![speed of sound of loneliness speed of sound of loneliness](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hWlFa9M1GWA/maxresdefault.jpg)
At that time, all the other Vietnam songs were basic protest songs, made up to slap each other on the back like “Yeah, this is the right cause.” I don’t remember any other songs that talked about the soldiers at all. I tried to right a song about vets from their perspective.” John Prine (1034) “There’s no one person who was the basis for Sam Stone, more like three or four people like a couple of my buddies who came back from Vietnam and some of the guys I served with in the army. I saw a thing on the news one night where vets came home from Vietnam via San Francisco, some protestors spit on them and stuff which didn’t sit right by me.
![speed of sound of loneliness speed of sound of loneliness](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5Bk8Cm53Ycg/maxresdefault.jpg)
But I had different guys, they all had different stories and I wanted to explain to myself what was happening with the veterans coming back from Vietnam. You still think you’re supposed to jump when a siren goes off.
#SPEED OF SOUND OF LONELINESS HOW TO#
They’d come home and it’s almost like the way people talk about being incarcerated – when they get out they don’t tell them how to live out on the street…you’re training to go into the military is so intense, they take your individuality away from you then they leave you hanging like that when you get out. It was like this tension and then they had nothing to do so they just got high all the time. Just being over there going day after day with nothing happening then you’d be walking to get a beer with a buddy and he’d step on a mine. About five of my buddies who got drafted at the same time, a lot of them ended up in Vietnam, they came home but none of them were ever the same people, regardless of whether they were in combat or anywhere near it. And when it came the day for us to get our orders, me and three other guys got our orders for Germany. I got drafted in January of ’66 just after LBJ had committed or gone from 23,000 troops in Vietnam to 250,000 and everybody who just got drafted thought, “that’s where we’re going.” They sent me to Fort Polk, Louisiana to trawl round the swamp so I figured, “this is where I’m going,” they’re teaching you all of this, you know.