Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

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Images from the war captured in the song include reading Playboy, seeing Bob Hope, listening to The Doors, smoking from a hash pipe, praying to Jesus, remembering "Charlie" and "Baker", the Company identifiers used in military units, and those in those Companies who "left their childhood / on every acre", many of whom died in the fighting. [1] [2] Joel has said that he "wasn't trying to make a comment on the war, but writing about the soldier as a person." [3] [4] According to Rolling Stone critic Stephen Holden, "As the song unfolds, Joel's 'we' becomes every American soldier, living and dead, who fought in Southeast Asia." [2]

LYDEN: These people are from another era. Do they still exert what you might call a romantic pull on us today? We all know how it ends. Guinn writes that final scene in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, the best I’ve ever seen it described. It is gruesome and heartless, born out of a real fear of these outlaws who had proven themselves to be as dangerous and unpredictable as trapped animals. 130 rounds were poured into that 1934 Cordoba Gray, 8 cylinder, deluxe sedan Ford with the greyhound radiator cap, which had been stolen in Topeka, Kansas, and forever now known as THE DEATH CAR. When the legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer walks up to the car and puts one final blast into Bonnie, a few expletives escaped my lips. I felt a flare of anger that attests to the difference between knowing people and just knowing they existed. Last night, I heard Bonnie’s screams in one of my nightmares, and the men who were there that day heard them for the rest of their lives. A snapshot of the couple found at an abandoned hide-out, with pistol-toting Bonnie smoking a cigar, was subsequently distributed to the press... It is no surprise that Clyde swore he’d never go to prison again, which changed the game. With the option of surrender eliminated from consideration, Clyde became a very dangerous man to try to apprehend. Many movies and TV shows have been made about American outlaw couple Bonnie and Clyde, but several never came to fruition, including the Go Down Togetherfilm. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met in 1930 and together with the "Barrow gang", carried out a series of armed robberies, notably banks, during the Great Depression. The Barrow gang's crimes were highly publicized in American newspapers, and in 1934, Parker and Barrow were gunned down and killed by a group of lawmen in Texas. Years later, their romance, notoriety, and dramatic deaths would prove to be irresistible to Hollywood.Jeff Guinn is the author of the new book, "Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde." He's with me from KERA in Dallas, and that's kind of appropriate because it's in Dallas, right, where the two of them grew up, met and fell in love? While Clyde hurts people, he was also hurt himself. In prison, he was repeatedly raped by a psychopathic man; he eventually kills the man, his only premediated murder. The terrible prison experience also confirms for Clyde that he would rather die than return to jail. One particularly gregarious witness, who claimed to have watched the whole thing from his farmhouse porch several hundred yards away, swore that two men shot down the patrolmen, and then the woman with them fired more shots into the fallen Murphy while her victim's head bounced off the ground like a rubber ball." - p 4 Shearer, B.F. (2007). Home Front Heroes: A Biographical Dictionary of Americans During Wartime, Volume 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. p.444. ISBN 9780313334221.

I have always been fascinated by the legend of Bonnie and Clyde. During the process of reading this book, I did get to watch that 1967 Bonnie and Clyde movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway…and that was absolutely ridiculous! Probably a more accurate and much better version would be the 2013 Bonnie and Clyde movie starring Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger. But in Go Down Together, author Jeff Guinn attempts to cut through all the “Hollywood Glamour” of the infamous crime couple, and deliver the true story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Later when the panel of doctors announced their insanity verdict, the agreeable Schrank, shaking hands and thanking each, informed them that while he disagreed with their diagnosis, he felt that they had done their best. Similarly, as he was being transferred to the state mental hospital, he thanked the sheriff and a jailer for their kindness adding, 'I hope I haven't caused you much trouble,' 'Not a bit,' the sheriff replied. 'You've been the best prisoner we have had here since I have been in office.' As an aficionado of crime fiction, I thought I would dip my toe into the non-fiction world of real life crime. Like many people, I had heard bits and pieces about various criminal celebrities of the 1930s, like Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, and Bonnie and Clyde. Part of my brain realized their real life stories were probably far from what has been depicted in the movies, TV, etc. so at the recommendation of a good friend who studies this era of crime, I chose to read this book about Bonnie and Clyde.

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Now they face a new war, between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess." - p 7 LYDEN: Jeff Guinn. He's the author of "Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde."