There was a softly-spoken anti-war song I remember from 1971. It was so soft that many times when it came on the (FM) radio, I would think the radio station was having a glitch, because I couldn't hear anything for a few minutes. There was no music, only a man talking. I'm pretty sure it was played on KDEO radio station, back when that station still existed. That was in San Diego, California.
By now I'm getting the song confused with a similar radio song at the time--One Tin Soldier (Coven, 1971, "Coven" album)--which was a regular song with a female singer, rather than being a piece spoken by a man. Both songs I believe had make-believe stories about a group of people who at the end discovered war. The mystery song had lyrics near the end similar to the following: "Do you know what it was? It was war." (This is similar to the ending of "One Tin Soldier", which ends with the lyrics "...turned the stone and looked beneath it. 'Peace on earth" was all it said.") "One Tin Soldier" came out in autumn 1971, and I'm pretty sure the mystery song came out the same time.
The man's voice was fairly ordinary, and I didn't recognize it as any major singer. His voice wasn't high-pitched or anything special. At the point I remember toward the end, the delivery was gentle and matter-of-fact.
I heard the song several times in those days, and KDEO emphasized slightly lesser known album music of groups like Quicksilver Messenger Service, Ballin' Jack, Elton John, War, CSNY, and It's a Beautiful Day, so it's likely the song was either in the top 100 (but I don't think so: I checked Billboard's top 100 listings for the entire year in fairly good detail) or on an album by a popular group of the time (very likely). Some songs I remember that KDEO played particularly often, in order to give an example of their generally mellow programming, were:
30 Days in the Hole (Humble Pie, 1972, "Smokin'" album)
All Day Music (War, 1971, "All Day Music" album)
Baby's Callin' Me Home (Steve Miller Band, 1968, "Children of the Future" album)
Carry On (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, 1970, "Déjà Vu" album)
Fresh Air (Quicksilver Messenger Service, 1970, "Just for Love" album)
Glad (Traffic, 1970, "John Barleycorn Must Die" album)
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (The Allman Brothers Band, 1970, "Idlewild South" album)
Long Haired Lady (Paul McCartney & Linda McCartney, 1971, "Ram" album)
Love Song (Elton John, 1970, "Tumbleweed Connection" album)
One Fine Morning (Lighthouse, 1971, "One Fine Morning" album)
White Bird (It's a Beautiful Day, 1969, "It's a Beautiful Day" album)
I've been searching for this song for years, even before the Internet. It's not a song I particularly like, but it would be very nice to know what it was and to listen to it fully. I haven't checked the Internet for it in the past few years in too much detail, though, so I may have overlooked lists of antiwar songs of the '70s, or something similar, that might mention it.
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softly-spoken anti-war "song" from 1971
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wiki has a list of protest / antiwar songs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_song
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Thanks. Yes, I found another list at...
Originally Posted by logan01
http://www.lacarte.org/songs/anti-wa...t/c/index.html
...which includes "One Tin Soldier" and "Morning Dew", which are more subtle anti-war songs. But since I don't know the title or even lyrics for sure of the song, and since there aren't links to samples of those songs, it's going to be a long process of search.
