Opinion | The Beatles of Vietnam – The New York Times
Yet normalcy proved elusive, as Tung Linh worried that he was constantly under police surveillance. When he drove his Honda to the market or around town and had to pass through security checkpoints, the guards always asked him why, given his young age, he wasn’t in the army. Military officers began harassing Hoang Thi Nga because they suspected she had bought his release. Worried that the army might call for him again, his mother enlisted the help of some American and Canadian concert tour managers to organize a CBC Band world tour to get the band out of Vietnam. The promoters planned an 18-month tour, and the siblings figured they’d return home after it ended. Hoang Thi Nga cried when she said goodbye to her children.
While the band was on the road, Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. Bich Loan and the other band members were asleep in Tibet when it happened; when they woke up and heard the news, they cried. They took refuge in a monastery and tried to figure out what to do. Their mother was still in Saigon.
“We thought we’d just be on a world tour for a year or so,” Bich Loan said. “We didn’t think we’d never go back.”
They were afraid to go back. There was a picture of the band members in downtown Saigon wearing American clothing and T-shirts with the American flag emblazoned on them. The new government branded the band members criminals and placed them on a most-wanted list because they had worked with Americans. The Phan siblings would later learn that their mother burned all their tapes and pictures of them with American troops, fearing retribution by the new government. They had been rock stars, but now they were refugees. In October 1975, the CBC Band entered the United States, thanks in part to a Vietnam veteran named Frank Ford, who worked in refugee resettlement after the fall of Saigon.
Two or three years passed before band members could reach family in Vietnam. In the meantime, the band had hooked up with American and Canadian concert promoters and booked some shows. After a concert in Montreal, a friend helped them call Vietnam. Over the next two decades, band members became American citizens; sponsored relatives, including their mother, to relocate to the United States; and returned to Vietnam to perform. They still do, giving charity shows after which they donate all concert earnings to orphanages, nursing homes and other places that serve the poor. Young Vietnamese, for whom 1975 is a foreign world, are interested in the CBC Band and other singers and musicians from the era, Bich Loan said. It reflects a broader curiosity among the young about the history of South Vietnam, especially the people and the stories that the government has erased from official histories.
