ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
‘Come and Get Your Love’ gets an official music video 46 years later
Aug 7, 2020, 8:17 AM
Redbone’s hit song “Come and Get Your Love” finally has an official music video, more than 45 years after reaching the #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, the first time that a Native American band had reached the top 5 on the chart.
The video, released on Monday, was created by Mexican-born producer and director Juan E. Bedolla and Native American artist Brent Learned. The psychedelic video includes an appearance from Bigfoot and a singing buffalo. It mixes archival photos as well as brand new artwork that follows the journey of a Native American looking for love.
“This is a commentary on an overarching idea repeated throughout the video, that of seeking our love/interests in all the wrong places, when often times they are right in front of us; if only we’re willing to look,” Learned tells ABC News Radio.
Recently, the song gained new life after it was featured during the opening scene of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
Redbone often wore traditional Native American garb when performing the song live, leading into the music with chanting and dancing. Bassist Pat Vegas said that surprised some audiences.
He tells the Wall Street Journal, at the beginning of their tour, “we’d first come out on stage in traditional outfits, people in the front rows freaked and backed up about four feet. It was funny. They’d seen too many Westerns.”
That’s perception is something Vegas says he wanted to change with the song.
While working on the arrangement with his brother Lolly in 1973, Pat said, “I thought about how Native Americans were always depicted in Westerns as bad guys being chased by the cavalry. I wanted the song to change that image,” Vegas says, so they wrote about love.
“The song’s verses refer to the excuses people back then came up with to explain why they were feeling out of sorts. Worrying about your state of mind, your astrological sign, your hair—they all got in the way of natural, honest feelings,” he continued.
That’s something Pat says continues in the new video.
“This visual really takes you on a journey and reminds us that the sky’s not the limit, it’s only the view. It’s something to help the young understand the old, one is silver the other gold, both are valuable.”
