Latest / Drawn of History / Rick Springfield on Touring in Vietnam During Active Combat(M4A_128K)

Transcript

Rick Springfield on Touring in Vietnam During Active Combat(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan experience.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: And then I moved back to Australia and then I
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: went to Vietnam for a couple of months and then
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: What were you doing in Vietnam?
• 0:11
  Speaker 4: 68, 69.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I was....
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: There was promoters in Saigon and Da Nang and they
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: were looking for the closest to Occidental country was Australia.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: So the GIs wanted to see, you know, girls that
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: reminded them of home. So as long as we had
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: a couple of girls in the band, they would hire
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: you and you could tour of Vietnam during the war zone.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It was pretty insane. We were there for about four months.
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: What was that like?
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: It was insane.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I thought, oh, great, we'll make money. Of course, we
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: didn't make any money. We spent it all at the
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: PX and we weren't making much money anyway. But we
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: based out of Saigon and Da Nang and we toured
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: from Cam Ranh Bay up to the DMZ. We were
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: at the DMZ the 10th after the Tet where they'd
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: crossed over the Viet Cong, crossed into the cities and
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: everything and like done the big assault, you know, the
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Tet assault.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: We were there, I was two miles from the DMZ
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: on that next Tet.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: And I remember New Year's Eve and the flares, you know,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: the parachute flares started going off like this. And there's
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: like a line of guys heading towards us. And it
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: was freaking freaky. They, you know, they kept them at bay,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: but we were, got shot at and rocketed and we'd
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: be playing and there'd be mortars landing and stayed over
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: and we befriended some Navy guys at Marble Mountain which
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: is outside Da Nang and we went back there for
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: to give them a free show you know because they
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: were so appreciative you know I mean they loved seeing
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: the girls but they wanted connection with home you know
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: so they'd take you into the tents and we'd play
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Hendrix and and get stoned, and you know, even though
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: we're Australian, there was a connection there. And so we
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: met these guys, and we really got along well, and
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: we stayed overnight with them, and we all got in
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: the bunkers, in the perimeter bunkers, and I stayed in
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: the radio shack, and we got attacked, and I'm throwing
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: mortars down the freaking tube.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Of the radio shack.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: You were throwing mortars?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It was freaky.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this was before, you couldn't do any of this now.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: This was 1968, 69. And it was, you know, you'd
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: see traces going off the guys, the rest of the
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Bamber and perimeter bunkers.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: And it was pretty insane.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: Holy shit, man.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: We actually went up on a mission in an Apache helicopter, too.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Because they said, you guys want to come?
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: And we're all like, yeah. But it was, you know,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: it was pretty hairy.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: Holy shit, man. That's got to be insane. When you
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: were over there, were you like, what the fuck have
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: I done?
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: It was fear.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I went down the wrong way.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: It was pretty much fear factor the whole time.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: Holy fuck, man.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: You know, we slept with, hang.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: On. As you get older, you get a dry throat. Yeah.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: We slept a lot of the times where the G.I.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: slept in their, you know, their hoochies and wake up
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: with dust all over you.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: Is that you over there?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. There we are.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: Holy shit, man.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That's what we slept in, the hoochies, a lot of
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: How old were you then?
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I was like 67, 68, 69. I was 18.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. Wow.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and those jeans hadn't been washed in about three months.
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: You had to be, like, rethinking that decision to go
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: over there.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: I was there, and it was, okay, we make the
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: best of it. I mean, there was, you kind of
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: fall into a mindset, although I wasn't, you know, I
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: wasn't going out, you know, shooting with the GIs. You
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: fall into a mindset there that everything's legal, you know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: anything goes. We did some pretty nutty things. At one
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: point we were standing in line with 40 other guys
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: in a hut and being.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Serviced by this one Vietnamese hooker.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: Just 40 guys waiting for one hooker?
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: Holy shit.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: And there was nothing much to do but smoke. I
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: started smoking dope there.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: That was the first time?
