So somehow I went down a rabbit hole and wound up listening to this song - YouTube We’ve all heard it a million times. A happy 60s folk song that you hear on the MUZAK while you’re eating ice cream at Friendly’s. Well for some reason I listened to the lyrics. HOLY CRAP! The song is totally about heroin. Google the lyrics, if you never heard the music you would think it was a Lou Reed or Depeche Mode song lol.
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It was never a happy folk song, it was a song about being broken-hearted.
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Not heroin, but old-fashioned booze, as the original lyrics by the brilliant Canadian singer-songwriter, Sylvia Fricker, spelled out clearly.
Went to the corner
Just to ease my pain
It was just to ease my pain
I got drunk and
I got sick and
I came home again
I’m surprised you didn’t include any lyrics, or even a link. I just ran through the song in my mind, and the only line that’s at all heroin-y is “I went to the corner, just to ease my pain”. Kind of a stretch. Are there other horsey lyrics?
ETA: NInja’ed beautifully, with OG lyrics yet!
I never would have said that about a song that said “I’ve got wounds to bind.”
But, yeah, I’m pretty sure the POV character went drinking, not shooting up, to forget the broken heart. Even if it was shooting up (or smoking pot, or opium, or something), it was to forget the lost love, which was the main point of the song. It isn’t about withdrawal and missing the drug, or whatever.
Another question which just now comes to me, is “Why were bars always on corners?” When I heard the song, I understood “the corner” to mean a bar right away, and I was pretty young, like, and older teen, the first time I heard it, but I knew by that point that “the corner” was code for a bar.
I’ve never gone to bars much, and really not at all in the last 15 years or so, but now that I think, the ones I did go to were all on corners.
OK. I guess this is becoming a hijack. Nevermind.
Pre-empting my hijack. Why are bars on corners?
Neither would I. But looking at the linked video, they sure were smiling a lot while performing it.
BTW, that’s one of the more blatantly obvious “we’re not really playing this” videos I’ve ever seen. Never mind the fact that none of the instruments are plugged in–that’s quite common in these kind of performances–but the song starts with drums establishing the rhythm, despite the fact that they don’t actually have a drummer.
On topic, I never especially got “heroin” out of it, either. Just a song about missing a lost love.
That could be another thread: “Why are so many heartbreaking songs so upbeat?”
One of the most toe-tapping albums I ever heard (CITE) was Poco’s live album Deliverin’, but when I actually listened to the lyrics there was a lot of “What does it matter to me that you’re gone…Guess I was just dreamin’/holding onto promises from you” and “So I think I’ll take a walk out in the rain” broken heart stuff.
Do listen to that… great pedal steel and harmonies.
Here is the group doing a live version:
Nice shout-out to one of my favorite folk artists of that era. I had several Ian (Tyson) & Sylvia (Fricker) albums. Tyson wrote some good songs, including “Four Strong Winds” and “Someday Soon”. I think the former was a hit for Neil Young.