In the United States, Stan Ridgway is still best known for Mexican Radio – the breakthrough track from his first band Wall of Voodoo, released in 1982. It is often a surprise to Americans that he has solo hits in other territories that eclipses it in popularity.
An interviewer for a well-known American music website asked Ridgway whether his audience expected all his tracks to be manic and zany like Mexican Radio. Ridgway’s reply was, “Well, to some, it’s a one-hit wonder. To others, it’s just part of the catalogue of songs. To the great wide open American world public, Mexican Radio is known in America; when I go to Europe, it was never anything there. The song over there is Camouflage.”
The surprised journalist utters, “Really?” to which Ridgway responds, “Yeah, that was a Top 5 hit for like several months in 1986 in Europe.” The journalist honestly responds, “I didn’t know that.”
If any of you didn’t know it either, now you do. Camouflage was Stan Ridgway’s biggest ever hit in Europe, taken from his debut album The Big Heat (released in May 1986).
In defence of the journalist, he was most likely a casual fan, or possibly a Wall of Voodoo fan. Things like what is or isn’t a hit in other parts of the world are easy to miss out on if you’re just happy to enjoy the music whenever it comes your way. Those paying closer attention would have seen the numerous mentions the song has gotten in interviews, the introductions the song has been given across many live albums and recordings, and the several articles and write-ups dedicated to that song in particular. While it might not have been an American hit, those who look will see signs that the song made some solid waves elsewhere.
Ridgway has always been seen as a storyteller and a describer of characters. His music is extremely evocative and almost soundtrack-like, which isn’t by accident. His professional music career started when he formed a soundtrack company called Acme Soundtracks in the 1970s, with an office on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. “I was way past insane at this point, actually,” Ridgway told the Stuck In the 80s podcast in 2006. “I had a desk in there, and a phone, a blackboard, and a filing cabinet – with nothing much in it, actually. But my idea was that I would start a science fiction low-budget soundtrack company, that would supply cheap soundtracks for cheap films. […] To make a long story short, eventually Acme Soundtracks turned into the group Wall of Voodoo.”
Ridgway left Wall of Voodoo in 1983, planning to carve out his own particular musical direction. Ridgway signed to Myles Copeland’s I.R.S. Records for three solo albums. Ever the entrepreneur, rather than renting a studio to record in he spent most of his advance buying recording equipment so he could set up his own home studio. This would inform the musical style on the first album The Big Heat in particular.
“We thought at some point it would just be better to purchase our own equipment,” Ridgway said in a 1986 TV interview with Much Music, “and consequently each project we’d do would probably be cheaper. It’s worked out well. It was a good way to go at that point. It didn’t seem to make a lot more sense to make some kind of a place to do this stuff in, no matter how simple or spartan it would be. It would at least provide more creative time to go over things and stuff.”
Ridgway was originally a guitarist, taking lessons from David Lindley at an early age. Towards the late 1970s, though, the mysterious lure of new technology and the opportunities that it offered took focus. “I was still playing guitar,” Ridgway says, “but I kind of had abandoned it for a while because I became overeducated. I crudely started to stab at the keyboard in what I considered to be my ‘keyboard claw’ method, which is really just two fingers on each hand. And out came this sound that inspired a lot of Wall of Voodoo and my early solo stuff.”
Ridgway was still experimenting with rhythm boxes, synthesizers, and ambient layers as he recorded his debut album The Big Heat. The fact that he was in control of his own recording equipment/environment was advantageous from a cost and creative control perspective, but it also meant things took longer. “It was not advantageous in every way,” Ridgway told Much Music in 1986 about the recording process, “because when you have a whole bunch of time, you actually postpone a lot of decisions that you might naturally make if the clock was running and you were burning up money. So making the record took some amount of time – a little bit longer than it normally would’ve, because we kept leaning back in our chairs, saying ‘we don’t have to decide on that now! We can just hang out!’ And, by the end of the day we had about 30 decisions that we hadn’t made as we went along.”
The songs that were taking shape came from a number of different places. Ridgway was listening to a lot of songs based on American folklore and had the desire to place a song within this tradition. More specifically, within the ‘grateful dead/grateful ghost’ tradition.
Camouflage is sung from the viewpoint of a young PFC (Private first class) of the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. On a search and destroy mission (“hunting Charlie down”) he becomes separated from his patrol. Alone in the jungle, he feels himself surrounded by the enemy and begins to fear for his life. Just then, a “big marine” comes to his rescue introducing himself as ‘Camouflage’.
The two fight together through the course of a night making their way back to base, during which the PFC notices that Camouflage is unaffected by bullets, swatting them away like flies, and is capable of superhuman feats (“he was pulling up a big palm tree right up out of the ground; and swatting those Charlies with it”). In the end, Camouflage leaves after leading the PFC to the edge of his camp.
