Hey, welcome to Veterans Radio.
This is Dale Throneberry, and we're rerunning a program from January of 2016 with Doug Bradley.
And we're going to be talking about his book, We Got to Get Out of This Place, about the
music of Vietnam.
This is kind of timely because this weekend is our fundraiser.
It's called Radio on the River, and Doug Bradley happens to be our guest, and we're going to
be talking all about the music of Vietnam.
So we are going to be playing the program straight on through.
No ads, no nothing.
Just music and Doug and me talking about the music of Vietnam.
I do want to quickly thank our sponsors, though, because we can't do this program without
them.
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And now, here we go.
This is Doug Bradley, and we got to get out of this place.
All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And good afternoon, America, and welcome to Veterans Radio.
Everybody puts your VHS on record so you can pay attention to what's going on during the
football games.
You also have to get your tic or tiac, however you pronounced it, when you were in Vietnam,
out and put in the two big giant reels and hit record because we're going to be playing
a lot of music from the Vietnam era.
And I want to say to all of our veteran brothers and sisters, thank you for your service and
welcome home.
From all of us here at Veterans Radio, we thank you, and so this program is dedicated
to you.
We are going to be playing music from the Vietnam era.
The name of the program actually is We Got to Get Out of This Place.
Nobody really remembers that song too much, right?
Now, the soundtrack of the Vietnam War, this is a book that has been written by our guest
today, where there's supposed to be two of them, and maybe we'll get the second one in.
But Doug Bradley is going to be on, and Craig Warner put together the book, We Got to Get
Out of This Place, and it's the soundtrack of the Vietnam War.
And it talks all about the different music that was being played from 1964 up until 1973.
And you're going to be amazed by the diversity, and I think the changes in style and the changes
in the environment in Vietnam.
I was shocked, actually I was shocked when I was reading the book.
I guess I was very naive.
I was unaware of a lot of things that seemed to be going on while I was in Vietnam in 1969.
But then again, I guess as a helicopter pilot, I went, I got to go back to the barracks,
and I didn't have to do guard duty and all the other things that many, many people had
to do.
So I think that you're going to find it a very interesting program.
We're going to take a real quick break, and then we'll be right back with Doug Bradley,
one of the authors of We Got to Get Out of This Place.
We're listening to Veteran Radio.
I'm going to go home, I'm going to go home, oh, I'm going to go home.
And that is Detroit City, and that was by Bobby Barron.
That was recorded in 1963, just before the beginning of the Vietnam War.
And joining me on the line right now is Doug Bradley, one of the authors of We Got to Get
Out of This Place.
So Doug, welcome to Veteran Radio.
Thanks, Dale.
I'm honored to be with you and with our brothers and sisters who hopefully will jump in to
participate in the conversation.
Mine was at Nakai, AKA I-DEC.
I've got it lined up, I'm ready to go.
Okay, you got that on extended play.
It's on extended play, right?
Yes, of course.
You can record, I forget, those are like eight-inch reels of tape or something.
Oh yeah, it was just amazing.
So tell me a little bit about how you got involved in putting this book together.
I found it was a fascinating read for me.
Well, I'm glad you liked it.
We talked to a number of warrant officers and some of your solo pilots.
So we tried to get around as many people as we could.
And the reality is, Dale, that one of the sad, perhaps the saddest legacies of Vietnam War
was the lack of welcome home and reception and sort of attention that Vietnam vets received
70 and 71, came back, did a lot of work with veterans, set up a storefront service center in Madison
for a variety of reasons, which I don't think we need to belabor and go into some places.
We're still fighting that war.
that I think helped become one of the examples and models for the vet centers that exist
now.
And, you know, so I stayed around with that.
And we just found one time, Craig and I were both together, the professor at the UW, we
were talking about music because he teaches a lot of classes about music and he had a
segment of the course devoted to the war and asked me what I thought about the tunes that
he had for that part of the course.
And I said, well, you know, my soundtrack is a little different here's when I was there.
The songs that I would include.
Next thing we knew, this is a little, you know, holiday gathering at a vet center.
We had six or seven vets around standing around and saying, what about this song?
Or no, I remember this and there was a band that covered that.
And we should have looked at each other and said, you know what, there's something going
on here.
And the more we talked to those guys and then the more that circle expanded and we talked
to people around the country, we realized so many men and women still had not been able
to talk about their experience had not been, you know, listened to or encouraged to talk,
but they could talk about a song.
And in the course of talking about a song, whether it was Detroit City or jet plane or
fortunate son or Dr. The Bay or books were made for walking, they started then to talk
about their experience.
And we sort of came away with this notion that music, our music, the best music, I think
it was frankly, and it was the best of country, it was the best of soul, it was the best of
rock, that that helps to sustain us.
It connected us as a generation.
It connected us to one another.
You could form communities around it.
