All the Dead Were Strangers
1973 · Philips 6308070 · London, UK: England
- Artist
- Pete Atkin
- Title
- All the Dead Were Strangers
- Release
- A King at Nightfall
- Year
- 1973
- Label
- Philips # 6308070
- Format
- LP · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- London, UK: England
- Genre
- Singer Songwriter · Singer Songwriter
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation
Pete Atkin, a British singer/songwriter, performed the song "All the Dead Were Strangers" (RCA Victor # SF8336), written by Clive James, which provided an account of US soldiers in conversation after taking part in a massacre at a Vietnamese village, a reference to the My Lai killings. The soldiers brutally and graphically observed that "just lying there were ladies so old they hardly bled, thin kids who never needed a red hole in the head". The soldiers found some comfort ("helps you to remember or forget"), that those killed were strangers, while they "were all in this together, we were friends". As a helicopter took the soldiers away, and torched the village, the narrator cried out "why bother all the dead?" It took an anti-war position, by its brutal depiction of the massacre and its impact on the perpetrators. Atkin also released a Vietnam track in 1971 - Driving Through Mythical America, about the Kent State shootings. (1) (2)
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
Born 22 August 1945, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK