“The Fightin’ Side of Me”
Merle Haggard
Written by Merle Haggard
Billboard
#1 (3 weeks)
March 14 – March 28, 1970
Music can illuminate in a way that simple words cannot.
“The Fightin’ Side of Me” captures a distinctive point of view about the protests surrounding the Vietnam War, forged by a set of lived experiences far different from mine but identical to those of my father.
He was a navy veteran who enlisted voluntarily, but he came up in an era where young kids without options like higher education would be drafted to serve in the military during active wartime. That generation gap was a chasm back when we would argue about politics.
It’s funny how time can heal a generation gap. My father’s long gone, yet when “The Fightin’ Side of Me” plays, he’s here with me again. Haggard’s ability to give voice to a largely silenced population was without peer, and I’m so deeply grateful to him that he made a record that makes me want to argue with my dad just one more time.
“The Fightin’ Side of Me” gets an A.
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This is not one of my favorite Haggard songs but it’s still worthy of the “A” grade. Such a great songwriter.
There are instances where I can get behind a geopolitical sentiment I don’t agree with if it’s cleverly or persuasively articulated. This is not one of them. I have a hard time fully embracing Merle Haggard because of his hippie-baiting era, pandering to the sentiments that turned the streets of Chicago into a police state in 1968 and got four protestors killed at Kent State. For Haggard to retroactively tease decades later that he was playing some sort of ironic character doesn’t sweeten the deal. If anything, it makes it worse.
While I can understand the sentiment of “giving voice to a largely silenced population” even if I oppose it in the abstract, “if you don’t love it, leave it” strikes me as about as useful as saying the N-word in shaping the national discourse or in respecting the nation’s history. Also, shaming penniless draftees for not wanting to go to Vietnam to be killed was not only quite indefensible by the time 1970 came around, the sentiment has really, really not aged well knowing how that whole thing turned out.
Grade: F
It’s a typo for the next entry it’s jack blanchard and Misty Morgan sorry for pointing it out,thanks for your hard work.
Haggard had a way with words that allowed in to succinctly encapsulate thoughts that politicians can expend large amounts of bloviating about. Not his greatest song but still worth a B+.
Vietnam was not one of nations brightest moments and the really unfair thing about it was that much of the blame fell on Nixon who spent much of his time trying to honorably end a war he inherited from Kennedy and Johnson. The end result, with the USA abandoning its allies to the savage butchery of the North Vietnamese, is a truly shameful episode in American history.
Haggard was a pretty complicated individual who spoke fearlessly on a wide variety of topic including inter-racial romance (“Irma Jackson”) and the plight of agricultural workers (“They’re Tearing The Labor Camps Down”). Haggard had nothing to do with the Kent State tragedy and to even hint at it is pretty irresponsible
He sang it ! Like he saw ! What’s that saying ? The Truth Hurts ! No one ever told it Like Mighty Merle !!! Mike Ray
The challenge of a song as polarizing as “The Fighting Side of Me” is how to approach its legacy. Is the song best criticised as a stand alone piece of art to be engaged with anew on its own terms and merits at every listen? Does it make more sense to consider the song only in its socio-historical context? Or is the artist’s career the lens through which we can most accurately evaluate the song?
The song is inescapably defiant, belligerent, and proud. It is intimidating in its clarity and confidence. That the song is so well written has to be both a point of pride for its backers and a major irritant to its most strident critics, sort of like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue.”
Like any message song, “The Fighting Side of Me” is easy enough to either love or leave. Haggard’s Capitol producer Ken Nelson apparently pushed Haggard to choose to release “The Fighting Side of Me” over “Irma Jackson.”
The significance of this song is that it provides a clear marker on Haggard’s road towards personal evolution and change.It’s a permanent pin on the map of his life, but so are later compositions like 2005′”Where’s All the Freedom” or 2003 “That’s the News.”
It’s the willingness to contradict himself that made Haggard such a compelling and compelling artist.
This song is a necessary part of that conversation.
…this is a very controversial work of art, particularly put into context with the times in which it was created and released. however, above all of merle haggards undeniably great qualities stands that he is the greatest chronist of contemporary american history in his field. throughout his career he was able to pick up the heartbeat of america and put it into his songs.
like mr. saros points out, the outcome could be quite contradicting at times – but so where the times. perhaps, haggard should never have attempted to relativize some of his more controversial material and rather leave it at what it was: inspired by the prevailing times and how he felt there and then.
Some people won’t like to hear it, but it’s not hard to draw a clear line between Merle Haggard and Toby Keith. While Haggard is unmistakably the superior artist (which is arguably true for any artist being compared to Haggard), both were artists that took defiantly patriotic stances that became a big part of their persona, even though their actual beliefs are likely far more complex. Additionally, Toby Keith talked extensively about how much of an influence Haggard was for him and his true fandom was on display when Keith took over for an ill Haggard one show. Merle asked him how many songs of his he knew, and Tony replied “all of them”, which wasn’t far from the truth. All this to say, while I do find Keith’s later jingoism to be in contradiction with my beliefs, I feel the same way with The Fighting Side of Me as I do with Courtesy of the Red White and Blue. Songs that in the context of events portray a justifiable anger and defiance that I can’t help but be sympathetic to. I understand why some don’t like this song, but I also understand and subscribe to the appeal.
I think the distinction for me is that Toby’s hit(s) from the War on Terror era tended to be “one man’s opinion” on geopolitical affairs rather than a hostile, otherizing polemic with a wrath entirely directed at people who disagreed with him as Merle’s two most controversial singles were.
70’s Merle is my favorite period of his music especially 70-77 even though I very much love his work in all decades . Looking forward to his songs being reviewed for this feature.
Bonus Beats:
Someone else in this comment section brought up the similarities between Merle Haggard and Toby Keith, so it’s only appropriate that Merle and Toby performed “The Fightin’ Side of Me” together on CMT’s “Outlaws” special in 2005. Here’s that performance:
https://youtu.be/2VJkypo8jcY
And here’s the version that Vince Gill and Paul Franklin recorded for their 2013 album “Bakersfield,” an album of covers of Bakersfield Sound classics:
https://youtu.be/7K0FmPvmNrc
I find expressing patriotism one of the most difficult and dangerous topics to explore in country music. The “Goldilocks Factor’s is always at play. Messages and tones are either too hard or too soft. Either extreme is an uncomfortable position to hold for people who disagree with a song’s premise. Creating a song that is “just right” is a hard slot to find, much less to meaningfully maintain given the inherent dynamic tension of the topic.
This comments section is proof of that.
Waylon Jennings did it best with “America,” IMO.
I agree, Kevin.
That was a good one. More recently, I’ll go to bat for Dierks Bentley’s “Home”.
Jennings’ “America” is a great example of patriotism well expressed!