When British pub rock band Brinsley Schwarz released “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” on their 1974 album The New Favourites of…Brinsley Schwarz, it wasn’t a major hit. But that was only the beginning of the song’s career; thanks to a series of high-profile covers (more on that later), it’s now considered a classic. So what inspired Nick Lowe to write it in the first place?
The song’s title says it all, pretty much: As Lowe told Vanity Fair in 2009, his “original concept was that it was sort of a humorous idea, because it was written in 1972, 1973, something like that, when the hippie dream was dying, and a lot of people who had been hippies — I suppose myself included, really — were starting to be rather embarrassed by the fact that they’d been hippies.”
“And the song was written from the point of view of an old hippie, answering the people who had once been hippies and had strayed from the faith,” he continued. “They were all laughing at this old guy, and he was saying, Well, you can laugh at me, but all I’m saying is, ‘What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding, man?’ So that was the idea.”
In a 2018 interview with The Ringer, Lowe expressed gratitude towards his younger self for not overthinking the concept.
“Unbelievably, because I was, in so many other ways, an incredibly stupid youth — I behaved in a sort of idiotic way, most of the time — I had the incredible foresight not to mess it up with any clever, stupid, clever lines,” he said. “Just let the slightly clunky title do the work, was the idea. The idea was all in the title. I had a good tune for it. And I let the title do the work. And that was amazing — I’m amazed nowadays, looking back, that I did that.”
Elvis Costello‘s version was the one that propelled “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” into the pop culture consciousness. Elvis Costello and the Attractions covered the song on the 1979 album Armed Forces, which happened to be the third Costello album Lowe produced.
“I could babble on about the history of the song, but the version that Brinsley Schwarz recorded, that Elvis heard at the gigs, was recorded by Dave Edmunds,” Lowe told Stereogum in 2021.
“It had quite a big full sound. When the Brinsleys split up, that should’ve been the end of it,” he added. “That’s what happens to bands’ songs when they split up, the songs go in the dustbin of history. The song was never a hit, it never caused much of a stir at all when we did it originally. ‘Cruel To Be Kind,’ we did a demo, but it never caused a stir even if it did well when we played live. That should’ve been it. But it was those two songs that got pulled out of the dustbin.”
It was Costello who “pulled out ‘Peace, Love, And Understanding,’ and said, ‘You remember that song? I think it’s a real cracker, I want to do that,'” according to Lowe. “Up until that point, he hadn’t done any covers at all, I don’t think. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ It wasn’t me as a producer saying ‘Elvis, I really think you should record my song.’ It was totally his idea. I was none too sure if it was a good idea until they actually went into it and was like ‘Oh my God, this is fantastic.’ But the success of the song is really all down to Elvis. He’s the one who put the hurt on it, which people identified with.”
Of course, Costello was far from the last person to cover the tune. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” was often performed during the 2004 Vote for Change tour, featuring a variety of different headliners; in Washington, D.C., the all-star jam session included Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Dixie Chicks, Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews, John Fogerty with Michael Stipe, Bonnie Raitt and others.
A few years later, in 2008, Costello joined Stephen Colbert, Willie Nelson, Toby Keith, John Legend and Feist to sing “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” at the end of the Comedy Central special A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!.
“I’ve heard all kinds of different treatments of it,” Lowe said, adding, “It’s a song that can really be done in many, many ways. I’m grateful for it. It was sort of a hippie that wrote the song, and the hippie in me wishes a time would come where the song would not be required anymore. But the narrow-eyed chancer I’ve become, thinks now ‘Well, royalties, ha ha ha!’ I’m grateful for it in two ways, the spiritual side and the fact it gives people so much pleasure to perform it and hear it.”
Related: 1979 One-Hit Wonder, Inspired by a Shakespeare Quote, Became One of the ‘Best Pop Songs of All Time’
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