It was a way you could sort of survive and keep your act together.
And then for some, it was a way to heal when they got back home.
So it was a joy to do this.
We are just so glad that the 200 plus people that we talked over the course of 10 years
invited us into their lives and shared their stories.
Well, that's for sure, and the music did evolve dramatically over that 11 year time
period.
And we're going to try and keep it somewhat chronological as we're talking about the different
kind of music that was there.
In fact, I was just reading a little bit this morning again, when the conflict broke out,
the war broke out with a golf of Tonkin incident and all these other things that were occurring
there.
And many of the people that were in Vietnam were career officers.
The draft really hadn't kicked in as far as sending people over there.
And so we're looking at older soldiers and veterans, and they're still listening to
40s and 50s music, not necessarily the Duwai music either.
Yep.
No, you're absolutely right.
And the other interesting thing there was that sometimes some of those songs, like Detroit
City, you talk about 63.
I'm there in 70 and 71.
I never heard that song when I was growing up.
I grew up in Silly in Pittsburgh.
I was more of an urban soul, R&B guy.
And you know, but Detroit City was played on every jukebox, every band, Filipino band,
you know, Korean band, Taiwanese band, Vietnamese band played it and covered it.
So it's like, for me, that song is 70 and 71, not just 63.
So some of that, you're right, the soundtrack really changed radically.
But I mean, when you look at some of the stuff, Detroit City out in 63, we got to get out
of place as popular in 65.
Those songs stayed in the Vietnam jukebox, if you will.
Well, yeah, you mentioned this at all of the bands, the bands that we saw.
I've got to be careful here with these bands that we saw.
You know, had these cover songs and they played everything from the Beatles all the way up,
you know, probably after I left, you know, into the Jimi Hendrix age.
Absolutely.
And it was, sometimes it was, you know, really good.
Some of them were excellent.
I mean, the Beatles were very popular at the beginning of the war also.
Yep.
And, you know, then they kind of fell by the wayside because they're, I don't want to say
their stuff was, I don't know, it wasn't as powerful, I guess.
You know, it didn't make you think as much until they later on in their career initially.
But when you were playing, you know, the Bobby Bears and, you know, Detroit City and one
of the other ones that I thought of that we put on the list, I'm not necessarily going
to play all these, but, you know, the green, green, grass of home by Porter Wagner.
Yeah.
Actually, I'm more familiar with the Tom Jones version of that song.
Yeah.
And it's a hit and, you know, again, and you're hitting on something else here too,
you know, that was very curious about this, you know, journey that we took with these
conversations and then writing the book is that, you know, a lot of people, I mean, Hollywood
did a thing of sort of reinventing what we think about Vietnam and everybody thinks it's
sort of, it's for what it's worth by, you know, Buffalo Springfield, you know, it's
country Joe, it's a feel like I'm fixing to die rag, it's the doors, you know, with
the cockles now and, but you know, more often than not, the men and women we interviewed
talked about Detroit City because that line, I want to go home of green, green grass at
home because it's about, you know, being away and missing your family and missing the girl
that you were in love with.
So some of these songs, you know, that maybe didn't have, wouldn't have had a lot of staying
power or didn't have a reason to because of the lyrics and the message.
I mean, Snoop John B.
You know, I mean, that's not a bad Vietnam, but you know, I want to go home.
This is the worst trip I've ever been on.
Some people just sort of quant the songs like that.
So it's really kind of interesting when you start to look at, you know, the chronology
and the changes, but also the stuff that stuck in state or anything about home, about missing
somebody.
I mean, songs about, you know, like Gloria because it's a guy's wife's name's Gloria.
So that's going to be his favorite song.
There was a lot of karaoke going on, but it wasn't called karaoke at the time, which
would be really embarrassing.
I got an email this week from Al Wood, who was a dog handler for the Australians.
And he's, you know, he sent me and he had recorded, he's had a bunch of AFVN programs
on his big giant, you know, recorder.
And so he's going to send me all of those.
Oh my God.
Which I, you know, I definitely will forward them on to you because I think this is something
that, you know, that is fascinating to me when we are talking about listening to the
radio.
And again, we are talking with Doug Bradley, one of the authors of We Got to Get Out of
This Place.
And we really do.
I realize this is a football day and it's probably going to be tough, but I would like
you guys, men and women out there because, you know, nurses were very important over
in Vietnam as well.
I'm looking at the list that I sent you and you said, you know, how difficult it was to
come up with the soundtrack for Vietnam.
Yeah.
You know, there are hundreds and hundreds of songs that are so important.
You know, since I talked to you earlier in the week, I think I've just been on this quest
to hear as many as I possibly could.
And my head's about to explode on all these things because I was talking with Nina, who's
our assistant, who gave you the call and I was saying, I said, every song on this list
or any other list that I was reading about in the book, there was a place and there was
a time and there was an event and there was something else that was tied to that.
