American Icon ADELE BERTEI Releases Provocative New Single “American Elegy”

“Throughout over three decades of our friendship Adele has never failed to demonstrate her total commitment to the musical arts. She is a gifted collaborator, performer, composer, vocalist and teacher. In her work with inmates in the Jail Guitar Doors songwriting workshops over the last few years, she has consistently changed lives and inspired people. In today’s challenging times, we could use a million more Adele Bertei’s.”  – Wayne Kramer, MC5, founder of Jail Guitar Doors

“Singer Adele Bertei is an icon, or should be. A fierce aliveness, a face you have to love, a potential star…watching Bertei isn’t like watching some rock game. There is no distance, no props, just a small human being insisting that she won’t be ignored, that she’ll have her day.”  – NME

“She smolders more than burns, an approach that fits the Chet Baker connection hand in glove.”  – Rolling Stone

“If there was a queer Cleveland answer to Patti Smith, it would have to be Adele Bertei.” – Bay Area Reporter

Inspired By The Unrest in The World,
ADELE BERTEI
Releases Her First Single in 34 Years
“American Elegy”

Purchase link here

“If we ignore what’s happening, we’ll move toward fascism. If we all become engaged, we can work to erase some of the recent injustices and move toward a more egalitarian understanding. I know it seems nearly impossible at this point. But we have to try. If we don’t, we are lost.” – Adele Bertei

AUGUST 26, 2022 (New York, NY) — “Our country has become a place I no longer recognize, and I’m hardly alone,” observes celebrated musician/author/artist/actor/provocateur ADELE BERTEI, in response to why she wrote her incendiary and politically pointed new song “AMERICAN ELEGY” which is released today, August 26, 2022 independently on Bertei’s label Imperial Dagger via Distrokid. 

Adopting a stance that many artists today are too timid to take lest they lose fans who might disagree with their own political views, Bertei is no stranger to confrontation. But aggression isn’t her weapon. Knowledge is. “We need a new wave of protest music, activist artists and indie radio stations who are not afraid to play resistance music. As Woody Guthrie wrote on his guitar, ‘this machine kills fascists’. Music can influence culture. It has before, and it may again. Silence equals death.”

An artist whose history stretches back to the 70s, Bertei fronted the adored punk band Peter and the Wolves in Cleveland, OH with Pere Ubu bandmate Peter Laughner. His sudden death however prompted her move to NYC in 1977 where she immersed herself in the counter-culture movement of art, film, music and literature. A founding member of The Contortions (produced by none other than Brian Eno), she dove deep into the underground, having toured the world with her other band The Bloods, one of America’s first all-girl bands.

Her musical history is essentially a who’s who of 80s music, performing and recording as a backing vocalist for artists such as Culture Club, Whitney Houston, Sandra Bernhard, and Matthew Sweet among others. She released records as a solo artist with both the Geffen and Chrysalis labels and has had international dance and pop hits with Thomas Dolby (“Hyperactive!”) and Jellybean (“Just a Mirage”). She has also written songs for artists as diverse as Scritti Politti, Sheena Easton, Arthur Baker, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Lydia Lunch, and the Pointer Sisters, among others.

Aside from fronting the Anubian Lights on the album Phantascope in 2007, she has remained out of the musical spotlight for 34 years. The downward direction of the deeply polarizing world and its descent into moral and political bleakness however prompted her to re-emerge with “American Elegy.”

“I was tired of feeling powerless, and the power of music should not be underestimated,” she explains adamantly. Inspired and heartbroken by the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022 that took the lives of 19 children and two teachers as well as the countless other injustices being doled out to minorities everywhere, she was compelled to write the song. Surveying the current musical landscape however, she saw a dearth of protest songs. “I wrote ‘American Elegy’ because I could not remain quiet after the Uvalde terror and the murder of those children,” she sighs. “It keeps happening and I’m so sick of feeling powerless.”  

Born in 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio to an Italian immigrant and a ballroom dance instructor, Bertei was always an upstart. Becoming a ward of the state in 1967, she spent the rest of her childhood in foster homes and reformatories. She was one of the first women to work on the assembly line at the Ford Motors plant in Lorain, Ohio. Aside from her musical career, she performed poetry and prose in downtown NYC sharing stages with William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, and Allen Ginsberg. An actress as well, she appeared in several underground films, including a lead role in Born In Flames by Lizzie Borden, films by Scott & Beth B., and films by Irish filmmaker Vivienne Dick. She’s been the subject of artists and photographers Kiki Smith, Richard Prince, Nan Goldin, Zoe Leonard, and David La Chappelle.

An accomplished author as well, her first book Peter and the Wolves (a short memoir of her rock and roll education via the aforementioned legendary Cleveland musician Peter Laughner), was released in November 2020 and her second tome Why Labelle Matters (a scholarly account and tribute to the the trio of women – Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash) was published the following year. She is planning a third book in early 2023 about her formative years as a young, queer punk woman finding her artistic voice. More info on that book soon.

“We’re facing a crucial moment where we’ll be defining the country,” Bertei continues, circling back to her provocative single “American Elegy” and the responsibility she feels in presenting it to the world. “If we ignore what’s happening, we’ll move toward fascism. If we all become engaged, we can work to erase some of the recent injustices and move toward a more egalitarian understanding. I know it seems nearly impossible at this point. But we have to try. If we don’t, we are lost. How my song is perceived, well, that’s something I can’t control. If it inspires a few people to do something, vote, write songs, join marches, that would be wonderful.”

Adele Bertei’s “American Elegy” was produced by Noisecastle III and is released today independently on Bertei’s label Imperial Dagger. It is available via Distrokid, Apple Music, and Spotify.

AMERICAN ELEGY
lyrics and music by Adele Bertei, music by Scott Bruzenak  

america
hijacked by
white men who hate
men who only demonstrate how to
rock the toxic shock of
political strychnine
in a genocide of the collective mind
we’re doped on cellphone slot machines
all these screens won’t liberate me
how long we gonna wait for it?
when we had facebook playing us all
we took the bait for it

will we mourn our country
as she dies
in rage and pain
before our eyes

america
home on the range
where the hatred lives
america
Suicide on the run
Down the barrel of a gun

Columbine Parkland Sandy Hook Pulse Topps Uvalde
Hundreds of mass shootings  in a year
There’s no there there, the war’s right here

How much of the earth
can they kill for a buck
we work and we work
we let them do this to us
controlling our bodies controlling our lives
for the need and the greed
of the men who divide
nazis on the march with torches and pulpits
throwing brown babies in camps
and how have we turned our heads
have we made our beds?
as we trudge through the
treasonous lies they spread?

The jails & prisons are filled to the max
souls chained to Jim Crow corporations
fascist groove bang bang
shooting up another school
just like the other school
they’re all bitches for the NRA
kings of capitol the devils we pay
with jesus as a bullet
and God as a gun
will there be any justice
for the treasonous sons?

how does it feel to be an american
are we proud of what we’ve become
with weapons of war killing our children

the american dream
now american red-hat greed
giving guns to the wayward sons
forcing our daughters to breed
we’re playing russian roulette
each time we go out in these streets
it’s a killing machine
how much money does a muthfuckah need?

amerikkka
home on the range where the hatred lives
america
suicide on the run
down the barrel of a gun

will we mourn our country
or will we rise
to fight for our lives
to resist and defy

home home on the range
where the bullets fly
and the children die

america
is there something here to save?
are we the land of the free
or the home of the brave?

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