“Goodnight Saigon” by Billy Joel

On The Nylon Curtain in 1982, Billy Joel turned to the Vietnam War, and "Goodnight Saigon" follows a unit of Marines from basic training on Parris Island into the fighting. Joel sings it in the plural, one voice among many, and the details come from a grunt's-eye view: Playboy, Bob Hope, the Doors, a hash pipe, prayers to Jesus in the dark.

Phil Ramone produced it for Columbia, and Joel's band plays it like a slow march, Liberty DeVitto on drums, Doug Stegmeyer on bass, David Brown and Russell Javors on guitars, with Bill Zampino's snare drum giving it a parade-ground edge. The fear mounts through the bridge until the refrain arrives as a crowd of voices, men bound to the same fate, and it lands like a eulogy for a whole generation.

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