The Veteran

David Peel — Street Corner Rant

People find out I served in the Army and they look at me like I just told them I used to be a cop. Like it doesn't compute. How does a soldier become the most anti-establishment musician in New York City? How does a military man become the King of Street Rock?

Easy. The Army showed me what I was against.

Two years. 1960 to '62. David Michael Rosario from the Lower East Side, reporting for duty. You know what the Army teaches you? It teaches you how to follow orders. How to stand in a line. How to say "yes sir" to someone who wouldn't know music from a garbage truck. It teaches you that the system works great — as long as you stop thinking.

I stopped stopping.

When I got out, I tried everything. I went to Alaska. I tried Wall Street. Can you imagine? David Peel on Wall Street? In a suit? Selling something? The only thing I ever sold was a song for a quarter in the park. Wall Street lasted about as long as you'd expect. Which is to say, not long at all.

Then I went to San Francisco. The Summer of Love was bubbling up. Haight-Ashbury. The whole scene. And it was beautiful, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't mine. San Francisco was California dreaming. I needed New York screaming. The Lower East Side was calling me back. The cockroaches missed me. The fire escapes missed me. The sidewalk needed a guitar player.

So I came home. And I never left.

Here's what I want you to understand. Being anti-war doesn't mean being anti-soldier. I served. I know what it costs. I know what they ask you to give up. That's EXACTLY why I spent the next fifty years telling kids not to go. Because I went. I saw the machine from the inside. I know what it does to people. You don't get to tell a veteran he doesn't understand sacrifice. I understand it so well I spent my whole life trying to make sure nobody else had to make one that wasn't worth making.

Every protest song I ever wrote came from those two years. Every time I sang about freedom, it was because I remembered what it felt like to not have any. Every time I stood in Washington Square Park and played for free, it was because I remembered standing in formation, doing what I was told, waiting for someone else to decide what my day looked like.

The park was the opposite of the Army. No ranks. No orders. No uniforms. Just music and whoever wanted to listen. That was my discharge. That was my real honorable discharge. Not the piece of paper — the guitar.

They wave the flag at you and tell you to be grateful. I am grateful. I'm grateful I got out. I'm grateful I found a guitar. I'm grateful I found Washington Square Park. I'm grateful I found a country that lets a veteran stand on a street corner and sing about everything that's wrong with it. That's America. The whole thing. The service AND the protest. The uniform AND the long hair. The salute AND the raised fist.

If that doesn't compute for you, that's your problem. I contain multitudes. Walt Whitman said that. He was a New Yorker too.

See also: Washington Square — the park he came home to. Have a Marijuana — the album that came from the corner. Forty Pages — what the FBI made of a soldier who picked up a guitar. The First Chord — the bravest thing a musician does. Send My Regards — Marshall Allen served too. One hundred and one and still at his post.

David Peel

← All David Peel