Protest songs in the United States Tom Paxton ("Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation" - about the escalation of the war in Vietnam, "Jimmy Newman" – the story of a dying soldier, and "My Son John" – about a soldier who returns from war unable to describe what he's been through), among others. The first protest song to reach number one in the United States was P.F. Sloan's "Eve Of Destruction", performed by Barry McGuire in 1965. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s often used Negro spirituals as a source of protest, changing the religious lyrics to suit the political mood of the time.
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War (1942–1970). Hendrix had a huge following among the youth culture exploring itself through drugs and experiencing itself through rock music. He was not an official protestor of the war; one of Hendrix's biographers contends that Hendrix, being a former soldier, sympathized with the anticommunist view. He did, however, protest the violence that took place in the Vietnam War. With the song "Machine Gun", dedicated to those fighting in Vietnam, this protest of violence is manifest. David Henderson, author of "'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky", describes the song as "scary funk ... his sound over the drone shifts from