“Billy Don’t Be a Hero” (Paper Lace/Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods)

Today’s classic song of the day is “Billy Don’t Be a Hero.” It was a hit first for the group Paper Lace in the UK, then by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods in the U.S.

“Billy Don’t Be a Hero” was written and produced by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander. These Brits were responsible, either together or separately, for hits for Gerry and the Pacemakers (“How Do You Do It” and “I Like It”), Freddie and the Dreamers (“You Were Made for Me” and “I’m Telling You Now”), Georgie Fame (“The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde”), Vanity Fare (“Hitchin’ a Ride“), and Wayne Newton (“Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast”). They also wrote another song for Paper Lace, 1974’s “The Night Chicago Died.”

The song “Billy Don’t Be a Hero,” written during the Vietnam War era, was about a young women begging her fiancé, who just enlisted in the Army, to not be a hero and come home to her in one piece. Spoiler alert: Billy was a hero and died in action, as detailed in the final verse:

I heard his fiancé got a letter
That told how Billy died that day
The letter said that he was a hero
She should be proud he died that way
I heard she threw that letter away

The British group Paper Lace was the first to record “Billy Don’t Be a Hero.” Their version, released in April of 1974 on the Mercury label, went to #1 in the UK, Ireland, and Canada, but barely broke into the Hot 100 here in the States. (It peaked at just #96.)

The American group Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods recorded “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” shortly after Paper Lace did and released their version in the U.S. almost simultaneously, thus blocking the British group from the American charts. That enabled Bo Donaldson’s version of the song to go all the way to #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100 charts.

Despite the song’s chart-topping performance, “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” was strongly disliked by many who felt that it trivialized the experience of soldiers during wartime. Many also thought that it was overly sappy and unnecessarily upbeat, musically, given the lyrical content. It’s hard to disagree with that, although the song’s final line is its redeeming feature.

Interestingly, despite its connection to the Vietnam War, the song was actually written about a soldier during the American Civil War. You can hear it in the lyrics that talk about “soldier blues” (as in the blue uniforms of the Union army) and “I need a volunteer to ride up” (presumably on a horse). Then there’s the photo on the Paper Lace single release, which shows the band wearing Union uniforms. Bet you didn’t get that back then, did you?