And you know, as a helicopter pilot, we were fortunate enough that we could listen to Armed
Forces radio all the time.
Yeah.
I mean, we had four radios going all the time, but the one that is lowest and kind of the
theme of the whole day was we had AFVN on our automatic direction finder, I guess is
what it was called in the time.
And so as we were flying, a compass needle would point to where the signal was coming
from.
And in our case, it was coming from Saigon because I was also stationed in Long Bend
and we'll talk about that a little bit.
But so the needle always pointed to Saigon.
And if we ever had gotten into any trouble, we'd say, you know, we're having a forced
landing, we're on a 320 radio out of Saigon, you know, going down, you know, 75 miles
out, something along those lines.
So we always knew where we were and this running musical theme was there just every
day.
Yeah.
I think that's a really, that's a great point.
And I think, you know, we know the guys that were out in the field, you know, in combat
on patrol, you know, they don't have the benefit of AFVN and what we're doing.
But even guys that we talked to and interviewed, you know, grunts that we talked to and guys
that really did some of the heavy lifting and fighting, they had a song in their head
sometimes.
And sometimes I would want to destroy the guy and he's saying, you know, I had this
song in my head, you know, from Leslie Gore, you know, and I had, I wanted to do it.
I wanted it out of my head because it was distracting me from paying attention to what
we were doing.
That's my party, right?
Yeah.
I think, and I think the other thing, you know, about what you're saying before is,
you know, this isn't unique to this situation and this war in these soldiers.
Everybody, you know, has musical associations.
I'm sure kids have run around now and they'll say, I remember the first time I heard Taylor
Swift or, you know, Kanye West.
I mean, we had that because that's the way the brains wired, you know, we've learned
since and some great studies have been done that where memory is in your brain is right
near where music is and where you hear.
And so the association is good.
But for us, what we think is, is makes this even special is that because of the trauma
of a war and the kind of war that was and what people needed to do in order to sort
of get through that the music took on an even greater power and meaning.
And sometimes songs that, you know, I'm sure we can talk about today or we'll come back
on, you take a song like Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin, which sort of means one thing
if you listen to it in the States, if you're white, another thing if you're listening to
it in the States, if you're black, and then another, if you're in Vietnam and you're black.
And so it's just, yes.
So this became, you know, for us, like even more of a revelation and I think speaks to
the power of music and memory and also of the ability of music to help us to get back
home.
Right.
We want, I want to play a little segment of Aretha Franklin's Chain of Fools and that
was, that came out in 1967.
So we're all set.
Let's hear a little bit of this.
So, we're going to play a little segment of Aretha Franklin's Chain of Fools and that
is, I think, the most popular song of the year.
Okay.
So we're going to let that kind of play under while we're talking.
And as you said, that this song means things to different people.
Right.
And, you know, Aretha was, you know, I mean, she was the queen of souls.
She was on the cover of Ebony Magazine.
She was, she was the big R&B star of her generation, female.
And I think that's what she's really like about the guys about an Aretha song.
I mean, it's like with Hendrix and Aretha and TCR, I'd say, it's almost just who they
are.
Not, you know, I mean, some people like different songs and the person's work, respect, you
know, you know, Chain of Fools, etc.
But I mean, she was enormously popular and with the troops.
And what's amazing is I heard that song.
I was in college in 67 in the US and I liked Aretha.
And it was just, you know, she had done respect about, you know, give me some respect when
I come home.
It was her again saying, you know, standing up to a guy, if you're going to lead me around
and play me like a fool, you know, I'm going to break up with you.
I mean, it was like almost like pre-feminist, you know, you won the strong woman statement.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, some of the black men and women that we interviewed for the book, they talked
about it.
They were back home and they heard it.
You know, a whole different, you know, I mean, that meaning was there, sure.
But Chain, and when you think of Chain and slavery, was out during the civil rights movement.
Aretha wasn't, you know, very political or out front with her politics.
But like other black artists like Sam Cooke and others, they would do a thing called masking,
where she's saying once they do a white audience, but the black audience knows there's a different
meaning there.
And they took that about breaking the chains of slavery and being a pro-civil rights song.
Well, then you get to Vietnam with all that overlay and everything was going on racially
in the country that was compounded and even more challenging in Vietnam.
And you know, we talked to guys, black guys in there, in Vietnam who heard that song, and
it was about the chain of command.
And you know, we all talk about the Tet Offensive being the turning point in the war, you know,
about what it did with the meat, even though, you know, the North Vietnamese, you know,
it was a suicide mission, they didn't, you know, they were in tatters after that, but
it was a psychological victory.
And everybody talked about that.
Black GIs talked to us about the death of Martin Luther King as being their turning point
in the war.
You know, if we couldn't keep their black leader alive back home, what in the heck were
they doing over there?