I was a PFC on a search patrol, hunting Charlie down
It was in the jungle wars of ’65
My weapon jammed and I got stuck way out and all alone
and I could hear the enemy moving in close outside
Just then I heard a twig snap, and I grabbed my empty gun
and I dug in scared while I counted down my fate
And then a big marine, a giant with a pair of friendly eyes
appeared there at my shoulder and said, “Wait”
When he came in close beside me, he said: “Don’t worry son, I’m here
if Charlie wants to tangle, now he’ll have two to dodge
I said: “Well, thanks a lot”. I told him my name and asked him his.
And he said “The boys just call me Camouflage”
Woohoohoohoo Camouflage
Things are never quite the way they seem
Woohoohoohoo Camouflage
I was awfully glad to see this big marine
The imagery of the big marine reminds us of the opening of Johnny Cash’s A Thing Called Love (“six foot six he stood on the ground”) or Jimmy Dean’s Big Bad John (“he stood six-foot-six and weighed two-forty-five pounds”), placing the song within that tradition as well.
Ridgway did not serve in Vietnam, but got inspiration from a number of things that was happening at the time. In an interview with Sounds 2, he said “When I wrote the song there were many things happening in my life. We had just marched into Grenada and I was sort of wondering what was going on, and really I was just examining my own feelings about it all!”
Camouflage describes a life-and-death situation, but at the same time, as soon as the marine Camouflage shows up the sense of danger disappears. The story change into a mixture of a superhero tale or a heroic feat wildly exaggerated for the purpose of story retelling. What really happened becomes clear at the end of the song. As the soldier returns safely to base camp, the PFC is informed that Camouflage had been on his deathbed for the past week and died the previous night. Just before his death, he said “Semper Fi” and expressed his last wish, “to save a young marine”.
When he led me out the danger, I saw my camp and waved goodbye,
he just winked at me from the jungle and then was gone.
And when I got back to my H.Q. I told them about my night,
and the battle I’d spent with a big marine named Camouflage
When I said his name, a soldier gulped, and a medic took my arm
and led me to a green tent on the right
He said: “You may be telling true boy, but this here is Camouflage
And he’s been right here since he passed away last night
In fact he’s been here all week long
But before he went he said: “Semper Fi”, and said his only wish,
was to save a young marine caught in a barrage
So here, take his dogtag, son. I know he’d want you to have it now”
And we both said a prayer for a big marine named Camouflage
Woohoohoohoo Camouflage
Things are never quite the way they seem
Woohoohoohoo Camouflage
This was an awfully big marine
This development solidly places the song within the ‘Grateful Dead’ genre of ghost story. This may be a little confusing as a certain San Francisco psychedelic jam band also carries that name, but it might help to know that they took their name from this specific genre. Grateful Dead (or Grateful Ghost) is a folktale genre present in many cultures throughout the world.
The most common story in this genre involves a traveller who encounters a corpse of someone who never received a proper burial, typically stemming from an unpaid debt. The traveller then either pays off the dead person’s debt or pays for the burial. The traveller is later rewarded or has their life saved by a person or animal who is actually the soul of the dead person; the grateful dead is a form of the donor. The grateful dead spirit may take many different physical forms including that of a guardian angel, animal, or fellow traveller. The traveller’s encounter with the deceased typically comes near the end of the traveller’s journey.
Ridgway is not the only one who has written in this genre in popular music. A short time after the release of Camouflage, some music writers claimed that it was ripped off from a track by Tom Waits called Big Joe and Phantom 309. The song tells a very similar story but is not set in the Vietnam War, but interestingly, most of said scribes failed to notice that the relevant part in Waits song is, in part, a cover version. Phantom 309 was written by Tommy Faile and was first recorded by Red Sovine back in 1967. The story is about a hitchhiker making his way home from the west coast of America in the pouring rain when Big Joe, driving a tractor (the Phantom 309), offers him a lift to the nearest truck stop. He then disappears forever and then turns out, also, to be dead. Phantom 309 has a different setting, but tells a similar story, and could well have been an inspiration for Ridgway. There are many, many examples that could have provided the actual jump-off point, though.
Musically, Camouflage is written in the style of an old west/western ballad. The keyboards especially add a distinct spaghetti western flavour to the song at times, which suits it remarkably well and even somehow lends some weight to the folk story aspects of the song.
