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"A Musician, Not a Killer"
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2009-09-30 12:05:32
Every artist knows that success depends on a lot of luck. I remember enrolling in a writing workshop where one of the well-
connected instructors attended the student readings in search of new talent. I spent at least a day selecting and rehearsing my
piece and several hours sitting through the other readings, waiting my turn. One sentence into my reading, Mr. Big got a call
on his cell phone. He left the room and returned just after I finished. Ouch! But my bad luck was nothing compared to Dean
Ellis Kohler, an aspiring rock guitarist and songwriter who in 1966 received a recording contract from a division of Capitol
Records and several days later, his draft notice. Coming from a military family in Norfolk, Virginia, he chose not to resist.
After a year of training as a military policeman, he found himself in Qui Nhon, Vietnam without ever understanding why
U.S. forces were engaged in what appeared to be a Vietnamese civil war. In his absence, the recording company rescinded
the contract. As a MP assigned to guard Viet Cong prisoners in a field hospital, he began to sing a capella to the wounded
Americans in the same hospital. One soldier, dying of gangrene, said to him, “You a musician, not a killer.” Soon afterward,
Kohler’s commanding officer asked him to start a band to play for the war-weary soldiers. Written with freelance author and
music journalist Susan VanHecke, Kohler’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Soldier (HarperCollins, 2009) describes his year in Vietnam and
the band he formed there to help him and his fellow soldiers to survive. Kohler and VanHecke offer a moving story of an
artist’s passion and resilience and how art can bring people together and affirm their humanity in the most difficult of
circumstances. Last week, I interviewed Susan VanHecke about Rock ‘N’ Roll Soldier and her role in the book: How did the
idea emerge for Rock ‘N’ Roll Soldier, and how did you get involved with the project? Several years ago, I interviewed
Dean Kohler for a newspaper article I was writing on Virginia garage rock bands. Dean was a teen guitar prodigy in the
early '60s, having formed a couple of regionally popular rock bands before being sent to Vietnam. He happened to mention
that he'd put a touring rock band together as an MP in Nam and that they'd even managed to record a single in the war zone.
I wondered how that could have been possible. When he told me the full story — about improvising band equipment from
bamboo canes and ammo crates, about trekking through VC ambushes to play for combat-weary soldiers, about how troops
relied on music to keep them sane during the insanity of war — I knew it would make a great book. Jn the book, Kohler talks
about his relationship with his Vietnamese girlfriend. How did that relationship come about, and what were the challenges
of navigating a cross-cultural relationship during wartime? Lynda was in the audience at one of the band's very first gigs at
MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) in Qui Nhon. She was a guest of one of the officers. Lynda, who was
fluent in English, sent a note up to the stage asking Dean to visit her at Lyndabar, the "steakhouse" she owned. You can
guess what else was on the menu there. Dean and Lynda's relationship was fascinating to me because of what each meant to
the other. For Dean, who'd left behind a long-term high school sweetheart in suburban Virginia, Lynda was something of a
surrogate, an exotic replacement. Yet, because you could never be totally sure just who was the enemy and who wasn't in
Vietnam, Dean could never fully trust Lynda, which made their relationship all the more dangerous, exciting, and,
ultimately, disposable to him. For Lynda, Dean represented safety and security. He was an Army MP who kept law and order
in town; it was good for her business to have an armed MP stopping by often. And Dean was quite possibly her ticket out of
the impoverished conditions of war-torn Vietnam, if she could get him to marry her and take her back to the U.S. The closer,
emotionally, Lynda tried to get to him, though, the farther Dean, the war-hardened soldier, pushed her away. Kohler had
landed a record deal just before his draft notice arrived. How did serving in Vietnam and his experiences there change the
course of his musical career? Dean was only a year out of high school when he landed the record deal and his draft notice
the same week. At that time, he was leaning toward a career in music, though his father, a career Navy officer, was
constantly after him to get a "real job," like the military. In Vietnam, Dean did a lot of questioning of himself, but his
experiences there proved to him what, down deep, he already knew — he was a musician through and through. A chance
encounter with rock artist Graham Nash, who penned the book's foreword for us, upon Dean's return cemented his decision.
Dean recorded a single as a solo artist, then led a series of regionally successful bands. Dean's still deeply involved in music
with his creative services company and mobile disc jockey business. What messages for young people do you two hope to
with SUSAN VANHECKE
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send with this book? There are many messages in ~aRock 'N'
Roll Soldier, the most important being stay true to yourself. In the war zone, while shooting and being shot at because it was
his duty to do so, Dean had to come to terms with his true identity. He had to sort out for himself that he was a musician at
heart — even if the Army, his father, and the rest of the World told him otherwise. I would hope readers would also be
inspired by what Graham Nash calls "the transcendent power of music." Armed with their music as well as their rifles, Dean
and his band brought much-needed comfort, camaraderie, and escape to battle-tired troops — one show at a time.
