"If Ya Wanna End War and Stuff,

You Gotta Sing Loud'*

A Survey of Vietnam-Related Protest Music
H. Ben Auslander
Rock music came of age in the 'sixties. Outgrowing its childhood of
simple four chord progressions and inane lyrics, rock evolved into a
complex art form that affected the lives of millions, simultaneously
reflecting and shaping their political and social attitudes. Much has been
written about the maturing of rock, but one area that has curiously heen
ignored is the study of protest music of the sixties, especially that directed
against the war in Vietnam. A possible explanation of this neglect may lie
in the difficulty of sorting Vietnamese-related material from general social
protest music, the two genres being so inextricably intertwined. If one
accepts as one's research criterion examining only those songs directly
related to Vietnam, many important songs may he overlooked. On the other
hand, to include all protest music of the period would be to obscure the
significance of songs directly related to the war. A middle approach, then,
one including material directly concerning the American involvement in
Vietnam and also those songs depicting the side-effects of that
involvement, would seem to be the best means of assessing the genre.
The roots of anti-Vietnam protest music can be traced back to those
folksingers involved in the Civil Rights and nuclear disarmament
movements of the late fifties and early sixties. Faced with the often violent
reactions to civil rights demonstrations and the continual threat of
thermonuclear annihilation by the Soviet Union, folk artists such as Bob
Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stokey
and Mary Travers alike took firm stands for racial brotherhood and
international peace. It was neither difficult nor unexpected, then, for such
artists to shift the emphasis of their messages from "Stop oppressing our
black brothers," to "Stop oppressing our yellow brothers," and from "Ban
the bomb," to "Stop the war in which we'il probably use the homh," as the
American involvement in Southeast Asia intensified.
Phil Ochs' "Talkin' Vietnam Blues" had the distinction of being the
first protest song to directly refer to Vietnam by name. The release date of
that song is of particular noteApril 1964, a full four months before the
Gulf of Tonkin incident and the first major escalation of the American
presence in Vietnam. Whether Ochs was mystically prescient or simply an
excellent socio-political prognosticator is irrelevant; one should note,
however, that rather than reflecting or attempting to direct public opinion,
Ochs consistently seemed to second-guess it throughout his career.
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A Survey of Vietnam-Related Protest Music

109

Ochs' second album, released in February 1965, included two songs

directed against the Selective Service that were both to become classics of
the Draft Resistance movement: "The Draft Dodger Rag" and the album's
title song,"I Ain't Marchin' Anymore." As draft quotas rose throughout the
year, Ochs' outspoken anti-draft attitudes came to be shared by more and
more potential draftees.
1965 was also the year of one of the decade's most controversial Top
Forty hits, "Eve of Destruction." Released less than a month after the
triumph of Gemini 4, the song included lyrics such as, "You may leave here
for four days in space/But when you return it's the same old place." The
singer-songwriter, Barry McGuire (another folksinger, formerly lead
vocalist for the New Christie Minstrels), and his songs were immediately
lambasted by the news media for expressing excessive pessimism, and the
song was subsequently denied airplay on many radio stations. While
attracting far less attention, "The War Drags on," by the English folksinger
Donovan was also released during 1965, an event significant in that it
marked the first time American listeners were exposed to criticism of the
war from a non-American artist.
By 1966 America's involvement in Vietnam was no longer a peripheral
issue for rock music's listeners. Rising troop commitments, rising casualty
figures, and rising draft quotas all contributed to the growing anti-war
sentiment of the young. The youthful "counterculture" became increasingly
disaffected with and alienated from the "establishment" of American
culture, and that schismatic tension was forcefully represented in several of
the year's songs. Once again Phil Ochs expressed the feelings of many with
his satiric songs "I'm Going to Say It Now" and "Love Me, I'm a Liberal,"
while the Fugs (charter members of rock and roll's lunatic fringe) pushed
humor to the limit with their song "Kill for Peace." In sharp contrast to the
Fugs' technique of aesthetic overkill, Simon and Garfunkel released two
quiet anti-war songs, "Seven O'clock News/Silent Night" (juxtaposing the
well-known Christmas carol with the narration of a topical and depressing
news broadcast) and "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" (whose anti-war
message was so subtlely presented that many never realized they were
listening to a protest song). As troop commitments and troop ceiling figures
increased, so did rock's attention to the war.
In terms of both the number of songs recorded and the artistic
expressiveness of those songs, 1967 was decidedly the peak year for
Vietnam-related protest music, and in the autumn of that year, public
attention was concentrated on protest songs and singers like never before.
The public's attention was first focused on the genre when CBS television
executives banned folksinger Pete Seeger from performing his anti-war
allegory, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," on a September Smothers
Brothers Comedy Hour broadcast. The executives held to their position that
the song's reference to the "big fool" (i.e. Lyndon Johnson) was disrepectful
and should not be broadcast on a prime time show, then finally caved in
under charges of censorship and allowed Seeger's performance.
During that same September Joan Baez's latest album, Joan, was
receiving a good deal of attention, in part for the song "Saigon Bride." As if

