Captain Jack Commentary

Captain Jack

To understand Captain Jack, one must recollect the context in which it was written.

It begins with a jarring mantra of military violence. One through which both John Hall and Charles had lived. In the
two hour drive from LA to Ojai, they would speak about how their world had gone from mornings of cartoons to
mornings of bayonet drills. One of them said Capt Jack should start with a morning drill. On the day we recorded it,
we did it many times as we filled track after track, and combined them to create a realistic sounding platoon. I guess
as they had done at boot camp. . By the end of the evening I recall, the experience had taken both of them back to
some dark place where it had been so real. To this day I am jarred by the abrupt controlled aggression of John Hall's
channelling of his boot camp's drill Sargent's morning call to kill.

Following John Hall's taunt to his "platoon" is a moment then the piano's gentle incantation and Chuck's vocal of a
wistful desire to return to a time of innocence, when everything seemed less complicated, less dangerous. John Hall
sings lead in the chorus with a desperate urgency to forget the morning drill. In the end chorus, the desire to return
to Capt. Jack cannot erase the madness of the war he was a part of. The guitar solo becomes a "call to arms", and
the platoon chants "Back".

The song was written in 1966 as the Vietnam war was raging. Troop deployment went from l84,000 at the end of 1965
to 389,000 by the end of 1966. By the time we recorded Captain Jack, in 1967, the number of troops in Vietnam had
approached 486,000 on its way to a peak of 537,000 by the end of l968.

Guys we went to high school with were dying there every day. John Hall and Chuck had been there, and while not
dead, they were damaged, and not much separated Tom and I from finding ourselves there.

In l960, I was 12 years old, My father took me to a community college just a few blocks from our home to hear the
Democratic candidate for President of the United States -John F Kennedy. The experience left an indelible
impression on my soul. It was a time of high ideals. It was a time when public schools were bursting at the seams,
swelled by a generation of Baby Boomers, the post WWII generation that would change and shape the world in the
second half of the 20th century. Vietnam was an issue so distant that it barely made the back pages of the LA Times.
Prosperity reigned in our little bedroom community seven miles east of downtown LA.

Tom Lubin, Chuck Giana and I first met just a couple of years later in high school. We were members of the class 65.
In November of our Junior year, 1963, an event took place that would change America for decades to come. JFK, the
symbol of youth, vigour and change, was assassinated in Dallas.

Our Generation entered the world on the eve of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi (1948). Our coming of age was
hastened by the events in the fall of '63. We saw over and over the moment of death for JFK, then we saw live
coverage of Jack Ruby firing a gun, point blank, into the gut of Lee Harvey Oswald. Lyndon Johnson was suddenly
the President of the United States and Commander in Chief of a military that was widening the Vietnam War
throughout all of Indo-China. Vietnam would poison an entire generation- Our generation.

When we graduated in '65, there were so many incomprehensible official truths. Among them was the spin that we
were keeping democracy and freedom alive by occupying Vietnam and carpet bombing anything that moved. The
other one was the Warren report's conclusion that a lone gunman killed JFK, and there was no conspiracy. Most of our
generation never believed these truths.

We grew up on Buffalo Bob, Howdy Doody, and Clarabell who became Captain Kangaroo. In 67, morning TV still had
the gentle Captain and Mr Green Jeans. He would invite us to the Treasure House, a place where life seemed less
scary and you knew he would always tell the truth. Captain Jack was a composite of Bob, and Howdy, and the
Captain.

Little did we know when Prufrock sang of wanting to go back to those mornings with Captain Jack, that the late 60s
was not a blip.

By the time the mid 80s had come, and Prufrock got together for the Revisions sessions, Martin Luther King and
Senator/Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. So had John Lennon, Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat, and Indira Gandhi. Ronald Regan and the Pope nearly suffered the same fate. None the less, America
continued its love of the gun, and no politician was willing to take on the National Rifle Association. Smokin' Gun
from the 1982 sessions chronicles these events.

Where am I today when half past six rolls around. When the station plays the News? I sometimes yearn for simpler
times when heroes like Captain Jack could save the day.