Rockin’ Thursday LXI

Yesterday, various organizations around the world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a devastating conflict fought from November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975. I was born just before the war ended, and as a teenager growing up in the mid-eighties, I didn’t fully understand how deeply it had affected an entire generation. It was only later that I began to grasp just how far-reaching and painful its legacy was.

With all that said, by 1987 I was already thinking about serving my country when Tour of Duty, an American military drama television series based on events in the Vietnam War, aired.

IMDb Tour of Duty Page

I was hooked from the first episode, and the theme song was incredible. Which brings me to today’s Rockin’ Thursday feature: the Tour of Duty theme song, “Paint It Black” by The Rolling Stones, an English rock band. The band released the song in 1966, almost 11 years after the war began, and it reached the number one spot on the U.S. Billboard charts that same year.

I hope you enjoy the video and have a wonderful, Rockin’ Thursday!  

Paint It Black – The Rolling Stones

You can access the lyrics here.

31 thoughts on “Rockin’ Thursday LXI”

  1. That was quite a song. My uncle had a friend who we celebrated after coming home from Vietnam. It wasn’t long after that when he was diagnosed with cancer as a result of Agent Orange. He died, leaving a young wife and child.

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    1. That’s terrible. A lot of veterans and civilians who were in the area or handled those chemicals are still suffering. I know the VA continues to expand eligibility for those with related illnesses, as they keep finding more connections to Agent Orange. Thank you for sharing that, Mary.

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  2. I was young when the Vietnam war was going on and I remember so many protests and my intended brother in law at the time getting drafted but didn’t serve. He was young, in college and an only child so I don’t know if that put him at the bottom of the list or not.

    Vietnam like so many wars were horrible events of our history with so many deaths that should have never happened.

    It wasn’t until I watched the series MASH that I learned about the Korean war, what they never taught us in history!

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    1. He probably received a deferment for being in college. I think they were sending only children back then. MASH, that was another great show, and I learned a lot about that war. I had a great-uncle who fought in the Korean war, but he never spoke about what happened there.

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  3. Thank you for sharing this, Edward, and thank you, as always, for your service. I was once married to a Vietnam War vet, 14 years older than I, who still suffered symptoms of PTSD and occasional flashbacks. A gruesome war.

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    1. You’re welcome, Natalie, and thank you for sharing that. Wars are horrible and continue to inflict pain, as many veterans struggle with a silent and invisible enemy.

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  4. Thanks for sharing that classic video. Such a great song. ’87 is about the time my brother joined the army. Thank you for your service, Edward. My dad wanted to serve but health issues made it impossible for him. He would have been the age to serve during the Vietnam War. A devastating loss of so many lives.

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  6. It was devastating for sure. Thanks for the tip on Tour of Duty… This song truly is a fav of theirs.
    BTW I watched Jerry McGuire … thanks for the tip, enjoyed it from start to finish… “You had me at hello”👋

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  10. Thank you for this, Edward. Thank you for your service, most of all, and for sharing “Tour of Duty”. I don’t think I’ve ever watched…but the theme song. Oh my goodness. What a tune. Powerful and I bet it had the perfect incessant beat for the show. Pounding. 😉

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  11. Vietnam was a totally avoidable tragedy. I’m not on the side of the “it was a war fought just to keep the military-industry complex happy” or “It was American imperialism at its worst” crowd; I believe that (a) France maneuvered Truman into financing its efforts to re-establish colonial rule in Indochina after WWII, (b) Cold War fears influenced our decision-makers, and (c) as usual, we didn’t bother to study the culture, history, or geography of Vietnam. Indeed, we backed the wrong side. (And the whole “domino theory” put forward by Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s was proved grievously wrong. A united, albeit “Communist” Vietnam proved to be zero threat to American national security. We had no business getting involved there, and I believe that if there had not been a Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961, JFK would not have asked his national security team to examine a commitment to South Vietnam so his Administration would not look weak re the Sovier Union and Communism.

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    1. Thank you, Alex, for your comment. I think the U.S. government needs to do better when deciding how to use our military, and we definitely need to improve in area (c). Even though we had—and still have—experts in those areas (culture, history, geography, among others) who know every detail and provide excellent assessments, our elected officials often listen to outsiders who are largely uninformed and push for interventions driven by personal or financial gain that isn’t apparent to the general public.

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  13. Because it’s my generation, I’m a big Stones fan, so as soon as you mentioned the song, it started causing a major earworm. Thanks for the share, Edward, lol.

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