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Singing a song for Osama

 

It was 2001, Bob and Gretchen Gardner were living in San Francisco and Sonoma, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were rubble and ashes, almost 3,000 Americans were dead in the wake of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden was on the run.

Seemed like a good time for a song.

Osama or later, America's gonna get ya;

Osama or later, dude, ya gotta give in.

Osama or later, America's gonna get ya;

Osama or later, America's gonna win!

The lyrics, in case you weren't alive or hip in the '70s, are a friendly twist on the hit song, "Sooner or Later," by The Grass Roots. That song ("Sooner or later, love is gonna get ya, Sooner or later, girl you got to give in. Sooner or later, love is gonna let ya, sooner or later, love is gonna win.") hit number 9 on the pop charts in 1971 when the melody flooded the airwaves and insinuated itself into the heads of millions of Americans.

Including Bob Gardner's. A veteran and pioneering advertising executive, speechwriter and campaign consultant for countless Republican heavyweights, Gardner is also an accomplished musician and piano player with a wry sense of humor.

Somewhere in the synaptic mélange of Gardner's brain the lyrics to "Sooner or Later" intersected the name Osama and a new song was born.

It's just a matter of time

We'll sneak up from behind,

We'll find out just where you've been hidin'.

Bob took the idea to his wife, Gretchen, no hack songwriter in her own right, it seems, and she came up with "about 85 percent of the lyrics."

The whole song, said Bob, "Took about an hour. We were pleased with ourselves. I said, 'What are we going to do with this?'"

It's just a question of when,

We get your whole Taliban,

Get the cave where you ran, where you're hidin'!

It was too good not to produce and Bob, who once worked for J. Walter Thompson, knew he had to use a New York production house. Two phone calls later he was talking to sympathetic ears at Fields Music, a New York production studio and jingle producer. Fields loved the idea, Bob faxed the lyrics and in short order the song was recorded.

"I think they did it in a day. It was a freebie," Bob recalled.

Coward bin Laden, hidin' in a burka;

Coward bin Laden, you are gonna give in!

Coward bin Laden, you are such a jerka;

Coward bin laden, America's gonna win!

The expectation at the time was that the United States military really was going to get bin Laden sooner or later. A lot of people thought sooner. That of course didn't happen.

But the song got some airplay on talk radio stations, including KGO in San Francisco. And when bin Laden disappeared into whichever cave or safehouse he could find, the Gardner's song disappeared too.

Act like a big Arab god,

You callin' for a jihad,

No one here or abroad, gave a goddamn.

To fully appreciate the song, of course, you have to hear it. And once the news came of bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. Navy Seals, the Gardners decided it was time to let people hear it again. So they began to selectively circulate it among a few friends and media contacts.

Say you got us in check

But, Os, you're army's a wreck

And The Prophet is sure you're a madman.

They'd love to turn it into a music video, but don't have the time to do it themselves. But Bob sent it to comedian Dennis Miller who was slated to appear on the Bill O'Reilly show and there are hopes the song will be played then.

You been rousin' the rebs...

(Promising them virgins.)

You been drapin' men in nitro...

(Paradise is closed to killers.)

To hear the song itself, go to the news page on sonomanews.com, find this story and click on the link to the song.

You say martyrdom is so cool...

(Then why aren't you in pieces?)

You say Americans are vermin...

(Americans who feed you.)

Osama or later, America's gonna get ya;

Osama or later, America's gonna win!