Monday, May. 10, 1982

Fire from the Mountain

By JAY COCKS

A country fiddler scores with a city boy's great tune

It is a match-up that has all the makings of a barroom brawl. On the right of the room, Charlie Daniels, roof-raising country rocker, the good ole fiddler who a couple of seasons ago sang about the devil going down to Georgia and about solid American spunk: "This lady may have stumbled, but she ain't never fell/ And if the Russians don't believe it, they can all go straight to hell."

On the left of the room, Dan Daley, New York City born and raised, at 28 younger than Daniels by 17 years, and at least 75 pounds lighter. A singer-songwriter with a solid dose of urban angst who has been plugging away in the music business for over a decade, with little to show for it but a cassette full of promising tunes.

Part of the peculiar physics of rock 'n' roll, however, is the ability to fuse opposites. What happened between The Charlie Daniels Band and Dan Daley and his demo tape is a hit song called Still in Saigon, featured on Daniels' new album, Windows, already 24 on the singles charts and climbing fast. At this bleak and uncertain moment for rock 'n' roll, Still in Saigon is not only the best single of the year so far; it would be a standout in the most bountiful of times.

Harsh, haunted, as chilling as a fever dream, Still in Saigon is music made from the silence of the dead. Like John Fogerty in his great songs for Creedence Clearwater Revival (Run Through the Jungle, Fortunate Son, Who'll Stop the Rain), Daley writes with ruthless simplicity. Still in Saigon has no patience with protest. Its power comes from undeflected imagery and reflective compassion: "The ground at home/ Was covered with snow/ And I was covered with sweat/ My younger brother calls me a killer/ And my Daddy calls me a vet .../ Damned if I know who I am/ There was only one place I was sure/ When I was ... Still in Saigon.":

Some have argued that the unlikely success of such a song demonstrates that the war in Viet Nam is now, securely, a safe issue. But Still in Saigon does not play it safe in the writing or in Daniels' slightly rowdy, defiant delivery. This is a war memorial of present and continued agony, about flashbacks that never stop and bad dreams that do not end with daylight: "Every summer when it rains/ I smell the jungle/ I hear the planes/ I can't tell no one/ I feel ashamed/ Afraid some day/ I'll go insane ..." It shows that popular music can still express strong and complex feelings, not mere sentiment. The true rock spirit may not be languishing after all, just waiting.

"I was very surprised I could write this song," Dan Daley admits. "A lot of Viet Nam veterans came up to me, and their first question was 'Where did you serve?' And I had to tell them, 'I was never in the service.' " Daley dredged up the shock and the immediacy of the song from his unconscious one slightly intoxicated night, and suggests now that its strengths come from "some shared core of trauma." Like most Americans, he watched the fighting and dying in Viet Nam on television. "We had the set next to the dinner table at night," he remembers. "Steak and potatoes with body counts." Daley concedes that "there are times when I wish I could say I wrote Saigon for the vets." But in a way, he did. A percentage of his royalties from the song is committed to the Viet Nam Veterans of America. At present, the songwriter is looking around for a record contract so he can sing his own material on his own albums. Even if the other works on his demo tape lack the focused power of Still in Saigon, they all show a talent ready to explode.

The considerable assistance of Charlie Daniels in that detonation happened almost casually: a record-company executive forwarded the Daley tape to Daniels' producer. Charlie had taken some sizable lumps for a hit tune called In America --wherein the Russkies were consigned to perdition -- and was being dismissed as some sort of star-spangled opportunist. In fact, Daniels talks a good deal about patriotism and does enjoy his Skoal snuff, but he is also at ease discussing the free-market incentives of China's Communist Party Vice Chairman Deng Xiaoping, and he knows the difference between simple pride and flag waving. In America was a rouser written at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis, "a documentary," in Daniels' words, that reflected the frustration and also the feeling of unity he sensed among the audiences he galvanizes during the 200 concerts he gives every year. "Still in Saigon is the same way," he figures. "I don't see the two songs as being at odds with each other. Saigon is about millions of veterans who came back, and it was as though the country didn't want to admit they ever existed. There weren't no jobs for them, wasn't honor for them, wasn't nothing for them but the memories they had. No, I don't think the songs are different. I don't think I'm different. I think both those songs are patriotic."

The patriot put in his time playing at anti-Viet Nam rallies when that issue was about as popular in Nashville as school busing. But as the son of a North Carolina lumberman ("He loved timber like I love music"), Daniels has always been a bit of a maverick. And he has always been a skillful entertainer, a hypnotic story teller in song (as The Devil Went Down to Georgia testifies), and a kind of bedrock conservative who can kick up his heels and still honor and abide by a set of contrary convictions. That is why he can bring such power to Still in Saigon. Some how it wouldn't sound quite the same at a save-the-whales concert.

-- By Jay Cocks.

Reported by B.J. Phillips/Atlanta and Denise Worrell/New York

With reporting by B.J. Phillips/Atlanta, Denise Worrell/New York

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