Jan Berry (1941-2004) was a member of Jan and Dean, a popular American duo who specialised in West Coast surf rock during the 1960s. Among their successful songs were Surf City, Dead Man’s Curve and The Little Old Lady from Pasadena. In late 1965 Berry penned The Universal Coward, an angry response to Donovan’s anti-war single Universal Soldier. He recorded and released it solo after his singing partner, Dean Torrence, refused to participate. The Universal Coward is a vitriolic attack on those who opposed the Vietnam War, describing them as “scroungers”, “twisted”, “fanatic” and “thick skulled”. It received little radio airplay and did not reach the charts.

He’s young, he’s old, he’s in-between
And he’s so very much confused
He’ll scrounge around and protest all day long
He joins the pickets at Berkeley
And he burns up his draft card
And he’s twisted into thinking that fighting is all wrong

He’s a pacifist, an extremist
A communist or just a Yank
A demonstrator, an agitator or just a nave
A conscientious objector
A fanatic, a defector
And he doesn’t know he’s digging his own grave

Oh he just can’t get it through his thick skull
Why the mighty USA
Has got to be a watchdog of the world
He’ll see the USSR
Will bury us from afar
And he’ll never see the missiles being hurled

He’s the universal coward
And he runs from anything
From a giant, from a human, from an elf
He runs from Uncle Sam
And he runs from Vietnam
But most of all he’s running from himself

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