There is more than one artist with this name: an American actor and a New Z… Read Full Bio ↴There is more than one artist with this name: an American actor and a New Zealand band named after the actor.

1.) Leonard Simon Nimoy (March 26, 1931 - February 27, 2015) was an American actor, film director, poet and photographer best known for playing the character Spock in the Star Trek franchise, namely Star Trek: The Original Series .

During and following TOS, Nimoy also released several albums of vocal recordings on Dot Records, including Trek-related songs and cover versions of popular tunes. These recordings are generally regarded as unintentionally camp, though his tongue-in-cheek performance of "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" received a fair amount of airplay when Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films were released.

In addition to his own music career he also directed a 1985 music video for The Bangles' "Going Down to Liverpool". He makes a brief cameo appearance in the video as their driver. This came about because his son Adam Nimoy (now a frequent television director) was a friend of Bangles lead singer Susanna Hoffs from college.

Leonard Nimoy is a man of many and considerable talents. As an actor he has ranged from Star Trek's indomitable, inscrutable Mr. Spock, to Tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, to Vincent Van Gogh in the one-man stage show Vincent. He has also appeared in plays such as Oliver!, The King And I, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Camelot, Twelfth Night, The Man in the Glass Booth, Caligula, and Sherlock Holmes. But Nimoy is more than an entertainer: in 1997 he narrated the A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, about the various sects of Hasidic Orthodox Jews, and he received an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor for the 1982 TV film A Woman Called Golda, to go with his three Emmy nominations for Star Trek. He has also directed three of the best-selling movies of all time: two Star Trek blockbusters and Three Men and a Baby. Nimoy is also an accomplished photographer, vocalist, writer and poet.

2.) A New Zealand band named after the actor, Leonard Nimoy (Peter Wright, David Khan, Tracey Pagey and Mikel Goodwin) was active between early 1994 and early 1997. In this period they both entranced and appalled audiences around the country with a unique combination of beauty and brutality.

In hindsight, and in the best underground tradition, Leonard Nimoy advanced a range of political viewpoints, related to the making and performance of rock music. These not only included obvious issues of noise versus melody or improvisation versus structure (where the Nimoy always took a distinctly ambivalent middle course), but also a whole raft of other issues surrounding both audience and industry expectations of what rock music was supposed to do and how it was to be promoted and presented. As far as this latter area was concerned, Leonard Nimoy stressed band democracy (everyone wrote lyrics, got to scream into microphones and play guitar) and independence (their best music was self-recorded and released). Not surprisingly, in the New Zealand context, these principles ensured that the 4-piece never achieved more (in a material sense) than a modest, albeit enthusiastic, cult following.

To further complicate matters, Leonard Nimoy existed in a near continuous state of evolution during their 3 year existence. In a very real sense the band was always a project in search of itself. Not until early 1996 did the Nimoy adopt their most familiar and notorious form; a back to basics drum machine/guitar noise band, enlivened by acoustic skin and metal percussion and intent on the creation of the most brutal and morbid music possible. Sitting uneasily between rock excess and high-art minimalism, the group deliberately sacrificed structure and melody in favour of percussive and rhythmic slabs of noise, by which musical conventions were reduced to a kind of industrial wreckage. Bandcamp.

If I Had a Hammer
Leonard Nimoy Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a bell
I'd ring it in the morning
I'd ring it in the evening
All over this land
I'd ring out danger
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
All over this land
I'd sing out danger
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Well I've got a hammer
And I've got a bell
And I've got a song to sing
All over this land
It's the hammer of justice
It's the bell of freedom

It's the song about love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Overall Meaning

The lyrics to Leonard Nimoy's song "If I Had a Hammer" convey an urgent sense of a need for unity and brotherhood. The song's central message is about the power of individuals to create change, and it urges people to take action rather than sit idle. The hammer, bell, and song all represent different ways individuals can create change, whether it be physically hammering down barriers or spreading the message through song and communication. The repeated refrain of "All over this land" demonstrates the universality of this message, emphasizing that it is not limited to any one individual or community but is something that applies to all of us.

The first verse explores the idea of a hammer, and the imagery of hammering out danger and warning suggests that there are serious challenges that need addressing. This could be interpreted to mean anything from social injustice to environmental issues, and the idea seems to be that by hammering away at these problems, we can eventually overcome them. The second verse employs the imagery of a bell, which is traditionally used to call people to action or to sound alarms. By ringing out danger and warning, the bell serves as a clarion call for individuals to take responsibility and work together to make the world a better place. The final verse brings the hammer and bell together with the notion of a song, suggesting that communication and art are essential tools for creating change. When we sing out dangers and warnings, we can bring attention to the issues and help mobilize others to take action.

Line by Line Meaning

If I had a hammer
If I possessed a tool to strike nails with

I'd hammer in the morning
I would use the hammer early in the day

I'd hammer in the evening
I would use the hammer late in the day

All over this land
In every part of this country

I'd hammer out danger
I would use the hammer to eliminate danger

I'd hammer out a warning
I would use the hammer to give a warning

I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
I would use the hammer to create love among siblings

If I had a bell
If I owned a bell

I'd ring it in the morning
I would make noise with the bell early in the day

I'd ring it in the evening
I would make noise with the bell late in the day

I'd ring out danger
I would use the bell to eliminate danger