We all (especially the “we” beyond the age of 60) know about “Easy Rider”,
the film starring Dennis Hopper and Robert Redford who, after selling a huge
amount of illegal drugs to some rich kid, take off on a road movie across
America, circa 1969. Most of the songs that decorate the soundtrack are
well known and many of them are identified with The Band (Take a Load of
Fanny, or “The Weight,” for example). At the end of the film both Hopper
and Redford get blown away by your generic Red Neck rifle-toting
pickup-driving All American villain (who in fact was getting his arms, legs
and balls blown away in Viet Nam while Hopper and Redford were enjoying the
fruits of their ill-gotten gains and giving the finger to the aforementioned
Rednecks, but I digress). So, the question is, at the end of the film
there is an arial shot of the blown-away heros and a song about “Flow river
flow, let your waters wash down, take me from this road…to some other
town”. Can you point me in the direction of who sang the song and where I
can get a copy of it?
John (University of Chicago, class of '68)
Roger McGuinn - Ballad Of Easy Rider
Lyrics
CMC +fnord!
BTW it ain’t Robert Redford it’s Peter Fonda
Ask, and you shall receive: http://www.findlyrics.com/byrds/ballad_of_easy_rider
While I think the song would be improved by the lyric you provided, it’s “Take a load off Fanny”, not “Load of Fanny” 
In fact my “lyric” was a typo…I meant to type “off”…for many years I thought they were singing “Annie” not “Fannie” until someone clued me in.
It turns out my memory of all that was pretty defective…it wasn’t The Band on the soundtrack but another group that sounds like them. Also it wasn’t Robert Redford, it was Peter Fonda who played Dennis Hopper’s partner.
Thanks for the link, but unfortuntely I’m logged onto a .br domain (brazil), and I can’t download from the USA to Brazil without running afoul of the LAW.
I would be very much obliged if you could attach the song to an email and send it to me at jweiner@ifsc.usp.br. If not, no problem. For some strange reason that song has always resonated with me…maybe because I’ve spent a lot of my life going to “some other town.”
also, they sold the drugs in the middle of their cross-country trip, and they were shot with a shotgun IIRC rather than a rifle but I could be wrong.
Easy Rider - End Sequence
Edited to add:
Roger McGuinn The Ballad Of Easy Rider
Thanks for this–I always thought it was “take a load off Annie”.
“Get back to Miss (F)anny”, “stay and keep Anna Lee company”
Just to be completely clear, The Band’s version of “The Weight” was used in the film soundtrack, but Capitol declined to license it for the soundtrack album that was released after the film became a hit, so Dunhill, the label that released the soundtrack, had a band called Smith, under contract to Dunhill, record a soundalike cover version for the album.
Since this is essentially about a movie and songs, let’s visit Cafe Society.
samclem GQ moderator
It really is Fanny…when the Band sings it anyway, you can hear it on the “Get back to Miss Fanny…you know she’s the only one” lyric.
I wsh it were Annie because I was once in love with an Annie that I wanted to get back to, but she had other ideas.
My daughter Nathalie was always convinced they were singing her name instead of Anna Lee!
Thanks for clearing this up for me. I guess it was pretty stupid of me to think that the soundtrack album would actually have the soundtrack on it!
I don’t know about the gun, but they did sell the cocaine before going on the road. That was how they financed the journey. And it was Phil Spector they sold it to. Who was not a kid, and was effectively playing himself. (Although the credits list him as “The Connection.”)
JoshWeiner writes:
> We all (especially the “we” beyond the age of 60) know about “Easy Rider”,
> the film starring Dennis Hopper and Robert Redford who, after selling a huge
> amount of illegal drugs to some rich kid, take off on a road movie across
> America, circa 1969. Most of the songs that decorate the soundtrack are
> well known and many of them are identified with The Band (Take a Load of
> Fanny, or “The Weight,” for example). At the end of the film both Hopper
> and Redford get blown away by your generic Red Neck rifle-toting
> pickup-driving All American villain (who in fact was getting his arms, legs
> and balls blown away in Viet Nam while Hopper and Redford were enjoying the
> fruits of their ill-gotten gains and giving the finger to the aforementioned
> Rednecks, but I digress).
You’re just making wild guesses in your attempts to put the movie into context. Were the sort of “rednecks” (note: your term, not mine) of whom the guy who shot Hopper and Fonda was supposed to be typical more likely to have fought in Vietnam than the sort of people that Hopper and Fonda were supposed to be typical of? It’s hard to say. Yes, the poorer one was the more likely that one would be fighting in Vietnam. It’s not clear though who was poorer in this case. Hopper and Fonda’s characters were bikers, not (apparently) rich kids. And they weren’t kids. Fonda was 29 as the movie was released and Hopper was 33. (If you’re just going to make up context, why not conjecture that they were both veterans who had been in Vietnam a few years before?) Bikers didn’t tend to be well-off. The two characters might well be working-class guys who decided that selling drugs was more interesting than working in a factory. Furthermore, a pick-up costs more than a motorcycle. The “redneck” might be more well-off than the Hopper and Fonda characters.
FWIW, the best version of “Ballad of Easy Rider” is the sublime cover by Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny singing. It was recorded during the Leige and Leif sessions in 1969, but not released at the time.