Allow a few minutes to download the song
Can
You Bring Back My Friend
(Al Parsons)
We
were there, we saw it all
Some
came home, no cheers at all
And
we can claim one, in each and every town
Our heads were hung,
for years in pain
Now
you tell us you understand, it’s OK
It’s
the way the times were, to that I will agree
But
that doesn’t put out this fire inside of me
Something’s
wrong, what made it right
We
lived in fear, day and night
Now
everyone’s sorry, in fact it’s a trend
What
I’m asking,
Can
you bring back my friend
They’re
making movies They’re doing shows
Analyzing,
criticizing the blows
Some
agree we were there to defend
One
night in his car, a bullet in his chest
Erasing
memories, he never could forget
Three
little girls and a mom will never know
What went wrong, we gave our lives
We
lived in fear, day and night
But what I’m asking
What
I’m asking
Can
you bring back my friend
Copyright 1990 Al Parsons
Al Parsons, Saigon, 1970
Al Parsons served with the 510th Engineers, 91st CS Battalion, at Long Binh. Commenting on the his song, "Can You Bring Back My Friend, he wrote:
“I can’t remember the exact date, but I was starting to get more than a little irritated at the hype the boys were getting coming home from Granada, so it was around that time. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad that the American people were finally recognizing the fighting man again as a hero, but I was really getting an attitude like, "what about me and my buddies, and now even if you recognize us or say your sorry, that won’t fix what you already put us through and it certainly won’t bring anybody back." It bothered me that I had these emotions, especially after they were neatly tucked away. It bothered me that people who didn’t want to hear me talk about it when I came home were now all of a sudden interested, and some were even going as far as to feel guilty because they didn’t have to go. It was just getting bizarre and I wrote the song and it didn’t take long.
The last verse is about one of my best friends that I grew up with. He quit school to go into the Army so he made it to Nam before I did. He got home in time to see me off. When I got back, he had gotten married. A couple of years later I got married, then his marriage fell apart. He wandered for a while and we ended up working at the same company. About that time, he remarried, and after the second child his wife went into postnatal depression, which turned into a nasty battle for the kids and legal separation. He told me that he was going to kill himself, and having those thoughts many times myself, I didn’t listen. I saw him a couple of hours before he did kill himself and he wanted to talk. We were both at work, but he was on his way out, I was just starting my shift and was too busy to take the time. The next time I saw him, was in his car, slumped to the side with a .22 rifle stuck in his stomach. The back of the station wagon had his AK-47 and some other Russian rifle he confiscated while in Vietnam. The rest of his worldly possession’s he had left at my house the night before. I assumed one day we would talk about it, but he decided to move on.
So, I included the last verse when I did the final recording, I just about made it through, and the old cliché you could have heard a pin drop in the studio held true for about a minute after the song was over. The same thing happened when I performed it live for "The Wall on Tour" in Elkton, MD a couple of years ago. I ran and hid, to hide my emotion.
I don’t know why, but the song just came out of me, and it seems to have touched a few people, including myself.”
Peace, Al Parsons