The Billy Joel song written for “my friends who did go down to ‘Nam”
It’s hard not to talk about the different eras of music without talking about their sociopolitical contexts. For all of the power that Bob Dylan put into a song like ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’, for instance, it’s hard not to see it in the aftermath of the civil rights movement in America, as many people strived to have more equality. Towards the end of the 1960s, the country was at war, and Billy Joel saw most of it firsthand.
Coming up at the tail end of the ’60s, Joel had started making a name for himself as a musician in the Long Island scene. Playing with any sort of band or recording session that he could get his hands on, Joel was happy to do anything he could so long as it didn’t mean strapping on any soldier boots at the time.
Many of Joel’s friends couldn’t make it through those tragic years for all of the great music he made at the time. While many see the effects of the Vietnam War through various clips from movies, the reality was the equivalent of Hell on Earth. Young men died fighting for a war they didn’t believe in, leaving others to come back severely scarred by the horrors they saw when overseas.
Even though Joel could never claim to have been in that sort of combat, he still had a soft spot for his friends who never made it back home. Since albums like The Stranger and 52nd Street painted a picture of Joel’s life throughout his years as a musician, the next half of his career would see him create a masterpiece in tribute to his friends.
While many remember the album The Nylon Curtain for Joel’s more radio-friendly material like ‘Allentown’, ‘Goodnight Saigon’ was his first time commenting on the tragedies he had seen from his friends. Despite never naming any of his friends in the song, Joel said that most of the track is about those lost souls who never made it out of the jungle.
When discussing the track, Joel felt the key to their survival was how they stuck together, saying, “I wanted to do that for my friends who did go to ‘Nam. It was all about them depending on each other. When they were over there, they weren’t thinking about mom, apple pie and the flag. They were doing it for each other – to try to help and save each other and protect each other. That really hit me.”
Before Joel starts singing, the song already puts the listener in the mindset of being in battle, hearing the different sounds of what could only be fighter planes hovering overhead. Even though Joel greets the audience with a simple vocal melody, the chorus is one of the most heartwrenching moments of his career, talking about how these men will all go down together no matter what the cost.
Spanning seven minutes, ‘Goodnight Saigon’ has the same emotional resonance as any excellent war film, looking to get down to the humanity behind these soldiers rather than talk about what made them so twisted in the first place. Out of all the great epics Joel has created through the years, this track deserves a place next to ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’ as one of the most cinematic pieces he ever put on tape.
