Almost by accident, Marie and Jim Bohlen had come up with a plan for how to protest US government testing of nuclear weapons at Amchitka, a remote island in Alaska. It was 1970, and The Bohlens – part of a small group of Vancouver ecologists and activists called ‘The Don’t Make a Wave Committee’ – had been discussing what they should do to try and halt the imminent nuclear detonation, when Marie Bohlen made an offhand suggestion: “We should just sail a boat out there.”
Later that day, a reporter from the Vancouver Sun called Jim Bohlen to ask how they were planning to protest the planned nuclear test. Unsure of what to tell the journalist, Jim blurted out: “We hope to sail a boat to Amchitka to confront the bomb.” The story was printed the next day, and the plan was set.
The Don’t Make a Wave Committee was soon renamed ‘Greenpeace’, and the Bohlen’s plan – to charter an old fishing boat and sail it up to the site of the planned bomb blast in Alaska – was to become the first ever Greenpeace expedition.
In order to raise the necessary funds to charter the old fishing boat and get to Alaska to prevent the bombs being detonated, another member of the committee, Irving Stowe, asked the singer Joan Baez to stage a benefit concert to fund the campaign. Baez could not attend, but introduced Stowe to Joni Mitchell, who agreed to play, and brought with her rising star James Taylor. The event, held In Vancouver in October, 1970 raised $17,000, enough for the boat charter and some basic expenses.
1970: Joni Mitchell and James Taylor perform to raise funds for the first Greenpeace expedition
In this sense, the very origins of Greenpeace are intertwined with music. The creativity, courage, and direct action in defence of our natural world which became Greenpeace DNA from the earliest days, was complemented by and made possible through music.
This connection has continued for five decades. Here are a few highlights.
1989: The Greenpeace Album which took Moscow by storm (and built our Russian Office)
On 6 March 1989, a compilation double album of 25 tracks, entitled ‘Greenpeace: Breakthrough’, was released in the Soviet Union, the proceeds of which would be used to establish a Greenpeace office in the country. The deal, set up with the state record company Melodiya, saw the release of 8 million double albums and 500,000 double cassettes, representing the first major release and largest pressing of Western rock music in the Soviet Union.
Each album also contained a 16-page booklet giving an overview of the world’s major environmental problems, and introduced Greenpeace to the Russian public. The artists, who all donated their tracks to the album, included Peter Gabriel, the Pretenders, Dire Straits, U2, the Eurythmics, Talking Heads, Sting, the Grateful Dead and Bryan Adams. A dozen of the artists went to Moscow for the album’s launch. Within hours, the first half million record were sold, reaching a million by May 15.
One Soviet journalist remarked, “Every time you plug in an electric appliance in the Soviet Union you hear the Greenpeace album.”
1990’s: U2, Public Enemy and Kraftwerk team up to Stop Sellafield
The success of Greenpeace collaborations with bands and musicians throughout the 1980’s continued into the coming decades. Greenpeace had become a global brand thanks to the combination of its creative, headline-grabbing actions and the growing movement of people across the world supporting the fight against environmental and social injustice.
The artist Suggs from the band Madness – one of the contributors to the 1985 album – agreed that not enough was being done to protect the planet, saying: “Greenpeace are ecologists but they do things. They don’t have debates, they don’t have marches, they just do things.”
In 1992 another album contributor, the band U2, joined Public Enemy and Kraftwerk to campaign against the expansion of nuclear facility Sellafield in the UK, with a major concert where Kraftwerk appropriately performed their 1975 classic ‘Radio-activity’.
2000’s and beyond: World Music
Into the new millennium, we continue to see the world’s top musicians support the call for a cleaner, greener future through their music. Music and culture play a critical role in the fight to protect our planet, to inspire action from millions of people across the globe. Here’s some of the performances that did exactly that.
in 2016, Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila joined Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior’s ‘Sun Unites Us’ tour of the Mediterranean, to raise awareness of the untapped potential of solar energy in the region. This 360-degree VR video was one of the first times Greenpeace had used this new camera technology as part of it’s campaigning work – scroll around the image to see the whole band and Rainbow Warrior in the background!
