As a listener to Top 40 AM radio around 1970-71, I can recall thinking that The Band didn’t have all that many hits, but the ones they did have were better than just about anybody else’s.
How long until “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is canceled?
I now presume that the last two lines of Virgil Kane’s verse:
Now, I don’t mind chopping wood
And I don’t care if the money’s no good
You take what you need
And you leave the rest
But they should never
Have taken the very best
refers to his next two verses about his younger brother:
Like my father before me
I will work the land
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel stand
He was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can’t raise a Kane back up
When he’s in defeat
It’s a non sequitur in reverse. It took me decades to figure out the woodchopper can’t stop obsessing over the death of his 18-year-old brother who was “the very best.” Whatever topic Virgil Kane starts talking about, the economics of woodchopping or whatever, will eventually turn out to be about his dead brother.
And when you finally figure it out, it’s one of the most moving lyrics of the rock era.
