUTH. Just FREEDOM. Just AMERICA.” Kid Rock also directly mocked Bad Bunny. “He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress and singing in Spanish?” he said in statement six days before the game. “Cool. We plan to sing great songs for folks who love America.” (Gilbert took a more conciliatory tone. “It’s been more than 20 years since a country artist has been asked to play the Super Bowl halftime show,” he wrote on social media. “I respect that some people may see this differently, but I’m not playing this show to be divisive.”)
In musical terms, Waasdorp’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner” was conservative, too. Despite the bent notes and feedback, it largely stuck to the melody, and conveyed a reverent if stubborn form of patriotism.
Since Hendrix, “The Star-Spangled Banner” has been adapted by numerous rock guitarists of varying political stripes, and for various purposes. Ted Nugent, the wild-man guitarist who for years has been a puckishly aggressive conservative — and has called Hendrix one of his musical heroes — has played similarly improvisatory versions of the anthem for years. In 2023, Neil Young did a very Hendrix-esque version he called “Stand for Peace”; the video has images of a tattered American flag, with a caption alluding to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Like the flag itself, the anthem — even when jammed and distorted through an electric guitar — can mean whatever its bearer wants it to mean.
When Hendrix was asked by the TV host Dick Cavett about his Woodstock performance a month after the festival, he gave a straight answer.
“All I do is play it,” Hendrix said. “I’m American, so I play it.”
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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