Five war songs that were inspired by actual soldiers
According to some, art and politics have no business mixing, a truly bizarre take that has seemed to gain some sort of traction in recent years, with heightened positions of power gagging the voices that are crucially needed in the world of art.
But what is art without people, and what are people, if not the politics of the world? The two will forever be interlinked so long as agency is encouraged in whatever sort of democracy we are willing to call this. So, of course, songs about the brutality and corruption of war are needed, but perhaps more so are the songs about the people who existed in it.
People whose boots were on the ground, absorbing the dark realities of conflict while celebrating the brief glimpses of companionship shared between these troubled youngsters, bolted out the door and got to fighting.
Artists may not have been able to contribute in that same honourable way, but penning their experiences in a song and subjecting it to artistic immortality? Please, try and convince me that that’s not important to the lifeblood of politics. Listen to these five songs and try to believe that art and politics should be kept separate, because to me, it feels impossible.
Five war songs inspired by real soldiers:
‘What’s Happening Brother’ – Marvin Gaye
Beyond the gore of warfare are just the everyday conversations that mean so much to those involved, and that’s ultimately what ‘What’s Happening Brother’ denotes. Inspired by conversations had with his brother Frankie, who served three years in the Vietnam War, the song highlights the social adjustments that are made for those not on the front line.
“What’s been shaking up and down the line? / I want to know, because I’m slightly behind the times,” Gaye sings in the final verse before bleeding into the next track of his socially provoking concept album. Because there is ultimately a whole life that is lived after the brutality of war, when soldiers are tasked with integrating back into normal society, and this song seeks to expose that.
‘The Ballad Of Ira Hayes’ – Johnny Cash
Like Gaye’s hit, ‘The Ballad Of Ira Hayes’ exposes the aftermath of soldiers returning to the Western world, but in a much more visceral fashion. Written by folk singer Peter La Farge originally, but brought to life through the bruising voice of Johnny Cash, it tells the story of a Pima Native American Marine who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima but died from alcoholism after facing prejudice and PTSD upon returning home.
It felt particularly pertinent for Cash, who believed that his lineage traced back to the Cherokee, and sought to use the song to highlight the wider injustices that the Native American community faced. To further enforce that message to the wider American public, he published an open letter in Billboard that asked, “DJs, station managers, owners, etc., where are your guts?”
‘Rooster’ – Alice In Chains
Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell wrote the song about his father, whose nickname amongst his platoon during the Vietnam War was ‘Rooster’. The song traces Rooster’s resilience, from the very beginning of his journey, as a soldier being shipped to a bloody war, leaving a wife and child behind, all the way to the companionship shown to his fellow soldiers.
As something of an archetype built by the American military system, Cantrell’s father wouldn’t talk about the war, so Jerry crafted the lyrics based on his perception of his father’s feelings and experiences, told from his lens. He said, “I was never in Vietnam, and he won’t talk about it, but when I wrote this, it felt right…like these were things he might have felt or thought”.
‘Harry Patch (In Memory Of)’ – Radiohead
Radiohead’s song was inspired by a 2005 interview on the Today programme with ex-World War I soldier Harry Patch. Yorke explained, “The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me. It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death”.
He was the last surviving World War I veteran to fight in the trenches at the time of the band’s recording and sought to be nothing more than a tribute to the great soldier, so much so that the bulk of the song’s lyrics featured quotes from Patch himself, “I am the only one that got through / The others died wherever they fell”.
‘Dear Old America’ – Heart
Ann and Nancy Wilson’s father, John Bushrod Wilson Jr, was a highly decorated Marine Corps officer who inspired their song, but it wasn’t a song that celebrated the field heroism of their father, rather the day-to-day kind that they experienced at home upon his return, and moreover, the hidden demons left to fight once they do.
Ann Wilson explained that ‘Dear Old America’ was “Written through the eyes of a soldier, when they think about what it’s like to be shipped out, what it’s like to be there and then what it’s like to re-enter and come back and not be able to really explain to anybody over here in America what you just saw.”
