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n addition to those songs from the summer of 1940, there is a substantial body of L. Ron Hubbard lyrics from the mid-1970s and early 1980s. These lyrics are reflective of a considerable musical output, and particularly so through the later decades of his life. In fact, quite apart from his three aforementioned albums -- Battlefield Earth, Mission Earth and The Road to Freedom -- Ron also organized, trained and composed for various musical troupes, as well as scored several Scientology instructional and dissemination films. His lyrics, drawn from both albums and earlier songs, are as diverse as the musical styles in which he worked.
The earliest of these lyrics date from Ron’s days aboard the research vessel Apollo, his home from 1969 to 1975. Long an aspect of shipboard life, music became a definite pursuit with his formation of the Apollo Troupe in 1974 as a gesture of goodwill and cultural exchange. The two Apollo songs reprinted here are typical of his work from these years-- free spirited and exuberant.
Lyrics from the 1983 Battlefield Earth album represent yet another direction entirely. The first ever soundtrack to a novel, the album recounts, in song, the epic tale of Jonnie Goodboy Tyler’s struggle to free mankind from alien Psychlos and so restore world peace. The album is especially notable for its employment of the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument, then regarded as little more than an electronic novelty. L. Ron Hubbard was factually the first to realize the potential of such an instrument, and thus his Battlefield Earth album proved not only innovative but trend-setting.
No less innovative are the songs from Ron’s ten-volume magnum opus, the Mission Earth series. One of the grandest satires of modern fiction, the series also stands as one of the most successful, with all ten volumes successively rising to international bestseller lists. The canvas is as vast as all human folly, and the author’s foil as keen as they come. Among other significant issues addressed is the wholesale rape of natural resources, unrestrained pollution in the name of corporate profit, the erosion of morality and the willful proliferation of drugs in the name of societal control. The author is not, however, bitter. He is gentle, urbane and smiling -- all underscored by the hundreds of lyrics and poems scattered through the text.
Finally, from the latter songs of L. Ron Hubbard come selections off Ron’s Scientology musical statement, The Road to Freedom. Essentially religious music in Scientology style, The Road to Freedom offers ten LRH compositions to convey fundamental Scientology truths: that there is more to life than our purely physical existence; that our happiness and well-being lie entirely within us; that we can, indeed, achieve our dreams and, most significantly, that the death of our body is meaningless in view of our greater immortality. In that regard, the songs from TheRoad to Freedom would seem to comprise a summation of all L. Ron Hubbard had to offer as an artist and a man.
