Universal Soldier (song)

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Universal Soldier
Donovan
publication August 15, 1965
length 2 min 16 s
Genre (s) Folk
Author (s) Buffy Sainte-Marie
Producer (s) Terry Kennedy, Peter Eden, Geoff Stephens
Label Pye (NEP 24219)
album EP The Universal Soldier

Universal Soldier is a folk song that became a worldwide hit in the 1965 version of Donovan .

Emergence

The anti-war song was written by Canadian songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie and first featured on her debut album It's My Way! In 1964 . released. It wasn't until 1965 that it became a hit in the Donovan's version .

content

Buffy Sainte-Marie said of the song, “I wrote Universal Soldier at the Purple Onion Coffee House in Toronto in the early sixties; it is about individual responsibility for the war and how the old feudal thinking will kill us all. ”She wrote the song from the point of view of a student who is writing an essay for his professor with whom he does not quite agree is. He hopes that his essay will change the professor's point of view. Sainte-Marie sold the publishing rights to the song for a "starvation wage," as she said in an interview , and later bought the rights back for $ 25,000.

The six stanzas of the song depict a soldier who acts in the belief that he is fighting for peace, but never realizing that he himself is part of the problem. The song ends with:

He's the Universal Soldier
And he really is to blame.
His orders come from far away no more.
They come from here and there and you and me,
and brothers, can't you see
This is not the way to put an end to war.

Donovan's cover version

In 1965, the song caught the attention of folk singer Donovan, who recorded it in an arrangement similar to the original Buffy Sainte-Marie recording. In Donovan's version, Dachau was changed to Liebau , where a training center for the Hitler Youth was located. His version was released on August 15, 1965 in the UK on an EP entitled The Universal Soldier . The EP reached number 5 on the UK charts .

The lack of interest in the EP format in the United States led Hickory Records to release the song as a single in September 1965 . Donovan's cover version of Universal Soldier was featured with Bert Jansch's Do You Hear Me Now? released from the UK EP as B-side. Donovan's US release of Universal Soldier also became a hit, entering the charts higher than his previous single Colors and eventually reaching number 53 on the Billboard Hot 100 . This success led Hickory Records to the song on the US version of Donovan's second album Fairytale publish and thus the cover of Bert Janschs Oh Deed I Do to replace.

More cover versions

Other versions

In 1965, Jan Berry (by Jan and Dean ) released The Universal Coward as a single, which is the opposite of Universal Soldier 's point of view . This has been heavily criticized by the anti-war movement .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Friend: Return of the protest song . February 3, 2017. Archived from the original on July 12, 2019.
  2. ↑ Financial Times (July 25, 2009) Buffy Sainte-Marie is recording again
  3. ↑ John Gilliland (1969). "Show 34 - Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders. [Part 2]: UNT Digital Library" (audio). Pop Chronicles. University of North Texas Libraries.
  4. ↑ Ronald D. Cohen; Will Kaufman (2015), Singing for Peace: Antiwar Songs in American History Google Books, p. 86
  5. ^ Ronald D Cohen, Will Kaufman: Singing for Peace: Antiwar Songs in American History. Routledge ISBN 978-1-61205-808-5 , accessed March 11, 2020 .

Web links