What were they fighting for?
And one guy said, you know, when he went, when he heard about King's assassination,
he wanted to go out and shoot the first white guy he saw.
He was still angry.
But then he went back to his hooch, he put on Aretha, came to chain the fools, and he
sat there and he said, yep, he said, that's just it.
You know, that wine, one day this chain's going to break, he said, that's it.
I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm, it's going to be different.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to follow the rules.
It's not to condone that or say it's the way, but it's how somebody was feeling and
talk about the power of the interpretation of a song.
Oh, absolutely.
And I was going to kind of, when we think about just living through that decade and
all of the changes that were happening, not only in Vietnam, but also at home.
Everywhere.
With the assassinations and just, you know, and the riots and so on and so forth.
Music also played a part in, in recruiting just a little bit.
And I want to play just a little thing of the Ballad of the Green Beret, because this is
absolutely.
So let's hear this one for a second.
Fighting soldiers from the sky.
Fearless men who jump and die.
Men who mean just what they say.
The brave men of the green beret.
I think that song was played, I can't imagine how many hundred times that I heard that even
one hour is in flight school.
I think it was the only song in the jukebox.
And then, you know, this came along and then we also had the movie, the green berets.
And if you were in Longbing, probably at the other end of the base where I was, that was
the movie probably four nights a week.
I saw the first and only time, well, I've seen it since we showed up to classes that
we had in Madison.
But first time I ever saw that movie was in Longbing.
Yeah, I was there.
Projected up against, you know, a white wall.
And, you know, and everybody, you know, all the guys are sitting there and they're going,
don't go in there, don't go down there.
You know, it's like watching a, you know, a mystery novel.
And then the next night, oh, you know, it's like I was, I felt like I was in MASH when
that program came out.
You know, well, this is the only movie we have, so this is the one we're going to watch.
And but the idea was that the ballot of the green berets, even though it, you know, it
when did that come out?
66.
50 years ago this week, in fact.
Right.
And I'll bet you that the special forces of the Army and the green berets still sing this
song.
Oh, I would not be surprised.
You know, it is, it raises such interesting, you know, and, and, and differing perspectives
from people.
But also when you think of that song, you know, out then at that time when the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones and the whole British invasion was going on, Motown had the Supremes
and the Temptation, the four tops, you know, the Moments and the Poppers came on the scene,
what was going on with music?
That was the number one song of the entire year about the green berets was the top song
of 1966.
And you know, we have, we have a number of different takes on that and different interpretations.
You know, we had a guy from Wisconsin who was an ROTC captain who, you know, when I
was going over and he that was his song.
And he thought it was like, because of that March, you know, you get a few men and later
you get the bugle call.
Yeah, he thought it was like, it was like on Wisconsin, you know, our fight song, we
were going to march across South Vietnam and win the day and go to the end zone and score
a touchdown and win for democracy.
But you know, his attitude about that song changed after he was there because he was
at some problems with the way we were fighting the war at the time when he was there in 1965.
I think probably as soon as he landed at Thompson Newton, he opened the door of the
airplane and he go, wait a minute, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind.
And the other funny thing was, including your fellow helicopter pilot, this was, you
know, the most parody song that I think that ever existed because the Marines had their
own song about it.
Different branches of the Army had their own song about it.
The Air Force had a song about it.
The Navy, everybody made fun of the song.
And it was one of my, and I remember even my buddy, Marty Hoyer, who's in the book,
who was a helicopter pilot, high priced help.
He was an officer, so he called his folk group the high priced help, the lines they had.
And it was silver wings upon my chest.
I fly my chopper above the best.
I can make more dough that way, but I can't wear no green beret.
We had some we couldn't reprint, you know, to take off from this song.
Well, yeah, that's understandable.
And I can't remember the lyrics that we came up with it.
I'm sure that they were just as bad at the time.
But, you know, and that's what we did.
The songs were very powerful to us and they were very important to us.
And there were, as you've mentioned before, there were very important songs.
And they were interpreted different ways by, I just mentioned this a couple of weeks ago
in the program, they were interpreted differently by enlisted personnel to, you know, non-commissioned
officers to warrant officers to officers to generals.
How did they interpret these things?
And when, you know, we're going to come up on a break here in about a minute and a half.
And when we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about Armed Forces Radio and how
Good Morning Vietnam was a great flick, but it wasn't exactly true.
No, not close.
To everything that occurred when we were listening to the music over there.
And in fact, every time I watched Wheel of Fortune, Pat Sajak was a DJ.
He was, yeah, you know, yeah, he was on one of the great shows over there.
He was a DJ.
Right.
And it's always amazing the people that we're unaware of.
Well, look, you know, what I'm going to play a little song as we go out and into the news
break.
And so I'm going to tell the people across the hall here, let's go with number 10.
