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Julie Gold Hopes to Go the Distance : Her ‘From a Distance’ Has Become the War’s Anthem; It’s Up for 3 Grammys Tonight

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Julie Gold is living a fantasy, but one made possible largely by the harshest of realities: Her song “From a Distance,” a gentle prayer of hope and harmony, has become the song of the Persian Gulf War.

The song is actually 5 years old. But a version released by Bette Midler last fall has tapped into the often ambiguous mind-set that has accompanied the war. The philosophical reflection expresses a one-world sentiment, starting from the global perspective we’ve gained in the Space Age, and it seems perfect for a time in which ideologies overlap and right and wrong are not so black and white.

That has helped propel it to the top of the charts--both in the United States and on Desert Storm Network radio--and is expected to help it in tonight’s Grammy Awards ceremony (at8 p.m., Channels 2 and 8). It’s nominated in three categories, including best female pop vocalist (Midler) and song of the year, which goes to the composer. Gold is considered the favorite to win that award.

“I’m on top of the world, living my dream,” said Gold, 35, hardly able to contain her excitement about attending the Grammy show at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the highlight of what until recently was an 18-year effort to make a living as a songwriter.

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“As a writer, it’s like you’re fishing and you pull in bigger fish and smaller ones,” she said by phone from her Greenwich Village apartment. “I had a feeling when I wrote this that I’d pulled in a bigger fish. But I still don’t believe what’s happening. I’m a lucky girl.”

But the connection of her current success with the war, though not dampening her enthusiasm or pride, is inescapable.

“The timing is sadly ironic,” she said somberly.

As wartime anthems go, “From a Distance” is an odd one, the antithesis of the rousing calls to arms (“Over There”) or against (“Give Peace a Chance”) that are the norm. It’s hard to imagine the gentle lyrics being chanted at a rally.

Yet not only is it a favorite of soldiers in the Persian Gulf, it’s been quoted by U.S. activists and politicians both supporting and opposing the military action.

“I’d like to think that there is no one message in the song,” she said. “I really truly believe that people do not want to be at war with each other, and that everybody envisions a better world.”

“Everyone who listens to it gets something different out of it,” Sgt. Maj. Bob Nelson, program director of Desert Storm Network radio, told the Baltimore Sun.

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“It doesn’t ascribe to any one point of view. The lady who wrote it should be congratulated.”

Reaction has been equally strong on the home front.

“As soon as the war broke out the phones went crazy with people demanding to hear the song,” said Denise Maynard, music director for Los Angeles radio station K-LITE (101.9 FM). “It obviously touched a nerve.” In truth, the song was written well before tensions between the United States and Iraq arose.

“It wasn’t written for this war or any war,” Gold said. “It was written about the human condition. . . . I’m a child of the ‘60s. I think that every day of my life something will bring back a Vietnam image or a civil rights image. So in some way I’ve been writing that song in my mind every day of my life.”

And actually, the Gulf conflict is not the first with which “From a Distance” has been associated. In 1987, the first recording of the song, by country-folk singer Nanci Griffith, hit No. 1 in Ireland, where it was embraced by Protestants and Catholics tired of bloodshed.

“It’s found its way into war-torn countries,” Gold said. “I’m honored they’ve chosen my words to comfort them.”

Since then, its broad appeal has been demonstrated by the variety of people who have recorded it: 13 total, by Gold’s count, ranging from an Irish nun to Judy Collins to the Byrds (newly recorded for the group’s boxed anthology). The performers have customized the song to fit their own styles and perspectives. The second recorded version, by English singer Simon Nicol, even deleted the key line “God is watching us.”

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“Everyone has adapted it to their vision,” Gold said.

The wide appeal, Gold believes, is a function both of the inherent ambiguity of this war--where many people are expressing support for the troops regardless of ideology--and of the way it’s being presented in the media.

“I think people are slightly desensitized,” she said. “You turn on your TV and it’s being handled like a miniseries. The day the war started there were logos and background music and it’s a sanitized version we’re seeing. And I don’t think the reality, the potential has sunk in.”

If the song is an unlikely anthem, Gold herself is an unlikely successor to Irving Berlin or John Lennon as an anthem composer. Gregariously chatty, and truly overwhelmed by her recent success, the Philadelphia native is trying to keep perspective about her current good fortune. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that she was paying her bills by selling vacuum cleaners.

“Only a year and a half ago I quit my day job, and that was on a gamble,” she said. “I wasn’t making a living (with music). My parents paid my rent for six months.”

Now things are going her way. The success of “From a Distance” has opened doors that had been shut to her since she moved to New York to try to make it as a singer-songwriter after graduating from college in 1978.

Singers and producers are looking to her for new songs--even one of her former day-job employers, Home Box Office, commissioned her to write and sing “Try Love,” which it uses in some between-show spots. It’s all refueled long-held dreams about being able to write a musical that’s “in my heart, bursting to get out.”

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But she also knows that an end to the war could also dim the spotlight on her.

“It’s a scary thought, but even if it’s only ‘From a Distance’ that’s ever a hit, I’m proud,” she said. “I’ll never be tired of hearing or playing it. But I think I have other songs equally as important, and now I’m having them listened to and we’ll see what they yield.”

For now, though, she’s just concentrating on getting through this week, which in addition to the Grammys includes a performance at a Rockefeller Center club and hosting showcases of young Village singer-songwriters put together by the Fast Folk organization on Friday and Saturday.

“I can’t wait until Sunday when everything is over and I can resume whatever might be considered normalcy in my life,” she said, before remembering again the larger concerns of the world. “And next time we talk, maybe there will be a peaceful world.”

From a distance you look like my friend,

Even though we are at war

From a distance I just cannot comprehend

What all this fighting is for.

From a distance there is harmony,

And it echoes through the land

And it’s the hope of hopes, it’s the love of loves,

It’s the heart of every man

It’s the hope of hopes it’s the love of loves,

This is the song of every man

God is watching us,

God is watching us,

God is watching us,

From a distance.

--”From a Distance”

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