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| Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC |
We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War
by Doug Bradley & Craig Werner (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015)
The best hit songs of the post-JFK 1960s make Baby Boomers, including me, nostalgic. But for American veterans of the Vietnam War, some pop, rock, soul & country music of that era has the emotional power to save lives marked by severe trauma.
In this gut-wrenching yet inspiring narrative, punctuated by "solos" (first-person stories told by candid veterans), vet/journalist Doug Bradley & co-author/professor Craig Werner take readers inside the absurdist nightmare of hot jungle duty during the height of the Cold War.
Bradley & Werner focus on accounts of vets' & musicians' experiences as they processed - through popular songs - the horrors of a futile, genocidal war in southeast Asia during the 1960s & early '70s. Whether militant African-Americans, culturally proud Latinos or white Southern officers, these servicemen & -women (i.e. military nurses & Red Cross "donut Dollies") found solace in songs played over Armed Forces radio and, above all, via personal tape decks & record players in Vietnam.
It was a communal shared music experience, the authors emphasized at a recent book-signing event at Mystery To Me bookstore in Madison (Wisconsin/USA). In contrast to the post-1990 period of Gulf Wars I & II, plus the ongoing war in Afghanistan, when personalized digital music is being played mainly through earbuds & laptops among combat troops abroad, in Vietnam fights even broke out over jukebox choices.
A labor of love laced with humor & anger, this cultural history packs a punch that many books about marines & soldiers in & after the 'Nam lack. It was born, appropriately enough, during a 2003 Christmas party conversation at the Madison Vet Center, home base of the Deadly Writers Patrol group of veteran-writers.
The book also addresses the vital contribution to healing made by more obscure Vietnam vet singer-songerwriters, such as the dog-handler MP Jim Wachtendonk. Plagued by disorders caused by exposure to Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant widely used during the war, Wachtendonk channeled his distress into art. For example, he wrote & recorded the satirical "Claymore Polka," a song about an Army grunt's wish to rig a bomb in the officers' latrine.
Performing Pete Seeger's anti-war anthem "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" at a 1989 Veterans' Day celebration in the state capitol rotunda in Madison, Wachtendonk moved a somber procession of hundreds as they dropped roses on an altar bearing a US flag, a shroud & a body bag symbolic of their losses. Similarly emotional events have taken place countless times at the stark polished black marble Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The title is a nod to the song mentioned most by vets discussing their time in South Vietnam. The authors call "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" an "unlikely anthem." Written by Cynthia Weill & Barry Mann about wanting to escape a stifling working-class existence, it was most famously recorded in 1965 by the Animals, a British rock band. Animals singer Eric Burdon recalled meeting a Vietnam vet who told him that the song literally saved his life once during combat duty at a firebase.
"They had a cassette of our second album, and they wanted to hear it. So he said to me, 'I left to go back to get a copy of that album, and when I came back all my buddies were dead."
That mid-Sixties hit's choral refrain, "We gotta get out of this place / if it's the last thing we ever do," struck a chord with many who served in Vietnam, Bradley & Werner discovered. It inspired a young Bruce Springsteen as well. During his 2012 keynote speech at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin (Texas/USA), Springsteen said the song put him on an artistic path that he still follows today.
"To me, the Animals were a revelation. The first records with full-blown class consciousness that I had ever heard," the Boss noted. "'We Gotta Get Out of This Place' had that great bass riff. [He plays the riff & sings the first verse.] That's every song I've ever written . . . That's 'Born to Run,' 'Born in the USA,' everything I've done for the past forty years."
Several songs by ex-Army reservist John Fogerty, of the late-60s California-based rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival, also had special meaning to many Vietnam vets. "Fortunate Son" & "Who'll Stop the Rain?" were composed out of Fogerty's anger at the government. He rejoiced upon receiving his final discharge papers in July 1968 & immediately started writing the oft-covered "Proud Mary."
The United States, especially under the leadership of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1963-69), sent millions of predominantly working-class and minority men to fight & die in a pointless war, one largely driven by ideology (see the so-called Domino Theory) & a desire to protect corporate assets (mainly rubber plantations) in Indochina.
The book features many anecdotes of pathetic gallows humor among troops. It also offers the ribald insider story of Lee Hazelwood, writer & producer of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." This monster hit carries special meaning among GIs whose lives depended on good combat boots. It became the signature number for Nancy Sinatra, the go-go-booted pin-up daughter of Frank, upon its release in 1966. She later performed it during USO tours of Vietnam & still sings it at veterans' gatherings. Hazelwood reputedly encouraged Sinatra to sing it "'as if she were a sixteen-year-old girl who fucks truck drivers.'"
In the final chapter, "'What's Going On': Music and the Long Road Home," the authors describe movingly how Marvin Gaye's classic Motown concept album, based in part on Gaye's brother & 'Nam vet Frankie's experiences, helped returning veterans. Syracuse University professor Art Flowers, for example, discusses in a solo how it allowed him to overcome addiction & cope effectively with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) back in the suddenly weird civilian world.
Aretha Franklin & James Brown were particular favorites among the vets. Brown even made a dangerous tour of US bases with his soul-funk band in 1968, demanding that he be allowed to carry a handgun in the helicopter that shuttled him from base to base.
Soulful songs like Aretha's "Respect," Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe" & Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" as well as Simon & Garfunkel's folk-rock "Sounds of Silence," "Homeward Bound" & their orchestral pop masterpiece "Bridge Over Troubled Water" helped homesick men & women deal with the daily stresses of life in a guerrilla war zone a vast ocean away from the States. Then they helped them come home.
Here is the Vietnam Vets' Top Twenty, as compiled by Bradley & Werner during their extensive research for the book, and as presented in familiar reverse countdown fashion. The titles alone are evocative of the physical & emotional struggles that most 'Nam vets have faced:
(20) "For What It's Worth" by the Buffalo Springfield (1967);
(19) "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen (1984);
(18) "Ballad of the Green Berets" by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler (1966);
(17) "Reflections of My Life" by Marmalade (1969);
(16) "My Girl" by The Temptations (1965);
(15) "And When I Die" by Blood, Sweat & Tears (1969);
(14) "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash (1963);
(13) "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye (1970);
(12) "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra (1966);
(11) "Say It Loud -- I'm Black & I'm Proud" by James Brown (1968);
(10) "Green, Green Grass of Home" by Porter Wagoner (1965);
(9) "Chain of Fools" by Aretha Franklin (1967);
(8) "The Letter" by the Box Tops (1967);
(7) "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding (1968);
(6) "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969);
(5) "Purple Haze" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967);
(4) "Detroit City" by Bobby Bare (1963);
(3) "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul & Mary (1969);
(2) "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" by Country Joe & the Fish (1967);
(1) "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" by the Animals (1965).
[For Bobby Dickert, Greg's brother who served in 'Nam. He came home, but couldn't stay long.]
© 2015 by J. C. Mrazek
Links:
http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/we-gotta-get-out-place
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dATyZBEeDJ4
(Country Joe & the Fish)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys_R3VIpxNY
(Nancy Sinatra)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxNEiZhpinY
(The Animals)