And that would be Fortune It's Sun.
Credence.
Great song.
Okay.
So we're going to play this out and then we'll come back after the news and talk some more.
Yeah.
And if James out of control, maybe people will call in.
Maybe.
Yeah.
So, number 4, 822-1600, you got a song.
Give us a call.
Give me an ass.
What the hell?
Okay, we decided we weren't going to play the Woodstock version of that one for everybody.
Everybody knows that's Country Joe and the Fish and the Fixin' Lundi Ragn.
That's kind of the switch over, I think, in the music of Vietnam.
We're talking with Doug Bradley, one of the authors, that we got to get out of this place,
the soundtrack of the Vietnam War.
Doug, that actually is one of my favorite songs, as weird as it sounds.
You're not alone in that, Dale.
And if it's not as weird, this is an amazing thing because when you think of the public
persona and this image that people have of Joe and the Fish and especially Joe, and,
of course, the lyrics of that song, when we met him, we went out to interview him and
meet him and we took a subway, he picked us up in his car to go to his house.
He went to introduce himself to us.
He said, I'm a veteran first and a hippie second.
I don't think many people knew.
I don't think many people knew that he was a veteran.
I don't think a lot of people knew that.
He was in the Navy.
He had to have his mom sign the papers when he joined when he was 18.
He had just turned 18 because he wanted to see the world.
This was an option.
And as we were going to break, two of the guys in Credence were in the military.
Jimmy Henders is in the military.
People forget that this is a generation where our fathers at one were two and they all had
served.
So even sometimes the circumstances notwithstanding, we signed up and a lot of us went and participated.
So Joe, he was in Pre-Vietnam, but he intended this song as Gallus Humor.
I mean, it doesn't get darker than that, but I think part of the reason it appealed to us
is sometimes when things are bad and there's a chance it'll get worse, we used to laugh
in the military.
I mean, we would joke about our situation and that's what Joe intended with this song.
Well, a lot of people never got the joke.
He still gets hate mail today for that song.
But you and others, me, other guys that were there, Colonel Bo Gritz, who was a rough and
tumble, kind of hawkish guy.
He used to play that song for his soldiers to sort of fire him up.
So, you know, it can take on some different meanings and have different associations for
people depending on their circumstances.
Well, absolutely.
I mean, in the Gallus Humor, sometimes it's the only way you can survive.
Right.
I mean, if you thought about what could happen to you all the time, it could have, you know...
You'd go crazy.
Absolutely right.
It would be a little depressing.
And then the guys that were out in the field without the ability to listen to music, although
they got themselves fairly creative, it sounds like.
Oh, yeah.
They really had the tunes out there.
Let's talk a little bit about Armed Forces Radio Network that really was, you know, to
boost up our morale.
Can you talk a little bit about it?
Yeah.
And, you know, I'll give them credit for it because, you know, there was a great book
out and, you know, this is later in the war, realized that, you know, especially post-Vietnamization
when Nixon came in and we know we're leaving, we're turning the ground war over to South
Vietnamese, we're getting out of there.
That, you know, in order to keep our morale up, the book that this woman wrote is called
Arms with Abundance.
And she talks about how they gave us, you know, a lot of stuff and access to a lot of
stuff.
When you look at, you know, maybe a Ho Chi-65, 66, as opposed to a Ho Chi-70 or 71 like I
lived in.
I lived in air condition, but the officer working with the brass was, but, you know,
we had fans, we had Ho Chi-70, you know, we had music, we had tape decks, we had tons
of music, we had a little bar in the Ho Chi.
And I mean, we had some of the comforts.
And I think one thing they were dead right about was that music was going to keep our
spirits lifted.
So they did what they could do and went as far as they could with the format on AFVN.
Some of these guys started sounding like the DJs from back home, the playlist evolved,
there were still some songs that were banned and censored, but they did what they could.
And you know, and then we had tape decks, we had cassette decks, we had live bands,
we had USO shows, we had people touring Nancy Sinatra, Johnny Cash.
So music came to us in just like a tsunami and it was there to keep our spirits lifted.
And frankly, for me, music was huge, obviously the book is a testament to that, but even
before I even thought about writing this book, music to me had enabled me to sort of connect
with the guys I was with, the people I was away from, to survive the experience, and
then when I got back home to help me to get back home.
Well, there was, there were a lot of, obviously a lot of music over there.
There were stations, you know, the armed forces radio stations in Saigon and up north, there
was one up in, I think.
All over.
All over the place, but there were also some pirate stations out there.
And these guys were getting music faster than I think the DJs in Philadelphia were doing,
it seemed like.
Oh, absolutely.
This is the funny thing, we have a guy, one of the guys in there that talks about, a lot
about Hendricks, and he knew a fellow that, and it was the way, you know, that things
were sent over, but the short story was that he would get copies of popular music, especially
from the LA and San Francisco area, before this jockey in the States would have him,
because this guy was into the music industry.
