Previously: Which girl is most like a child?
Related: All the words.
Some men are born on the road. Some men die there. Some men cannot be held down, for they will melt through your fingers and reassemble several yards away. These men are powerful witches and should be humored at all costs.
Song: “Take It Easy,” The Eagles
How much of a wanderer is he? “Well, I’m running down the road trying to loosen my load/ got a world of trouble on my mind.”
Who’s trying to hold him back? Six, possibly seven women. “Four that wanna own me/ Two that wanna stone me/ One says she’s a friend of mine.” It remains to be seen whether the woman who claims to be a friend can be trusted. Not sure if I like the sound of the girl in the flatbed Ford, either.
Overall freedom quotient: Like Atlas, he carries the burden of the earth entire with him wherever he goes. Seven — the same number as the lamps lit in the book of Revelation — harpies of the Cities of the Plain pursue him. He must get free or die.
Song: “Freebird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd
How much of a wanderer is he? “For I must be travelin’ on now/ There’s too many places I got to see/ If I stay here with you girl/ Things just couldn’t be the same/ ‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now/ And this bird you cannot change.”
Who’s trying to hold him back? His girl. “Bye and bye baby, it’s been sweet love, yeah yeah/ Though this feelin’ I can’t change/ Please don’t take it so badly.”
Overall freedom quotient: This man is so free he has become a bird, the most unnatural of all the animals. He can never change back to his human form; he cannot change. He is simultaneously free (soaring through the air) and unfree (in his bird-body prison).
Song: “Goodbye Stranger,” Supertramp
How much of a wanderer is he? “Like a king without a castle/ Like a queen without a throne/ I’m an early morning lover/ And I must be moving on.”
Who’s trying to hold him back? A stranger — “Goodbye stranger, it’s been nice/ Hope you find your paradise/ Tried to see your point of view/ Hope your dreams will all come true” — and also possibly Mary and Jane.
Overall freedom quotient: Deeply and profoundly free. As free as a ship; as free as a ransomed slave. He can say goodbye to anyone and wish them well, for they cannot hold him back, whether they will or no. Everyone is a stranger to him, for he has no home.
Song: “I Got A Name,” Jim Croce
How much of a wanderer is he? “Moving me down the highway, rolling me down the highway/ Moving ahead so life won’t pass me by.”
Who’s trying to hold him back? THEY (damn them!), always THEY. “They can change their minds but the can’t change me/ I got a dream, I got a dream.”
Overall freedom quotient: Terribly free. His only possessions are a name and a dream; he can outrun life itself on the open road. Who moves him? He moves him.
Song: “I’m Free,” The Who
How much of a wanderer is he? “I’m free/ I’m free/ And freedom tastes of reality.”
Who’s trying to hold him back? Everyone, but mostly you. “If I told you what it takes/ To reach the highest high/ You’d laugh and say ‘nothing’s that simple.’”
Overall freedom quotient: The man can taste freedom. Taste it! With his mouth!
Song: “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” Bob Seger
How much of a wanderer is he? “Cause I was born lonely down by the riverside/ Learned to spin fortune wheel and throw dice/ And I was just thirteen when I had to leave home/ Knew I couldn’t stick around, had to roam.”
Who’s trying to hold him back? “I got to keep movin’, never gonna slow down/ You can have your funky world, see ya ’round.” Like a shark, Bob Seger must stay in continual motion, lest he sink to the bottom of the sea and drown.
Overall freedom quotient: He is so free that he will die without freedom; he cannot live otherwise. He spins wheels and flings dice into rivers like some horrible amalgam of Tom Bombadil and Kenny Rogers’ Gambler.
Winner: Supertramp. Even the name is nomadic. His only home is the road; the road is his home. No woman — be she stranger, Jane, or Mary, who are the only kinds of woman that there are — can change him or hold him back. She can buy him castles, and he will not be moved. Other men are free, but he is the freest of them all. Freer even than the birds. Wave to him as he passes you by, for he will not stop to talk.
