'It Needed to Be Said': 'Fight the Power' by the Isley Brothers

‘100 Greatest Soul Songs’ Book Excerpt

Frank Mastropolo

Sony Music Entertainment

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the demand for Civil Rights and an end to the Vietnam War roiled the nation. In response, the Isley Brothers released “Fight the Power,” a №1 R&B hit in 1975. The song was primarily written by Ernie Isley and the band’s keyboardist Chris Jasper.

“You try to write what you feel, which is always a challenge because those feelings are often bottled up,” Isley explained in The Hub. “Sometimes you have a little melody fragment, or a phrase, or a bit of a lyric that works like a flashlight to lead you on. I was usually more into the songwriting aspect than the guitar solo. If the song is there, then anybody can play the solo.”

“We don’t close ourselves away like some entertainers do,” Marvin Isley told Blues & Soul. “We listen to the radio, read the newspapers, and generally get into what’s happening out there in an attempt to reflect the world as it is. We wanted that to be as funky as possible musically, and yet for the lyrics to say something unusual.

“‘Fight The Power’? Well, we decided not to be passive, to take a stand. And we met hardly any resistance because that power could be anything — we all have our different conceptions of what it is to each of us. And just letting it out — about the bullshit that does go down — is something that everyone wants to do.”

Lead singer Ronald Isley added that word spontaneously in the lyric, “When I rolled with the punches / I got knocked on the ground / With all this bullshit going down.” Many radio stations bleeped the word but Ronald maintained that “it needed to be said” and “it’s what people want to hear.”

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Greatest Soul Songs, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.