One of the most iconic Greenpeace actions of recent years came just a couple of months later, when Greenpeace invited acclaimed Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi to perform one of his own compositions on a floating platform in the Arctic Ocean, in front of the Wahlenbergbreen glacier in Svalbard, Norway.
Einaudi’s composition, Elegy for the Arctic, was inspired by eight million voices around the world calling for Arctic protection. The Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise carried Einaudi and his grand piano to Svalbard, and the result was this breathtakingly moving footage, which was seen by millions around the globe.
Another global superstar keen to lend their talent to raise awareness of the threats facing polar regions – Radiohead’s Thom Yorke created this track exclusively for our Protect the Oceans campaign. In 2018, Greenpeace travelled to the Antarctic to conduct scientific research and demand protection for one of the last remaining pristine regions on Earth.
The stunning images captured during that expedition, combined with Thom Yorke’s track ‘Hands off the Antarctic’, create a deeply moving sense of an environment in peril – a unique ecosystem in desperate need of protection.
Soundtrack to our Future: Nature as Music
Throughout our fifty year history, Greenpeace has been lucky enough to work with some of the best-known bands and musicians on the planet, reaching huge numbers of music and nature lovers alike to shine a light on the most important environmental issues of the time. However, it hasn’t always been instruments and vocalists creating the music, sometimes nature itself provides the soundtrack.
A beautiful example of this is the Save Our Sounds project from 2017. Greenpeace Indonesia partnered with Jakarta-based DJ and Producer Ninda Felina, who journeyed into the heart of the Papua rainforests to make audio recordings of the incredible biodiversity in the region. Ninda used these recordings to create the acclaimed track Birds of Paradise, and went on to be featured at the Wonderfruit in Thailand and at festivals all over the world.
Following the Save Our Sounds project, we decided to catalogue and publish an online database of audio recordings from the Greenpeace archives. These recordings, made as part of our environmental campaigns from the Antarctic to the Amazon represented an incredibly rich and diverse collection of sounds, and the opportunity for listeners to immerse themselves in environments they may otherwise never hear.
Sadly, some of these environments may even be at risk of permanently losing their ‘bioacoustic profile’ (the unique sonic fingerprint of a specific environment such as a rainforest), due to threats facing habitats and biodiversity, unless immediate action is taken to protect them.
Shortly after we published this archive, we were approached by a non-profit group of DJs and electronic music producers called DJs for Climate Action to collaborate on an exciting project to share these recordings with the world.
A selection of the sounds were made available for download as a Climate Sample Pack, and we invited electronic music producers from all over the world to create music using these sounds, in answer to the question: ‘What does our future sound like?‘
An all-star jury of electronic music producers then selected the best of the submitted tracks for inclusion on a compilation album entitled Soundtrack to the Future, due for release this week. All proceeds from the album sales will be given to conservation organisations working in the regions where the sounds were originally recorded, to try to ensure these habitats continue to thrive and produce their own unique music for generations to come.
From the concert which launched the first ever Greenpeace expedition in 1971, through to collaborations with the biggest musicians on the planet, to up-and-coming electronic music producers using Greenpeace nature recordings to create their own visions of what our future will sound like, music is intrinsically woven through Greenpeace history.
If we are to inspire the millions of people we need to build the movement for environmental and social justice, people need to feel moved, connected and inspired – and how better to do that than through the joy we all feel from the music we love.
This is why music and culture play such a huge part in imagining and taking action for the world we want to see, and why we hope to continue this rich tradition for another fifty years.
Timeline: Greatest Hits – 1971 to 2021
Perhaps it was Emma Goldman, the American writer and activist who said it best, writing in her 1931 autobiography Living My Life:
“At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
“I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy.
“I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things. If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution!”
We couldn’t agree more.
