Touro Law Review Volume 32 Number 1 Symposium: Billy Joel & the Law Article 5 April 2016 Goodnight Saigon: Billy Joel’s Musical Epitaph to the Vietnam War Morgan Jones Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/lawreview Part of the Law Commons, and the Other Music Commons Recommended Citation Jones, Morgan (2016) "Goodnight Saigon: Billy Joel’s Musical Epitaph to the Vietnam War," Touro Law Review: Vol. 32 : No. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/lawreview/vol32/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Touro Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Jones: Goodnight Saigon GOODNIGHT SAIGON: BILLY JOEL’S MUSICAL EPITAPH TO THE VIETNAM WAR Morgan Jones* Billy Joel adopted new personae and took on new roles in several songs on both 1982’s The Nylon Curtain1 and his penultimate studio album to date, 1989’s Storm Front.2 In what some have seen as an attempt to reach a more adult audience, to “move pop/rock into the middle age and, in the process, earn critical respect,”3 Joel put on new hats (literally, at times: his fedora-wearing balladeer appears prominently in the video for “Allentown”) for “Allentown” and “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’,” “Pressure” and “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and “Goodnight Saigon” and “Leningrad.”4 Each of these pairs of songs saw Joel endeavoring to make statements about issues that were bigger than he and his own life, which was in stark contrast to his sources of inspiration for his earlier, more self-centered albums.