Tom Rapp’s “Fourth Day of July”, a Great Independence Day Song
July 4, 2020Tom Rapp’s ”Fourth Day of July” is an antiwar song without equal. Known mostly to Rapp’s loyal fans of fifty years ago, it deserves more attention, especially on the occasion of Independence Day, and as much in 2020 as in 1972 when the song was released on Rapp’s album ”Stardancer”. Although the subject of Rapp’s song is the war in Vietnam, its lessons are timeless. Its theme, classically simple: the tragedy, cruelty, insanity, immorality, and immense bloodshed of a completely wrongheaded war, and - not least! - the stupidity, vileness and devilry of those who send soldiers to war.
It is not a routinely patriotic song, to be sure, but rather an expression of anger about the U.S. war in Vietnam, and still a useful corrective to our continuing adventurism in foreign policy. Back in 2007 I wrote a short letter to send to radio stations to suggest that they program Rapp’s song for the Fourth of July. At that time I looked into Tom Rapp, who was no longer in the public eye, to see what had become of him. It seems that after several years in the music business, he studied economics at Brandeis University, took a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and became mainly a civil rights lawyer. I was glad to see that someone like him was able to reinvent himself in order to do some good for his country, instead of just going for the big bucks like most people. (That’s what I call patriotic!)* In his later years he even performed a bit. Nice going, Tom!
“Fourth Day of July” is an apocalyptic vision, practically a hallucination, of the return of the last troops to the US at the end of the war in Vietnam. It hits very hard, both musically and poetically. The phrasing and imagery are biblical. Besides Rapp’s lamenting voice, there are crashing cymbals and sitars, and a powerfully descending melodic line, with an ascent returning to the dominant. I could say more, but let me just leave it like this: compared to this song, Dylan’s “Masters of War” (which I love) is just an excellent antiwar song. Tom Rapp certainly created some special, beautiful and memorable music.
In 2007 I couldn’t find ”Fourth Day of July“ on the net, but now it’s there. (These two links are effectively the same URL.) There are many of Tom Rapp’s songs on YouTube - or perhaps I should say Pearls Before Swine - and they’re certainly worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjLdKXChh2M
Tom Rapp - Fourth Day Of July - YouTube
Fourth Day of July
And it came to pass on the first day of July
The last man home from Vietnam was going to arrive
The ship came in so silently, its bow a ghostly white
But when they looked upon the decks, there was not a man in sight
Then the sea began to roll and from the ship a-moaning
A line of broken children, all from the ship a-coming
The light of death was in their eyes
The broken children of Vietnam
On the first day of July
Like a war beyond control, to Washington at dawn
A line of ghostly children upon the White House lawn
Grown men did turn away, not to see it anymore
To see the burning child running to the White House door
No one found a place to hide
The burning children of Vietnam
On the second of July
All across America in a line ten miles long
The dead children all coming home
From the land of Vietnam
To men who got too far away
From what was done in their name
Someday must all have to pay
Who never saw a child die
The dead children all coming home
Four days in July
On every door and window across this sad gray land
A mark that would never go away of a thousand thousand hands
A voice like voices in a dream
A voice like somebody else’s scream
Or not somebody else’s scream
A voice within a fire
The burning children of Vietnam
On the third day of July
They they came upon the sea, it did open up before them
A line of children all with wounds, upon the ocean walking
The the sky began to rain
And beat the land with tears of rage
And every year upon that day if a hundred years go by
It rains upon America
On the fourth day of July
Words and music by Thomas D. Rapp
©1972 Our Lady of the Media
From “Stardancer” (BTS44 – Blue Thumb Records, 1972).
Tom Rapp died in 2018. If there’s anyplace you go after death, he must be in a better world than this one.
When I wrote to the radio stations, I suggested that, if they were concerned about accusations of political bias, they could follow Rapp’s song with Kate Smith singing ”God Bless America”, which someone on WBAI used to threaten to play, to good effect, in order to facilitate pledge drives some years ago.
I have always liked the artwork chosen for Rapp’s albums, whether in his own name or as Pearls Before Swine. Works such as Giovanni Bellini’s Cristo Benedicente and Pieter Brueghel the Elder’sThe Descent of the Rebel Angels suit Rapp’s sensibility perfectly. You could describe Tom Rapp as a hippie folksinger with a heavy streak of medieval Catholic mysticism (though all faiths were welcome in Tom’s church). Some songs seem to come from the lands of mythology and folk tale, such as ”Sunforest”, where magic and miracles exist.
Once in 1973, when the hearings regarding the impeachment of Richard Nixon, were nearing their conclusion, Rapp was engaged for a concert, sharing the bill with several other performing artists. Just before Rapp was supposed to go on stage, he was told that he couldn’t have all the time on stage that he had expected, that he would have only something like two minutes - barely enough time to say hello to the crowd. So he went out on stage, took the mike, and just asked the audience, “How many of you think he’s guilty?” The applause was wild, and went well over time.
Most people back then took for granted that Rapp’s songs were inspired by drug-induced hallucinations. But in an interview years later, he said that he had never done any drugs up until that time. Instead, he explained, back then he had been a steady smoker of Winston cigarettes, and so he figured they must have been Winston-induced hallucinations.
*Although I’m changing the subject here from a life and career to a single pop song, not the sentimental, inane jingoism of Barry Sadler’s ”Ballad of the Green Berets”!
On the back of his Stardancer album, there are a few lines of a song, or poem:
oh children don’t you weep
if the road is long
all of us are prayers of action
on our way to God
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