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: But I haven't, I didn't, I haven't really been a doper,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: you know, but I did there and it was kind
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: of considered just a thing to do.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Everybody was stoned. All the soldiers were stoned.
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: All the time.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow.
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: The last thing I would want to do is be
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: high in a war zone.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Dude, we were in the Trang, right, which is this
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: beautiful beach town. And they go there for R &
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: R because they could surf, right? But it was still dangerous.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: And we were in a, we'd stay in these, sometimes
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: if we weren't staying on an army base, we'd stay
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: in these old villas that were old French villas that
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: were once beautiful and now were rat infested. You know,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, we'd be sleeping on cots and rats would
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: be going underneath. We got stoned. I remember one night
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: we got stoned. And the next thing you hear, machine
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: gun right outside the house. And you hear the guy goes,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: hit the lights, hit the floor. So the lights go
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: out and we all hit the floor. And you didn't
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: know what was going on. But when you're stoned, it's like, oh,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: my God. It could have been anything.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: Holy shit, man.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: But it was freaky.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: But being stoned helped you deal with it, you know,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: not have the constant fear. Although when the fear hit,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: if you're stoned, it's like you go over the top,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: But it was just the way we deal with it.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: I remember we'd be playing for the troops, you know,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: and we'd be playing on the back of a truck.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And we played in.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Fire bases.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: We all thought it was going to be like a
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Bob Hope tour.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: You know, you come in a fleet of helicopters. You play.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: They were sitting in bleachers. They applaud. You get in
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a helicopter, fly away. It was nothing like that.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: It was just a guy out of Saigon that hired us.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And what was I talking about? I get lost very easily.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I have ADHD, and there's so much awesome shit around
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: here to look at that.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: I'm kind of like, We were talking about getting stoned.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: We were playing on the back of a truck, and
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: there's the guys sitting there on their helmets with their M16s,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: just watching the show. And we finish, and this guy
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: comes up to me, and he's stoned out of his head.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: He goes, I'm going to go out and see what
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I can kill now, man.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: And he puts his helmet on and walks out into
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: the jungle with the company. But it was just bizarre
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: experiences like that. But now I look back.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: And go, what the fuck was I thinking? It was unreal.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And it's so weird, because I remember Arthur C. Clarke
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: telling the story about how he's sitting with a guy
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: on a plane.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: He said, what do you do?
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: He said, oh, during the war. And he went on
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: for two hours about what happened during the war. And
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: he says, what do you do now? He says, I'm
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: an insurance salesman.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And that was it. What he does now was a...
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: But the whole, the war experience, you know....
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: It's, it's, you could go on forever because it's so
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: much happens and it's such a, in a space so
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: much is lived, you know.
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• 9:15
  Speaker 1: The fear is.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Kind of one of the having that much that much
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: fear constantly is pretty taxing. We weren't even going out
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: and shooting although we did we'd shoot everything from. 45s
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: to tanks and we And, you know, we'd be driving
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: along and get shot at, and like I said, we'd
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: be playing, and the rockets or the mortars would start landing,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: and they'd hustle us into a bunker. But it was,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: you know, we weren't actually going out like those guys
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: were and walking point, you know.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: Well, that was also one of the strangest wars ever
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: because it didn't make any sense that why we were
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: over there and then when the soldiers came home instead
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: of being greeted like heroes like they were in world
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: war ii yeah i mean it was uh it.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Was really a terrible for them because i know it's
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: meeting them over there they go you know that you
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: think oh when they get over there probably yeah we're
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: here we'll do a job you know All the ones
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: I met were, dude, I don't know why we're here.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know what I'm doing here. All of them
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: while they were, you know, fighting. So it was a
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: bad war for sure.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: No, one of the worst wars ever.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: And these guys coming back from that, it's just that
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: experience must have been so different because you're over there,
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: you're killing people, you don't know why you killed people,
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: and then you're in the grocery store. Like that scene from,
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: what's that movie? You know the movie I'm talking about?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Apocalypse?
