On July 25, 1966,
The Monkees recorded their first big hit,
Last Train to Clarksville. The song, written by Boyce & Hart (
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart), was recorded at
RCA Victor Studio B in
Hollywood on July 25, 1966, and was already on the
Boss Radio "Hit Bounds" playlist on August 17, 1966. The song topped the
Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending November 5, 1966. Lead vocals were performed by the Monkees' drummer,
Micky Dolenz.
Last Train to Clarksville was featured in seven episodes of the band's
television series, the most for any Monkees song.
The lyrics, were inspired by
Paperback Writer: Hart misheard the end of that song on the radio and thought
Paul McCartney
was singing "take the last train"; Hart then decided to use the line
himself, after he found out that McCartney was actually singing
"paperback writer."
The lyrics tell of a man phoning the woman whom he loves, urging her to
meet him at a train station in Clarksville before he must leave,
possibly forever. There is no explicit reference to war in the song, but
its last line, "And I don't know if I'm ever coming home," was an
indirect reference to a soldier leaving for the
Vietnam War. Hart has denied any connection by the song to the city of
Clarksville, Tennessee, near
Fort Campbell, home of the
101st Airborne Division
that was then serving in
Vietnam. According to Hart, "We were just
looking for a name that sounded good. There's a little town in northern
Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to
Oak Creek Canyon called
Clarkdale.
We were throwing out names, and when we got to
Clarkdale, we thought
Clarksville sounded even better. We didn't know it at the time, [but]
there is an Army base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee — which
would have fit the bill fine for the storyline. We couldn't be too
direct with the Monkees. We couldn't really make a protest song out of
it—we kind of snuck it in."
The
Vietnam War was a great inspiration for the arts of every kind, music, dance, sculpture, painting, photography, etc., with music leading the charge; check the .
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