I don’t have the album, but Wikipedia backs me up.
In any event, let’s just agree that the Live in Edmonton version is one of the greatest pieces of symphonic rock ever recorded.
Back when I was listening on a crummy record player (and before liner notes with lyrics) I misheard the words and thought “rooty toot toot” was some kind of rhyming cockney slang referring to the singer’s wife’s bum (“Her rooty toot toot is tattooed too”).
And, as with just about every Who story, there’s another explanation (from the book in Sell Out SDE): “The “rooty toot toot” refrain in the last verse was inspired by the nonsense verbiage often sung by Who roadie Bob Pridden”
I think the Who were exceptionally good at story telling. Tattoo, Mary Anne With The Shaky Hands, Happy Jack, Pictures of Lily…
Of course that was before they started taking themselves oh-so-seriously with all that rock opera shit.
I found the recording where I remember the version I shared from (it’s a live solo acoustic concert he did in La Jolla in 2001) and it turns out we’re both right - he ran out of words, so he started singing Pridden’s nonsense.
I saw him the following night. The storyteller aspect of those shows was just fantastic. I became convinced that Pete had a future as a stand-up comic if he decided to give up music. His semi-rant about weddings at the Valencia Hotel was hilarious.
I’m not really sure how Pete Townsend and the Who got dragged into this discussion for simply filling some space with nonsense words (a well established R&R tradition). Pete is probably the best story-telling songwriter of his generation. His worst offense is calling the establishing song on Tommy “1921” instead of 1940-something.
My own take was he got involved in forced prostitution. “She” may have been pimped by her husband — or at least pressured. That could have caused her to become “froze up inside”, and to sell everything she owned to escape from him.
Folsom Prison Blues. Somehow, someone gets sent to a California State penitentiary for killing a man in Reno, NV. And a nearby express train of some sort (catering to moneybags and bigwigs) runs between Sacramento and San Antonio, TX.
That’s telling a story that doesn’t hold up to real life facts not bad storytelling. The story makes perfect sense as told, and is perfectly good storytelling. It just clearly didn’t happen but plenty of good stories clearly didn’t happen based just based on the facts given in them.
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is still a great party song. Everybody gets up to dance.
@Jackmannii this cover of “Wreck” is pretty good and actually not too bad to dance to.
Ha, yeah, this is the first song I thought of when I read the thread title. I like Dylan and I like the song, but it does seem like at least 3 separate stories smooshed together.
One thing about this song I’ve long found odd, which I mentioned in another song thread a couple months ago, is that it seems to go against the typical hippie sensibility of its day. You have the valley people, who would seem to represent the Proletariat, who rise up against the mountain people, who would seem to represent the Bourgeoisie. Yet the valley people are the greedy, evil villains of the story, and the mountain people are the peace-loving goodniks.
Is this supposed to be sarcasm? If so, how dare you malign one of the greatest story songs ever written. For shame 
I’ve seen that video before-- excellent cover, and a great video to back it up.
For my own nomination for a bad storytelling song, I’ll submit 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia":
- The Devil “was in a bind 'cause he was way behind”-- the Devil has quotas? Who is imposing quotas on the Devil-- God? Is God the Devil’s boss, then?
- A fiddle made of gold is a terrible idea-- it would be far too heavy to easily play, and would probably sound terrible. Why not just offer the equivalent in gold bars?
- What idiot enters into a contest with the Devil? Everybody knows he’s the father of lies and deception, and it’s not like there’s some impartial judge deciding the real winner.
- Despite all odds, the Devil admits losing-- but I actually thought the Devil’s fiddle playing was much cooler and more interesting than Johnny’s competent but ordinary and derivative fiddle work. I would have given the win to the Devil.
Um, I disagree. The mountain folk said they had a treasure. That treasure was not gold or gems or anything - it was a message - “Peace on Earth”.
The mountain folk were in no way Bourgeoisie. The valley folk were obviously greedy MFers who’s love of money made them think that any treasure had to be monetary. Nowhere does it even imply that they were the proletariat rising up against their oppressors. Hell, the mountain folk said they’d gladly share their treasure. Don’t sound oppressive to me.
I didn’t say the mountain people acted oppressive. But you have a story song that’s essentially a fable about two groups of people-- one living on a mountain, who are rumored to have riches in the form of ‘tons of gold’, and then the valley people down below. The setup sure sounds like that of a Bourgeoisie class and a Proletariat class, respectively.
Yet the mountain people are the good, kind, peaceful ones, and the valley folk are the evil, greedy murderous ones. Just seems like a reversal of the standard trope of the time, to me.
I don’t see how that makes it bad storytelling.
Other posters had called it out as bad storytelling. I was just responding with a comment that started out “One thing about this song I’ve long found odd…”. Odd, not bad.
I mean, in general I think the song is bad storytelling in that it’s an overly simplistic moralistic tale, and has a lot of plot holes in the story itself, but not necessarily because of what I mentioned.
Again, it’s a good story that holds together plot-wise even if the details don’t make a lot of sense. (My example of this would be “Red Barchetta” by Rush. It’s a thrilling story song, but you can nitpick it apart if you start thinking about it too much. Why haven’t the rubber tires on the car deteriorated after fifty years? How is there still gasoline? Why are there still one-lane bridges? )
'bout to get Fruit Punched, homie by The Wonder Years at first blush is a standard cheating song in the pop-punk genre. I’m not sure if it’s a story song per se because it doesn’t tell a linear tale, but it does include more concrete details than the average non-story song.
The only problem is, it’s not really clear whether the narrator only works at a cereal factory, or if he literally is the Kool Ade man and his cheating friend is Captain Crunch, or if it’s just a mixed up metaphor. It did, however, inspire this classic album art cover, so that makes up for its lack of polished song writing.
The Wonder Years have disavowed the album, and I can theoretically see why in the case of this song because it wasn’t written very coherently, but at least it made an attempt to be interesting. If they had committed to the bit slightly more it would have almost been an experimental song (i.e. writing a love song based on actually being a box of cereal and a sweet drink.) So I think it’s better to have tried and failed than to not have tried, as long as the result sounds good.
I think I have a post, somewhere, or I started a thread, asking if the events of the song really happened (in the context of the song) or if it is just fantasy (in the context of the song).
Like, are the narrator and the old man only dreaming by the fireside. They have no car?
eta:
If it helps, the song is based on a short story that was published in Road & Track magazine in 1973, which was satirizing the oil crisis and the American public’s obsession with big overpowered cars by envisioning a future where giant gas-guzzlers which are completely safe to crash at high speed rule the road, and older cars are fair game for sport because nobody will insure them.