Pat Helms
Long live Freewheelin' Franklin!!
Sr. Member
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Posts: 373
Loc: E. TENNESSEE
Often wrong.....never in doubt
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« on: April 07, 2009, 08:14:41 PM » |
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I'm sure most will agree that Sandy's version of this song is truly one of the great "deep tracks" within her catalog.
I love to perform it whenever I get the chance. "You just can't pull a Bruton Town on an audience out of nowhere," insists Chris - the David St. Hubbens to my Derek Smalls. He usually vetos me when I begin playing around with it between numbers. Most of the time, I admit, he's probably right.
Perhaps, he just gets bored with my long and numerous distorted guitar leads during the song - but I can't help it! Truly, its the English version of Down By the River. Loud, meandering, and admittedly amateurish solos are required.
Aren't you glad you live thousands of miles from Tennessee?
Anyway, that's not the point of the topic. Here it is:
The song makes sense through most of the story. Girl meets servant boy. Girl loses servant boy (due to slaughter by unsavory brothers,whose reasons might have even more bizarre connotations). Girl finds boy's body after strange dream. Everything is going great. Drama is continuing to build.........
Then, the song takes a Bergman twist. I don't really know happens at the end. The girl gets a cruel hunger. That sounds cool, but what does she do with the hunger? Does she eat her boyfriend? Understandable. After all, she was out there for three days!
Afterwards, she goes home to her brothers, calls them butchers and claims that they've not only killed her boyfriend, but have indeed killed her as well. Does this mean she's a ghost? Did she kill herself, return from the dead and is about to whip them, ala Tales From The Crypt (which would be real cool)? Or, is she just telling them that they have metaphorically killed her by breaking her heart (which would be fairly lame, IMO)?
I tend to favor an implication of her gorging herself to death in a cannibal feeding frenzy on her beloved corpse, then going home to open an ectoplasmic can of whoop-ass on her incest crazy siblings.
If I'm way off base though, please let me know. I sure don't want to be misrepresenting the song when we play it at the old folks home.
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