Narrative: when I was in the Army I was stationed at Ft Ord California, and a friend of mine named Lewis Rambo, that was really his name, was working on his Doctorate in Theology at University of California Berkley and he asked me to meet him at this church in San Francisco called the Glide Memorial Methodist Church in the Tenderloin district. And after church we came out and I had on my uniform cause you could get on the bus a lot cheaper if you had your uniform on and when we got outta church there was a guy standing on the corner and he had on his dress green jacket with his fatigue pants, had long hair I could tell he’d been outta of the army for a while but I went up and to him and said hey where’s your fatigue jacket was and he said oh, that went in my arm about a week ago. So we decided to take him to lunch and while we were at lunch he said Lt. can I ask you something, and I said sure, he said when I got home where was the band. I had a band when I left, but when I came home they didn’t have no band. It took me thirty-five years to write this song and I’d like to dedicate it to that unknown soldier in San Francisco.

Oh, it played a sweet song when they went to war
Like their fathers and their fathers before
Destined for some distant shore
They marched off to the band

Drummers drummed flags were waved
Shiny silver piccolos played
Boarding ships in the home of the brave
They marched off to the band

Standing tall looking good
We ought to be in Hollywood
To strike a blow for the common good
They marched off to the band

Then they learned the truth of war
The screams the stench the sweat the horror
Much more than they’d bargained for
And forgot about the band

The sound of music soon replaced
By machine gun chatter and smoke in the face
Surely hell’s a better place
I think they got a band

Suck em up shoulders square
No one said war was fair
So they slowly sank in deep despair
When they came home to no band

What’s your problem you didn’t die
Soldiers aren’t supposed to cry
Then we wondered why they all got high
When they came home to no band

Oh, they linger now in a nursing home
Or on the streets or ‘neath sandy loam
Wondering you know when I came home
Where was the band