“‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’ was our ‘We Shall Overcome,’” observed Bobbie Keith, who served as an Armed Forces Radio DJ in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. “We listened and danced to the tune in a state of heightened awareness that many of us might not make it back out. We counted our blessings each time the song played, that we were still alive. The song conjures up the fire flares and rockets that illuminated the sky each night as helicopters whirled overhead, creating an ominous musical cacophony that the war, ever present, was all around us—would the rockets hit us tonight?—as we danced, listened, and sang along, shouting the words, ‘We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.’ It has become the vets’ national anthem” (Doug Bradley, Craig Werner, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, 2015).
The Animals “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”
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