And you're absolutely right.
You know, I mean, some guys still talk about the music Hanoi Hanoi play, you know, and
that they listen to.
And others talk about the pirates, you know, or guys just going on a different band, a
frequency on the radios that they had and playing music there.
You know, we wanted to hear this stuff.
It kept us going.
You know, there was a lot about it that we liked.
So we were going to find any way we could.
And I want to thank the Donut Dollies, your DJs, and the Red Cross nurses at a lot of
the, you know, a lot of the bases around Vietnam.
Music was coming and we were taking it.
Absolutely.
In fact, I wanted to, I'm going to have them play another little thing here, because it
was mentioned in the release on this and it's going to be cut number 16.
And in it, you mentioned that a Marine was, you talked earlier about not being able to
get a song out of your head.
And this is one of those songs that we couldn't get out of our heads once we heard it.
So here we go.
And of course that was our generation's Sinatra.
Yes.
That was a Nancy Sinatra and that was from 1966.
Fifty years ago, yeah.
Another one of those big, big years.
And as you mentioned in the book, this Marine is out in the booties, couldn't get this out
of his head.
I know.
And sometimes you couldn't get the images Nancy Sinatra out of our heads either with
the one.
Well, we want to tell you that.
Absolutely.
You know, they, you know, the guys talked about, I mean, they were pushing this song
so strong and Nancy to much to her credit.
And I think it's why she is held in such high esteem to this day by Vietnam vets because
she went there and she had spoken very eloquently herself about that was like a defining moment
in her life and where things change because part of what stars like her did when they
went there and performed was they also went to the hospitals to visit the guys.
And that, you know, that has forever changed Nancy Sinatra.
But man, the song and the way she looked then with the go-go boots and the short skirt.
Big white, tall white boots.
Yeah, I mean, so, but it's just amazing that for some of these guys, you know, we come
back and guys talk about it.
And of course, you know, you've got all that I've just mentioned to the appeal.
But you know, the other thing was that for some of these guys, when they think about
it, they remember how essential boots were to their survival.
You know, if you remember the foot gear in Vietnam and how it evolved and adapted, that
was, I think, one of the best designed combat boots ever.
I mean, because of the way it would air out and, you know, to handle water and could handle
the heat and the jungle and I mean, they were.
And but a lot of these guys would just tell us, you know, that song sticks in my head because
my boots were essential to my survival.
My boots were working.
I wasn't working.
So, if they've got Nancy, her appeal, the fact she went to Vietnam, it's a great song.
But you know, that then you also have just the real direct indication that this is a
part of your equipment that you need in order to be a soldier.
Well, it is fascinating what these songs mean.
I guess you mentioned the different people.
I want to play another one.
This is by the Charelles and this is Soldier Boy.
I'll let you hear this one.
So, and that came out, you know, in 1962.
This was even before everything started.
And I can remember that song from high school.
But I can also remember hearing it a lot in the officers' clubs with the bands.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and, you know, it's funny because as you mentioned, it's a song that was, you
know, not necessarily Vietnam, so it's previous Vietnam in many ways.
But it's a song we all knew.
It's been in movies.
Oliver Stone has it.
A great scene in that and born on the Fourth of July.
But again, it's back to the thing of what the Charelles are talking about is what happened
to a lot of young men growing up in those days.
And that is they would go in the military and they'd leave their sweetheart.
Maybe they'd go to Germany like Elvis Presley, but they went in the service and they served.
And this is the whole thing about you'd miss them, you'd say goodbye.
But you know, a song like that sort of sticks around and hangs with you.
So even though, again, you know, it's an older song.
It was played there.
People would say, and then now we become soldiers and that song is talking to us, you know,
like we talked about, you know, Mr. Longley by Bobby Binton, same thing.
But it never had anything to do with Vietnam.
But you know, but in that line, you know, I'm a soldier, I'm a lonely soldier, you
know?
And those are the associations and connections people make and it makes it strong.
And hey, if it got you through a day or a couple days, thank goodness that you had that song.
That's right.
In fact, I've got another one that follows up on that one and you'll recognize this.
This is the letter by the box stops.
And we got a lot of letters, a lot of letters.
And unfortunately, some people got bad letters, you know, they're basically.
Yeah, the dear John.
Dear John letters.
And I know myself as a helicopter pilot, we had figured out how much fuel we would need
to fly from Vietnam to California.
We just couldn't quite figure what we were going to do with the over water flight stuff.
But we were working on it.
We were working on it.
You know, because, well, you knew.
You know, and as you mentioned earlier, you know, Nixon came in with his plan to get out.
I was, you know, Ho Chi Minh died in 1969.
So we figured this thing is going to end soon.
Right.
Unfortunately, it didn't really too much.
