Paper Lace

[tpj1965]

"Billy Don't Be a Hero" is a 1974 anti-war pop song by Paper Lace and was also recorded by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. It was written by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander.

Because the song was released in 1974, it is often associated with the Vietnam War (although repeated reference in the lyrics to "the soldier blues" indicates Billy may have been a Union soldier in the American Civil War). A young woman is distraught that her fiancé chooses to leave the area with an Army contingent passing through the town, and go with them to fight. She laments,

"Billy, don't be a hero! Don't be a fool with your life!

"Billy, don't be a hero! Come back and make me your wife!"

And as he started to go, she said, "Billy,keep your head low!"

"Billy, don't be a hero! Come back to me!"

The song goes on to describe how Billy is killed in action in a pitched battle after volunteering to ride out and seek reinforcements. In the end, the woman throws away the regret letter notifying her of Billy's "heroic" death.

Paper Lace's version of "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" hit number one on the UK singles chart, and was released in the United States at the same time as Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods' interpretation. Whereas Paper Lace had the chart-topper in the UK, their version stalled at number ninety-six on the Billboard Hot 100 and Bo Donaldson went to number one.

Bo Donaldson - Billy Don't Be A Hero

Paper Lace then had a U.S. number-one later in the year with "The Night Chicago Died".

"The Night Chicago Died" is a song by the British group Paper Lace, written by Peter Robin Callander and Mitch Murray. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week in 1974 and also reached number 3 in the UK charts. Its subject matter is a fictional gang shootout in Chicago between gangsters tied to Al Capone and the Chicago Police. The narrator retells his mother's anguish in awaiting news of the fate of her husband, a Chicago policeman.

The song's opening is perplexing to anyone living in Chicago:

Daddy was a cop, on the east side of Chicago,

Back in the U.S.A., back in the bad ol' days..

Many believe that, although Chicago has a "North Side", a "South Side", and a "West Side" there is no "east side" of Chicago, and that the aforementioned cop must have patrolled Lake Michigan. In fact, "East Side", one of Chicago's 77 officially recognized neighborhoods, is a small, isolated enclave at the extreme southern end of Chicago along the border with Indiana. Its name derives from the fact that it is on the east bank of the Calumet River (by analogy to the North, South, and West sides, which reference their location with respect to the Chicago River and its two branches). Unlike the North, West, and South Sides, which divide the city into three general (and well known) areas, the East Side is a local Chicago neighborhood like "Rogers Park" or "Lawndale". However, it is near where Al Capone lived (his address was 7244 South Prairie Street). So it is likely that a cop could have become involved in large-scale gangland warfare since the chief of police lived on the exact same block.

The group may have been referring to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre Among other discrepancies between the song and the real-life events on which it was loosely based, the gangsters did not "Surrender up or die"; rather, Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and for having weapons in his apartment. Many of the discrepancies can be attributed to the fact that the songwriters do not hail from Chicago, but from England, and admitted in interviews - most notably on Beat Club shortly after the song's release - that they had never even been to the city itself, and that their sole knowledge of the city and that period of its history had been based on gangster films. When Paper Lace sent this song to Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, he was not impressed, shunning the fictionalized story, saying that the group was nuts.

[Redneck4sure]

When Paper Lace sent this song to Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, he was not impressed, shunning the fictionalized story, saying that the group was nuts.

But they had a hit song and somebody made money from it. That's all that really matters, isn't it?