One critic’s view: “It’s an irritating little nothing of a song made even worse by its pretense of wrestling with heavier subjects.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum
The public’s view: 2.57 / 5.00, the third-worst #1 hit of 1974
I enjoy reading history books written by British scholars because they have such a different perspective than what is taught in U.S. schools. For example, the Brits insist that the American Revolution was a dreadfully unnecessary affair that could have been averted if the hotheaded colonists in Boston hadn’t wasted all of that glorious tea. But not everyone wants to read books, so we also need popular culture to occasionally force-feed a few history lessons to the masses. This is what happened in 1974, when a team of two Englishmen, Mitch Murray and Peter Callandar, wrote two #1 hit songs that told stories of our American heritage: “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” and “The Night Chicago Died”. What an educational time to be alive!
Calling Murray and Callandar history scholars is probably an exaggeration. Even calling them “buffs” may be a bit too generous. Mostly, they were a couple of ordinary blokes who had watched a few fictionalized historical films and decided that a good song could stretch the truth a lot farther than any movie could. After writing their two pseudo-historical hymns, the duo asked English band Paper Lace to bring these songs to life.
“Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” is not so much about history as it is about heroism – or about stupidity that masquerades as heroism. From its lyrical reference to “soldier blues,” we can gather that Billy served in the Union Army in the Civil War. He was apparently a grinning dimwit who immediately volunteered for any kind of foolishly dangerous task. (“The sheep’s bladder we use in our ball games just rolled into the Confederate camp. Can someone walk down there and ask for it back? OK Billy, but not so fast, they’ll shoot you if you show up in a Union uniform. How about if we disguise you as an escaped slave?”) His fiancée knew of Billy’s propensity to dig himself in over his head, and she warned him about it – to no avail – before he went off to war.
Paper Lace had a U.K. hit with “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”, but ran into a major obstacle in the States. A band from Cincinnati, Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, had recorded their own version of the song that more closely mirrored the tastes of the U.S. public. The upbeat vocal on Paper Lace’s original, along with the sound of Billy’s fiancée pleading with him to not be such a doofus, was replaced by an even more upbeat and almost cheerful tone. In the hands of Donaldson and his lead singer Mike Gibbons, the “hero’s” tragic death was not a depressing story that might make Americans feel badly about their history. It was more like: “The Civil War: a good time was had by all!” Paper Lace saw their record falter at #96 on the Hot 100 while Bo and his Heywoodian friends rocketed straight to the top of the chart with their Americanized version.
“Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” is one of those annoyingly catchy songs that sounded so great on the AM radio in the 1970s, but which critics of today love to disparage. It has that in common with “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” and “Love Will Keep Us Together”, but the contrast between the chipper singing and Billy’s lamentable fate gives Bo Donaldson’s record an additional reason to be considered among the supposed “worst” songs of its era.
After being aced out on “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” in the U.S., Paper Lace was able to quickly bounce back. Their version of “The Night Chicago Died” soared to #1 on the Hot 100 a couple of months later in 1974, aided by the sympathy the band got when people heard how Bo Donaldson had robbed them of their other potential hit. By all rights, “Chicago” deserves to get worse retrospective reviews than “Billy”. It is an upbeat song about an even bigger tragedy, plus it contains a couple of major historical and geographic inaccuracies that cast doubt on Murray & Callandar’s credentials in the field of American Studies. A fellowship at Princeton was probably going to be out of their reach after this. Nonetheless, “Billy” has slightly lower scores from listeners and many critics, and so it is the song that I have chosen to feature here. Life isn’t fair, and neither is this blog.
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