It kept going.
Right.
That's right.
Fine.
You know, I think you're absolutely right.
But, you know, that song, Lonely Days are going on going home.
Of course, you know, and it's something that, you know, I want to be to mention here while
we're there, well, you know, like you said, the lyrics themselves say that and the notion
of letters.
I mean, mail call, I was lucky enough in the rear we had it twice a day and you know,
we lived for it.
I mean, you know, we, I mean, not for the Dear John letter if that came, but you know,
it was our, you know, if you got, we're getting something from your folks, you get the care
package, you know, your girlfriend, your wife, sweetheart, your brother, your sister, your
friends from, you know, back home.
Right.
They was great.
The letters kept us going and they were, you know, we didn't have email.
We didn't text.
No, we were letter and it took 10 days.
Yeah.
But the other thing is that there were some, there were other things that, you know, like
we talked about a little bit with the, the green berets and that March and, and the bugle
call and there's, there were, there were some songs and this is where Hendrick's Joy comes
in and he's later, but that's sonically, you know, it's, it's some, you know, you can talk
about all along the watchtower, purple haze, you know, and we probably don't have time
to get into those today.
We'll do it another time.
We're going to be talking again, but you know, the sat, you know, the sound of Hendrick's
was very much like the song called machine gun.
You know, if you listen to his Star Spangled Banner Woodstock, he does, you know, the,
the, I mean, the call for, you know, for the whatever the naval call is, the stress signal.
And I mean, so it's like, so we, you know, lyrically, a lot of this stuff we talked about
with Bobby Bear, we just mentioned about with letters, you know, boots, meaning boots,
but other times just sonically things made you and reminded you of Vietnam.
If you know, you know, anything, and of course we know, I mean, if you hear any of us here
a helicopter, we're there.
I mean, because that's, they were there.
It's everything in Vietnam.
Chopper's all over the place.
That is true.
I have to, we have to take another break, but we're going to be right back in just a moment
and on our way out on this break.
Let's see what we can play with this one.
Let's do, let's do a brown eyed girl, number 21.
Okay.
So we're all set to go.
I got a stretch while we're loading it up into the computer.
But here we go.
So we're going to take another break.
Stay tuned.
Come on back.
We've got more music after these brief messages.
Hey, where did we go?
So we're going to take a break.
Okay.
So we're going to take another break.
And I'm sitting here listening to Inna Gada De Vita with the same headphones I was wearing
50 years ago.
They're as big as tin cans.
And that to me was the, it wasn't really the changeover, but it was the changeover for me
as far as music was concerned because that came out in 1968.
That was by Iron Butterfly, folks.
And then we're going to key up here in just a second, number 24, which will be Jimi Hendrix.
All right.
We're talking with Doug Bradley.
His book is, we got to get out of this place, the soundtrack of the Vietnam War.
And we're only touching just the surface of some of these songs and what they mean to
the Vietnam veteran and to everybody else.
In fact, I was talking with Inna earlier and she said that this music is outselling
today's contemporary music still.
Yeah.
You know, because I was downloading some of these things that are all remastered from
in 1960, whatever.
You know, the amazing thing is, we teach this course about this at UW Madison and these
kids are born like in, you know, 94, 95, 96.
Did you want to play a song and then have me talk?
No, no, no.
Go ahead.
Okay.
And so, you know, it could be the Pelton Asian Wars for all they know, but they know
the music.
And through the music, we tell them the veteran stories and we let them hear about the war
through the men and women who fought it.
And it's so ironic.
We have two TAs and they're both post-911 vets and they listen to this music because
their soundtrack was their own individual.
They put on a headset.
They had their iPod.
They played their own song.
They didn't share it.
Ours was shared.
I mean, even if you weren't in Vietnam, you listened to Inna Gada, Davida and the letter
and Brown Eyed Girl and all the songs we talked about.
So it's like radio was our internet and we all listened to the same music.
Right.
And so what I'm having them do right now is we're going to start off with a little purple
have here and we're going to bring it up.
This drove my platoon leader crazy.
He couldn't stand it.
Every time.
That's why we had to wear the headphones.
When we'd start playing it and everybody's dancing with each other, he would stick his
head into our bar area and tell us to turn it off.
And so then we would go to something just as loud and up noxious to him as we could
think of, which is just what happens when you're 19, 20, 21 years old.
Right.
Exactly.
We were kids.
But you know what's amazing is that again, here's another guy.
People don't know it.
Hendricks was a soldier.
He was a bad soldier.
The Army got rid of him.
But he was a screaming eagle.
And so it gives a whole different maybe definition to excuse me while I kiss the sky.
You know, if you listen to, if you know that Hendricks is in the military, but this is
another one of those songs.
You know, because when I purple haze, I was in college and that song came out.
There was a form of acid that was going around for people who were doing those sorts of things
like a deluxe.