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hurt Locker.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Remember when the guy comes back, he was diffusing IEDs.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: He comes back and he's walking to the grocery store
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: and he's just like, what the fuck am I doing?
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: The contrast between the two places is just too much.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: It's too crazy.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: My mom said when I came back and they picked
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: me up at the airport– she said a car backfired
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: and I like jumped and I don't remember it but
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: she said you know my eyes look kind of haunted
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: I could only imagine took me a while to kind
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: of get through it did.
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: You see people die over there what's that did you
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: see people die over.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: There um we saw trophy albums which were kind of
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: scary they said a lot of the GIs kept trophy
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: albums where they'd photograph like body parts or a guy
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: that had a 50 millimeter shell go through his head
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: you know and It was pretty freaky. The leader of
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: the band actually died when we got home from a
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: disease he picked up over there, a lung disease.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Died at 25.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: What was it? His name was Pete Watson. He was
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: the leader of the band. I was a guitar player.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: In the band. I wasn't the lead singer or anything.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: And he must have gone somewhere where we didn't go
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: on the days off and picked up something.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Just some jungle disease?
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The doctor said, you've been anywhere exotic lately? He said,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I just got back from Vietnam. Why?
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: He said, well, you got this thing in your lungs
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: that is pretty rare. So, you know, I don't know
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: if it was Agent Orange or if it was something
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: you picked up from, you know, whatever was in Vietnam.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, he lasted about a year.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: Oh, wow. Unfortunately, none of you guys got it.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we all raced to the doctors and got chest x-rays,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: but it was okay.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, he was weird.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I was looking him up the other day and didn't
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: realize he was so young when he died. He was
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: older than me then, so he seemed like an older guy,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: but he was only 25.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: How much time in total were you over there for?
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: About four months.
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: Holy shit, man.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: And there was a point where they wanted us to
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: go play in North Vietnam. They said, we'll keep the
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: choppers going. There's a troop over there that wants you
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: to come and play. And we'll keep the choppers going.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: So if we get into trouble, you can get, you know.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: And luckily he said, no, we're not doing that. We'd
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: had enough, you know, of that experience.
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: What was the decompression like when you got back home?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: I don't really remember because it's just one of those,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, I, The hardest thing for me was that
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: I'd thrown a mortar down and it had hit somebody.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And they came in the next day and said, hey,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you got.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: One, you got one.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And that still has a hard place to land.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: In me, you know?
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: That's really kind of the one thing I brought back.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: with me that I couldn't really find a place for
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: that to land. And still, it still seems like, you know,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: years ago, another, another guy, another place.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: So explain to me how this is happening. Like, where
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: are you? Were you throwing these mortars down?
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: I was in a place called Marble Mountain, Marble Mountain
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: outside Da Nang. And it was a Navy encampment on
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: the beach. And, uh, and I was in the radio shack. And, um,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: And the band members were in the perimeter, the perimeter boxes,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: you know. And they said, radio, you know, it was
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: like the movies. Radio came in, we were seeing movement
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: over here, check for friendlies. And they said, no, no
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: friendlies there. So they said, hey, you want to throw
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: some mortars down the tube? And it was John Wayne time,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: you know. I mean, as a young kid, I didn't really,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: understand what I was doing. I said, oh, yeah, let's
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: fire a gun, you know. So I threw the mortars down,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: about five or six mortars, which I could have easily
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: lost a hand, you know.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, that kind of thing.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: And then came in the next morning and said one
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: of them had hit a VC.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: Wow. How long did that sit with you for? How
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: long did that sit with you for?
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: I think it's still there. It's hard for me to
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: kind of face that I was responsible for the end
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: of a life even though it's distant and it's war
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: and I didn't really have anything to do with it
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: and didn't really know what I was doing. But as
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: a kid and playing, like I said, John Wayne, but
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: it was, it's pretty heavy when I, you know, when
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I think about the reality of it.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: Did you write any songs about that experience?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: No, I wrote about it in my autobiography, but it's
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: not really, well, not yet, hasn't been song material.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because it seems like there's probably something there.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, there's definitely something there for sure.