Tags: dudes love their freedom, footloosery, music, nicole’s favorite song is ‘take it easy’, on the road, the eagles
How about the rock and roll man in Joni Mitchell’s “The Blonde in the Bleachers”? “Feeling it hot and cold / You’re in rock ‘n’ roll / It’s the nature of the race / It’s the unknown child so sweet and wild
/ It’s youth, it’s too good to waste”
You can’t hold the hand of a rock and roll man for very long, after all.
Or Joni herself, in “Cactus Tree.”
True! I would also put in Laura Marling’s “I Was an Eagle” for lady singer who loves her freedom.
Nelly Furtado – “I’m Like A Bird”
Hmm, I wonder if this guy ended up in “Free Man in Paris,” stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song? Those telephone screamers must get awfully tiresome after a while.
Clean white linen and fancy french champagne have also conspired to keep Joni trammelled.
Although actually she finds roaming itself to be the prison, and wishes to be free to go back to California, so it’s sort of the reverse
“Reader, I married him.”
Also,
Here I go (AGAIN!) on my own.
Going down the only road I’ve ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
He was born unto this lonely road, and has been walking on it since infancy. Not drifter, yet in many ways akin to drifters.
“(in his bird-body prison)” is the fate I wish upon all those responsible for unleashing that hell song on the world. AND FUCK YOUR CONFEDERATE FLAGS TOO.
“Who’s trying to hold him back? Everyone, but mostly you.”
I KNEW IT.
like some horrible amalgam of Tom Bombadil and Kenny Loggins’ Gambler.
ahhhhiiiiii love you Mallory
*Kenny Rogers*
I’m so sorry. It had to be said before my friend would stop glaring at me. I do really like it!
THANK YOU
I was born in the backseat of a Greyhound bus/ rolling down highway 81 ( roaming at the moment of birth! Fated to roam forever.)
See also Gentle on My Mind , The Last Thing on my Mind, By the Time I Get to Phoenix…many many rambling men who must live free or die.
Damn it, Mallory. I think you’ve just sent me spiraling back into a Jim Croce addiction.
But also, thank you, this was several different types of glorious. Also, also: there exists, somewhere in this marvelous world, a video tape of my stern and oh-so-militaryish father standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizon singing about a girl (my lord!) in a flatbed Ford who slowed down to take a look at him. I was born a few years too late to witness this, but I would give anything to find that recording.
I’m partial to Swans’ “Eden Prison”, in which the protagonist is free of (a) the greasy ochre walls of Eden Prison and (b) the choking hold that began in Eden Prison. I’m not entirely sure what Eden Prison is supposed to be, but it’s probably a Freudian thing
I'm partial to Swans' "Eden Prison", in which the protagonist is free of (a) the greasy ochre walls of Eden Prison and (b) the choking hold that began in Eden Prison. I'm not entirely sure what Eden Prison is supposed to be, but it's probably a Freudian thing
Hmm, I wonder if this guy ended up in "Free Man in Paris," stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song? Those telephone screamers must get awfully tiresome after a while.
Baby, baby, I don’t wanna leave you,
I ain’t jokin’ woman, I got to ramble.
Oh, yeah, baby, baby, I believin’,
We really got to ramble.
I can hear it callin’ me the way it used to do,
I can hear it callin’ me back home!
Led Zeppelin had at least two of these!
Clean white linen and fancy french champagne have also conspired to keep Joni trammelled.
Although actually she finds roaming itself to be the prison, and wishes to be free to go back to California, so it's sort of the reverse
Hank Williams loves you baby, but you gotta understand, when the Lord made Hank, he made a ramblin’ man
Hank Williams loves you baby, but you gotta understand, when the Lord made Hank, he made a ramblin' man
But I’ll take my time anywhere
Free to speak my mind anywhere
And I’ll redefine anywhere
Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home
(Metallica!)
But I'll take my time anywhere
Free to speak my mind anywhere
And I'll redefine anywhere
Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home
(Metallica!)