It was called purple haze.
So you know, sure it's a drug song.
Well, you know, you talk to guys in Vietnam and you know, we had the M18 smoke grenades
and what was one of the colors?
It was purple.
So for some guys, it's an LZ rescue, it's in the landing zone.
So then purple haze is associated with, you know, being safe, getting out, getting away
from something.
So again, you know, here's a guy, you know, who knows exactly what Hendricks was, you
know, but the song can have some different manifestations depending on where you were.
You mentioned in the book, there's a story about a tunnel rat and that's what he would
think about.
You know, I can't imagine being a tunnel rat myself, but he would throw smoke grenades
in there and that was the purple haze.
Yeah, and he would play the song because he didn't want anybody, he would put his little
cassette down there because he didn't want anybody, you know, he wouldn't want anybody.
Here I come, purple haze.
Yeah, I mean, as we've said already, we're going to probably try and do another one of
these with different songs, but you know, because, you know, and different units had
favorite songs also.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
We are, ours were the Ghost Riders of the Sky and that came out in 1949 originally.
And I, I only thought of the Johnny Cash version, but this is a Vaughn Monroe and I forgot about
him.
And you know, the amazing thing about that, there's just another one that you're picking
like that and, you know, that it's got, it's set to the same melody as when Johnny comes
marching home, so maybe that's another reason it sticks in our heads way it does.
And you know, Robbie Krieger of the Doors says it was the inspiration for Riders in
the Storm.
And that was a song that was that when I was there.
And boy, if that didn't have like a Vietnam feel to it, everybody thinks that the apocalypse
now in the end with the Doors, but for me, it's Riders on the Storm.
I mean, and it's like Ghost Riders in the Sky.
Oh, that was it.
That was an anthem.
And everybody would stand up for that one.
And that and the Skypile is another song by the Animus.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's a great song.
It's an amazing book, Doug.
And I really, you know, want to thank you and Craig for putting this together.
And I strongly encourage our listeners to go out and get it.
I mean, it's great reading is great stories, especially for you guys that were on the ground.
You're going to find a lot of people like you out there.
And there was some things going on in Vietnam that I even know what was going on.
I guess I was I wasn't paying attention, I guess, which is nothing unusual.
But that that's what I was talking about.
Where can we where can they get ahold of this?
Everywhere, right?
Yeah, everywhere.
I mean, that's, you know, we hopefully your local bookstore, tell them to get it.
I think we heard the Barnes and Noble is going to have a display many of their stores around
the country.
And of course, you know, available Amazon, you can get it that way.
You know, are from our publisher, you know, I could maybe help get people a discount.
But and we've also put together our own website for what we would hope today.
And, you know, people are there's there's a snowstorm, there's football, but it's the
WGG OOTP.
It's basically the initials of it.
Oh, OK, right.
WGG.
The only thing.
And we've helped men and women go there and share your story.
We got it.
We had a thing on that site says, what's your song?
And we want to hear from people because we couldn't get everybody.
What's your song?
Tell us.
Right.
Oh, and you guys could be doing podcasts for years on these on these different.
I'm glad I got a chance to talk to you and thanks so much for having me on.
I'm not quite done with you yet.
Because I got about a minute or so to go.
We're going to.
Right.
Yeah, we're going to go out on another song.
Well, we're going to go out on San Francisco by Scott McKenzie.
Oh, well, which is which was.
I know it's still a very emotional song.
Anytime I hear this song, it it it almost brings tears to my eyes because of course
San San Francisco is where I came back into the country.
Yeah, I'm here.
And it's where I left the country.
And here, you know, of course, Tony Bennett with his.
But I left my heart in San Francisco.
Yep.
And so all of these all these songs have so much meaning and I want to get together with
you and Craig after the football season.
They're all over and we'll set up another program so that we can get you on and maybe
get some of the people that you interviewed in the in your book because.
Oh, that's the fun.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
That that would be very cool.
Yeah, let's let's try that.
Yeah, because some of you are what you call solo.
The articles that they wrote about their their memories of this music and so forth is really,
really important.
And as we always say here on Veterans Radio is that we want to make sure we get the people
that were actually there to tell the stories because sometimes authors kind of get confused
and you know, don't necessarily know what it was.
So anyway, I know what you're saying.
So anyway, Doug, thank you very much for being on Veterans Radio.
And my pleasure, Dale.
Welcome home, everybody.
And welcome home to you too.
Hi, ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of Veterans Radio for today.
Stay tuned for just a second though.
We're going to play the entire length of San Francisco by Scott McKenzie until next week.
Not yet.
I'm hearing it.
If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your head.
If you're going to San Francisco, you're going to need some gentle blue hands.
Welcome to San Francisco.
Summer time will be a long and dull industry of San Francisco.
Welcome to San Francisco.