As for how Ridgway arrived at the song’s arrangement, he told Much Music in 1986 “It’s very intuitive. You just start with something and see what strikes your fancy, you know. And then, knowing that you’re recording on 24 tracks, or 16 tracks, or something… I always feel that anything there can always go away. You might start with something which inspires another sound, and later on you realize that you’d rather keep the one that was inspired by something and get rid of the one that started it. Because you think that one is more essential. So you build it up, and eventually you have something that you’re wrestling with. It’s hard for me to say how it happens.”
Having your own studio equipment and the ability to spend the needed time to tinker with sounds sound like a nice combination, but isn’t there a danger that you end up spending too long on even the simple solutions? “You need to have a lot of self-discipline,” Ridgway admits, “because I often end up saying ‘I can get back in here tomorrow and figure it out.’ You have to be a little bit obsessive about it. You naturally want to get it done, but there is also a side of me that is extremely lazy and just want to have it done now and get it over with. Writing a song is a lot like putting together a jig-saw puzzle. You see the picture. You know what you want. You just have to put these little pieces together, and sometimes that can be a bit tedious. You end up actually cheating sometimes – shaving a piece a bit, you know, and shoving it in there… just to get it done. But there’s many roads to the same place that you can get to.”
Ridgway’s wife Pietra Wexstun has been his musical collaborator and partner in crime throughout his career, playing keyboards and singing on most of his recordings as well as being the only ever-present member of his touring band. Stan also gives her credit for contributions in the ideas and songwriting department. “Pietra and I have been together since 1978 – actually before Wall of Voodoo,” Ridgway told NPR’s Director’s Cut in 2005. “I would say that we probably collaborate on everything. There is nothing that I do that I don’t talk with her about. We’re both musicians and we both enjoy playing music, so working together works out just fine.”
Camouflage was released as the fifth (!) single from The Big Heat in late summer 1986. None of the previous singles had done brisk business and releasing yet another one almost appeared like a ‘hail Mary’. If they had known if would turn into a touchdown they probably would have considered releasing it earlier, but perhaps the timing would then have been worse. The single didn’t do anything in the United States, but as we know from earlier in the text, it was a different story in Europe.
“I was lucky enough to have a song on that record that I didn’t even really know if I was going to include,” Ridgway revealed on the Stuck In the 80s podcast. “It was a song called Camouflage. And it really didn’t do much in the United States, but it took off like a rocket over in Europe. And I found myself touring most of the time that year and into the next, into the UK, Germany, Italy, and all over the European continent. Just marching along with this song called Camouflage, which I still play as well.”
“We just got back from Europe,” Ridgway told Much Music in 1986, “and Camouflage over there was in the top 10 in most markets. It was a really fun ride, that was fun to do. I can’t really explain it, I don’t know. I think that a lot of European countries now are interested very much in American things, or things from North America, because they have a lot of the English music now, and English aesthetic and sensibilities I think in some ways are becoming a little predictable for them, so they find American things to be novel once again.”
Amongst the chart placements it achieved, a bit hit all over Europe reaching number 17 in Austria, 11 in the Netherlands and Switzerland, eight in Germany, seven in Belgium, four in the UK and number two in both Poland and Ireland. It was not released as a single in every country – Norway did not get a single release, for instance, but it still became a radio hit here which helped push the album up to #11.
Who knows why Europe took to the song set in the Vietnam war to such an extent while America ignored it. The music certainly helped, with the ‘old west’ sound and evocative arrangement striking a chord. Could it be that the song was misunderstood by its own? Ridgway has had a few instances of needing to set the story straight as far as what it’s about, as he told Extra’s Adam Weissler in 2013: “Sometimes you make something and you want it to be looked at in a certain way. You ask yourself, ‘do they get it?’ There’s always gonna be some people that don’t; who might take it the wrong way. When I wrote Camouflage, I thought of it as an update on the vanishing hitchhiker story, but I put it in Vietnam with a ghost marine. We still play the song, but a lot of people thought I was a gun collector or something, and that I was reading the Art of War. I said, ‘no! It’s Americana, it’s a folk tale!’ But you know… if you got to tell somebody, then they might as well not even be asking, you know.”
Stan Ridgway is one of the most unique voices in the American landscape. Rolling Stone once described Ridgway to seem “as if he were passing street secrets out of the corner of his mouth.” Equal parts writer and composer, tough and gritty words and images meet complex rhythms and seductive melodies to create a singular listening experience. Over time, his music has become even more cinematic. “Over the past couple of years, I’ve been doing more scoring for film and TV and I think some of this has crept into the songs,” Ridgway told alliedchemical.com in 1999. “Dark and disturbing characters are very attractive to me, and they allow for a more dramatic approach with the music. I really enjoy the balance of doing both songs and film scoring. One side feeds the other. I look at these songs as small films for the imagination. For me, the atmosphere in a piece is everything.”
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