“The diversity of voices and songs reminds us that the home front and the battlefront are always connected and that music and war are deeply intertwined.” —Heather Marie Stur, author of 21 Days to Baghdad For a Kentucky rifleman who spent his tour trudging through Vietnam’s Central Highlands, it was Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” For a black marine distraught over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., it was Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.” And for countless other Vietnam vets, it was “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die” or the song that gives this book its title. In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner place popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. They explore how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. They also demonstrate that music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans—black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and “grunts”—whose personal reflections drive the book’s narrative. Many of the voices are those of ordinary soldiers, airmen, seamen, and marines. But there are also “solo” pieces by veterans whose writings have shaped our understanding of the war—Karl Marlantes, Alfredo Vea, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bill Ehrhart, Arthur Flowers—as well as songwriters and performers whose music influenced soldiers’ lives, including Eric Burdon, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Country Joe McDonald, and John Fogerty. Together their testimony taps into memories—individual and cultural—that capture a central if often overlooked component of the American war in Vietnam.

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Offering the widest scope of any study of one of popular music's most important eras, Songs of the Vietnam Conflict treats both anti-war and pro-government songs of the 1960s and early 1970s, from widely known selections such as Give Peace a Chance and Blowin' in the Wind to a variety of more obscure works. These are songs that permeated the culture, through both recordings and performances at political gatherings and concerts alike, and James Perone explores the complex relationship between music and the society in which it is written. This music is not merely an indicator of the development of the American popular song; it both reflected and shaped the attitudes of all who were exposed to it. Whereas in previous wars, musicians rallied behind the government in the way of Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber, the Vietnam conflict provoked anger, frustration, and rage, all of which comes through in the songs of the time. This reference work provides indispensable coverage of this phenomenon, in chapters devoted to Anti-War Songs, Pro-Government Songs, and what might be called Plight-of-the-Soldier (or Veteran) songs. A selected discography guides the reader to the most notable recordings, all of which, together, provide a unique and important perspective on perhaps the 20th century's most contentious time.

In their 2015 award-winning book, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner placed popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. Over the next two years, they made more than 100 presentations coast-to-coast, witnessing honest, respectful exchanges among audience members. That journey prompted Bradley to write Who'll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America and to further explore how the music of the era, shared by those who served and those who stayed, helped create safe, nonjudgmental environments for listening, sharing, and understanding. Those insights, and others, can help redefine America's public memory of Vietnam, one that invites a broader public understanding, sometimes written physically into the landscape via monuments, about what we revere and what we regret about who we are and what Vietnam did to us. A chorus of voices in Who'll Stop the Rain–​famous and anonymous, female and male, veteran and non-veteran, American and Vietnamese–suggests new possibilities for understanding the legacy of Vietnam and, ultimately, for bringing the men and women who served their country in that controversial war home for good.

This is the trade paperback second edition of the popular original title