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Journal of American Culture

to counter charges that protest music was nothing more than noisy rock and
roll, Baez co-wrote and recorded this gently poetic hallad about an
American soldier bidding farewell to his Vietnamese wife as he leaves to
fight in the jungles. Arlo Guthrie, son of the famous folksinger Woody
Guthrie, also came into the public spotlight that month with the release of
his first album, Alice's Restaurant, including the enormously popular
monologue, "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree." Guthrie's humorous
burlesque of the judicial system, the Selective Service, and the military
establishment won him instant acceptance with the anti-war movement,
but neither that movement nor the singer himself was spared a few stinging
remarks (best expressed, perhaps, in a remark to his audience after an
unsuccessful attempt at an audience sing-along"If ya wanna end war and
stuff, you gotta sing loud"). The month's activity was capped by the release
of Peter, Paul and Mary's "The Great Mandala (The Wheel of life)," a
hagiographic account of a draft resister's life and death. Two months later.
Country Joe and the Fish's song, "The I-Feel-Iike-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag,"
was released, providing the late sixties' anti-war demonstrators with an
unofficial marching song.
Until 1968 the gjrowth and popularity of protest music closely paralleled
escalation of American involvement in Vietnam, then unexpectedly its
intensity began to wane while the war's continued to increase. The number
of anti-war songs recorded declined and those that were released lacked the
immediacy and forcefulness of their predecessors. One explanation may be
that performers and audiences alike were physically and spiritually
exhausted by the war against the war and simply did not want to be
reminded of the conflict any more than was necessary. Another possible
reason may be that many shared the sense of manic resignation expressed
by Phil Ochs in his last anti-Vietnam song, "The War is Over."
Whatever the cause, protest music declined as the sixties ended and the
seventies began. Apart from Joni Mitchell's "The Fiddle and the Drum",
1969 was an aesthetically lean year for protest music. By the time of the
Kent State University murders by National Guardsmen in May 1970, the
anti-Vietnam song genre was effectively dead. The last Vietnam-related
protest song, Neil Young's "Ohio" (recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and
Young and released as a single during the summer of 1970), commemorated
the four murder victims and simultaneoulsy provided an epitaph for the
entire anti-Vietnam peace movement.
Disregarding chronology (see Appendix A) and looking at the body of
Vietnam-related protest music as a whole, one can readily discern several
major categories of songs. First are those songs that are general in their
condemnation of war. This group includes such compositions as "Masters
of War," "One More Parade," "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," "The
Universal Soldier," "The Great Mandala (The Wheel of Life)," "The
Unknown Soldier," "Minstrel" and "Rejoyce." Second are those which
specifically refer to the war in Vietnam: "Talkin' Vietnam Blues," "Lyndon
Johnson Told the Nation," "The War Drags On," "Waist Deep in the Big
Muddy," "Saigon Bride," "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree," "Thel-FeelLike-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag," "The War is Over," "White Boots Marchin' in

A Survey of Vietnam-Related Protest Music

111

a Vellow Land," "American Eagle Tragedy" and "Ohio" may all be

included in this category. Third are those songs that are directed against
the Selective Service, including "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore," "The Draft
Dodger Rag," "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree," "The Great Mandala,"
and "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting."
Viewed from another perspective, the songs also reveal many of the
attitudes and emotions felt by performers and audiences of the period.
"What Have They Done to the Rain?" "Masters of War," "Eve of
Destruction," "The War Drags on," "Requiem for the Masses," all express
the same fear of sudden and unprovoked personal destruction by
impersonal forces. Skepticism concerning "the American way" and calls
for re-evaluation of the "American dream" underlie such songs as "I'm
Going to Say it Now," "Love Me, I'm a Liberal," "The Universal Soldier,"
"For What It's Worth" (note: while not written about Vietnam protest, the
intent of this song's description of the 1966 Sunset Strip riots is nearly
identical to other Vietnam-related material), "The War is Over," "The
Fiddle and the Drum," "Give Peace a Chance," "Chicago" and "Ohio." In
response to the active militarism guiding U.S. foreign policy throughout the
sixties, a domestic attitude of militant pacifism evolved in many of the
young, an attitude expressed in songs like "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" and
many of the others discussed here. A few songs, most notably "We Can Be
Together" and "Volunteers" even went so far as open calls to arms, urging
the young to take to the streets and seize power before their elders destroyed
the world.
Given the large body of Vietnam-related material, it is to be expected
that a wide range of rhetorical devices were employed in the songs' lyrics to
convey their anti-war messages, yet three (by virtue of their prevalence) are
worthy of special mention. In those songs leveling political criticism
against American involvement in Vietnam, satire and humor were
frequently utilized, as in "Talkin' Vietnam Blues," "Lyndon Johnson Told
the Nation," "Kill for Peace," "The Draft Dodger Rag," "Love Me, I'm a
Liberal," "War Song," "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree," and "The IFeel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag." Such songs as "Seven O'Clock
News/Silent Night," "Requiem for the Masses," "The Great Mandala," and
"Sky Pilot" relied on religious allusions to focus attention on the moral
issues involved in the war and the homefront effects of that conflict.
Finally, the device of ironic juxtaposition was occasionally employed,
setting harsh or cynical lyrics about the war against a beautifully melodic
score, as in songs such as "Seven O'Clock News/Silent Night,"
"Scarborough Fair/Canticle," "Saigon Bride," "The Great Mandala" and
"The Fiddle and the Drum."
Like the decade in which they were written and recorded, protest songs
concerning the American involvement in Vietnam and the subsidiary
effects of that involvement defy easy categorization. Many fall
simultaneously into several classifications while others fit into none at all.
Musically the songs ranged from beautifully melodic to jarringly dissonant,
lyrically from idealistic to cynical. While their study is unlikely to provide
the ultimate key to unraveling the enigma that was the sixties in America,

