‘Green River’: The song that perfectly captures 1969 like a time machine
No year does contradictions quite like 1969, when, following his inauguration, Nixon decided to bomb Cambodia, marking the deadliest peak of the Vietnam War.
Charles Manson, the renowned cult leader, led his so-called ‘family’ to kill the pregnant actress Sharon Tate and executive Leno LaBianca. But masking the horror that lay beneath, the US continued its fight in the Space Race, becoming the first country to put a man on the moon with Apollo 11. Woodstock, a festival that would go down in history as a symbol of counterculture, took place on a dairy farm in New York, beckoning stans of “Power to the People” from across the country.
With all this in mind, George Harrison crooning into a mic about “something” doesn’t seem to do the year justice, and neither does Elvis’s ‘Suspicious Minds’. Instead, I like to think that Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s rockabilly-edged track ‘Green River’ is the one and only soundtrack of 1969, because I’ve watched too many Vietnam films to not give this answer.
While according to vocalist John Fogerty it was written about a creek he used to frequent as a child, the catchy riffs and swampy sounds have become synonymous with a time of anti-war sentiment. Take Steven Spielberg’s taut political thriller The Post, documenting the build-up to the Washington newspaper’s publication of the Pentagon Papers. The opening scene in 1966 Vietnam, where US State Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg is documenting the harsh day-to-day of the soldiers is soundtracked poignantly by ‘Green River’.
Unlike many cinephiles, I did not grunt at another CCR feature in a Vietnam War-related film, even if the history of the scene predates the track’s release. But for some, the feature acts as a “sub-Gump-level hackiness” thumbing at an over-exaggerated nod to the band’s ‘Fortunate Son’ featuring in yet another Hanks vehicle, Forrest Gump. But peel back the snobbishness, and it makes sense that CCR’s music has come to represent a time of devastating loss in pop culture.
While the band did not, at first, intend to write songs of protest, their music came to reflect a growing mood that was engulfing America pandemic-style. That being said, their track ‘Fortunate Son’ hit the nail on the head with its comment on the war’s mistreatment of the lower classes, resulting in their following releases, like ‘Green River’, being associated with opposition to the Vietnam War.
You might roll your eyes at yet another CCR song feature in a Vietnam film, but it’s not exactly hard to imagine draftees boosting their morale amidst the humid jungle by listening to a track that lets them remember things they love. A track that beckons them, as it does for Fogarty, back home.