112

Journal of American Culture

the songs and their lyrics do chronicle many ofthe ideals and attitudes held
by America's youth during the Vietnam war years, and as such should be
included in popular culture studies of the decade.
H. Ben Auslander holds an All University Fellowship at the University of
Delaware where he is continuing his graduate studies in American
literature.

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ALBUM

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to tne HalnV"

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SONG TITLE

KELEASE DATE
191)3

^asters ol' War"

Bob Dylan

the Free-v;heelin' nob Dylan

1963

une More parade"

Phil Ucha

All the News That'g_ Kit

To Sinn

Apr. 1964

Talkin' Vietnam Blues"

Phil Ochs

All the Nev:s That's Fit

~'ro^ Sinn

Apr. 1961

Lyndon Johnson Told the

Nation"

Tom Haxton

19hb

i Ain't Harchin' Anj-more"

Phil Uchs

1 Ain't Marchin' Anymore

Feb. labh

The Draft Uodger lla/j"

Phil Ochs

1 Mn^'^ Harchin' Anymore

Feb. 1965

Eve of Destruction"

Barry HcGulre

Eve^ o Destruction

July 1965

The War Draps On"

Donovan

Catch the Wind

Dec. 1965

the

The Fugs

1966

Phil Ochs

Ih Concert

Feb. 1966

Love Me, I'm a Liberal"

Phil Ochs

In Concert

Feb. 196G

Seven O'clock News/

Silent Night"

Simon & Garfunkel

Parsley, Sap.e, Rosemary.

& Thyme

Sept . 1966

Scarborough Fair/Canticle"

Simon & Garfunkel

Parsley, Saj^e, Kosemary,

& Thyme

Sept . 1966

The Universal Soldier"

Donovan

Fairy Tale

Dec. 1966

v/ar Song"

the Fugs

Tenderness Junction

1967

Kill for Peace"

I'm Going to Say It Now"

FURS

A Survey of Vietnam-Related Protest Music

113

"For What It's Worth"

Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield

Feb. 1967

"V/aist Deep in the Big

Muddy"

Pete Seeger

Waist Deep lji the Big Muddy

June 1967

"Requiem for the Masses"

the Association

Insight Out

Aug. 1967

"Saigon Bride"

Joan Baez

Joan

Aug. 1967

"The Alice's Restaurant

Massacree"

Arlo Guthrie

Alice's Restaurant

Sept. 1967

"The Great Mandala (The

Wheel of Life)"

Peter. Paul. & Mary

Album 1700

Sept. 1967

"The Dolphin"

Kenny nankin

Wind Dusters

"The I-Feel-Like-1'm..Fixin'
To-Dle Rag"

Country Joe and the I-Feel.-Like-I' m-Fixin' -TFish

Die

Nov. 1967

"Re Joyce"

the Jefferson
Airplane

After BathinR t Baxter's

Jan. 1968

Nov. 1967

"Sky P i l o t "

the Animals

the Twain Shall Meet

May 1968

"The War i s Over"

Phil Ochs

Tape from California

June 1960

"White Boots Harchinn In

Phil Ochs

E 2 California

June 1968

a Yellow Land"
the Doors

Waiting for the Sun

July 19G8

"The Unknown Soldier"

"The American Eagle
Tragedy"

Earth Opera

The Creat American Eagle

Tragedy

rinr. 1969

"The Fiddle and the Drum"

Joni Mitchell

"Give Peace a chance"

the Plastic Ono

Band
ljonovan

"To Susan on the V/est Coast

Waitino"

Apr. 1969
Peace in Toronto

June 1969
July 1909

"V;e Can He Together"

the Jefferson
Airplane

Volunteers

Oct. lOGD

"Volunteers"

the Jefferson
Airplane

Volunteers

Oct. 1969

Richie Havens

Stonehenge

Mar. 1970

the Temptations

(single)

June 1970

"Chicago"

Crosby, Stills,
Nash, & Younc

(single)

July 1970

"Ohio"

Crosby, Stills,
Nash. Young

(single)

July 1970

"Minstrel!'
"Ball of Confusion"