DBT Track of the Week 143 "Till He's Dead or Rises"

[RevMatt]

The camera pans across the closed storefronts of a small town in November; dried leaves and dust blowing in the wind. A dilapidated pickup truck sputters and stalls as its young driver works the choke. The engine turns over allowing the pick up’s radio to be heard.

“Why don’t you love me like you used to do, why do you treat me like a worn out shoe,” cries the voice of Hank Williams.

It is one of film’s most iconic opening shots. Peter Bogdanovich’s adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel, The Last Picture Show, chronicles a year in the life of a Texas town during the early 1950’s. Sonny and Duane are two high school seniors sharing a room in a boarding house. Jacy, the pretty daughter of a wealthy oilman, turns the two friends into rivals. The stark black and white cinematography combined with the absence of a musical soundtrack – all of the songs are heard coming from jukeboxes, radios, record players and live bands – give the film an almost surreal quality. Though the film only shows a single year in Sonny and Duane’s life two older characters, Sam the Lion and Abilene, give the viewer a poignant picture of the men they will become.

I suppose it was inevitable that The Last Picture Show would inspire a Drive By Truckers song. Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley were only seven and five years old when the movie premiered in 1971. But the film had staying power. It was broadcast regularly on late night television, PBS and cable throughout the 1970’s providing plenty of opportunities for the dialog and images to imbed themselves in the consciousness of the two songwriters who would one day use song lyrics and electric guitars for their own portrayals of dysfunctional marriages and small town life. When Cooley and Hood became musical partners they were around the same age as Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms in 1971. They would create onstage personas that evoke Duane and Sonny as well as Sam The Lion and Abilene; the small town sage and the pool shooting roughneck.

“Till He’s Dead or Rising” is not a musical version of The Last Picture Show. In the movie neither Duane nor Sonny spend the rest of their life with Jacy. The song is about feeling used in a marriage where a man’s worth is determined solely by how much money he earns. It is a theme Hood and Cooley have covered since their days in Adam’s House Cat. A single scene, where Jacy’s mother tells her daughter not to marry Duane because he’ll never be rich, is referenced in the song. Jacy objects on the grounds that her father wasn’t rich when her parents met. Her mother responds, “I scared your father into being rich.”



Another possible interpretation of the song is that it is about Hood and Cooley's musical partnership. The "she" in the song is the dream the two of them have pursued since they were teenagers. In the song their career is a metaphor for a marriage. It will either kill them or the two of them will "rise" to the occasion.



When she met him they was teenagers
He was no more than seventeen
She was a little less than all that
but held the bit between her teeth
He was tall and strong and lanky
the fear of Jesus was on her side
He asked her, if she weren’t too busy
might come out for a ride

She’ll ride him until he’s dead or rises to the occasion

They ran off the great embankment
They flew through the air so far
They landed with a mighty crash
then got crushed by the falling star.

She’ll ride him until he’s dead or rises to the occasion
She’ll ride him until he’s dead or rises to the occasion

That small crossroads became a city
she was the bell of every ball
Boys would line up to try to ring her
she’s let them line up down her hall
She ran up a life so lavish
somehow those bills would all get paid
Your Daddy worked and never faltered
never forgot the things she said

She’ll ride him until he’s dead or rises to the occasion

Times change but I still see her disapproval pouring out
She said I ain’t got the gumption to make it
and you ain’t scary enough to turn me around
But I’m hoping you might be game to ride my dream aground
We’ll ride it until it’s dead or makes your mama proud

She’ll ride him until he’s dead or rises to the occasion

[jimmyjack]

What a great post. LPS is one of my favorite novels and one of my favorite movies, and I like your interpretation. That said, THDOR remains the only song on EO I don't really love. Then again, I don't like "Proud Mary" much, either.

[John A Arkansawyer]

I've never read the movie or seen the book, but I do have one somewhat informed comment anyway:

Though the film only shows a single year in Sonny and Duane’s life two older characters, Sam the Lion and Abilene, give the viewer a poignant picture of the men they will become.

I have read the sequel, Texasville, and the man Abilene eventually becomes is nothing like either Sonny or Duane, from reading them in that book.

I know that's not quite what you're saying happens, but I have a hard time imagining a way that either of them, no matter what life took them through, would have ended up like him, other than surviving.

[Clams]

Interesting angle, Rev. Can't say I would've come up with any of that.

To me, this song is all about the myriad ways that a wife can ride her husband. What a great double (triple? quadruple?) entendre. Personally, I get ridden in all sorts of ways - and I like some much better than others. In the interest of marital peace and harmony, I'm not saying anything more on the subject.

Great song.

[RevMatt]

I've never read the movie or seen the book, but I do have one somewhat informed comment anyway:

Though the film only shows a single year in Sonny and Duane’s life two older characters, Sam the Lion and Abilene, give the viewer a poignant picture of the men they will become.

I have read the sequel, Texasville, and the man Abilene eventually becomes is nothing like either Sonny or Duane, from reading them in that book.

I know that's not quite what you're saying happens, but I have a hard time imagining a way that either of them, no matter what life took them through, would have ended up like him, other than surviving.

I read Texasville and didn't like it. I never saw the need for a sequel. By the end of The Last Picture Show it is pretty much established that Jacy is going to end up like her mother -- married to a wealthy man, Sonny assumes the role of Sam The Lion in the life of the town and Duane will end up like Abilene, a tough pool playing roughneck who always has at least $1,000 cash in his billfold. I thought Texasville was as absurd as doing a sequel to The Graduate.

[John A Arkansawyer]

I read Texasville and didn't like it. I never saw the need for a sequel. By the end of The Last Picture Show it is pretty much established that Jacy is going to end up like her mother -- married to a wealthy man, Sonny assumes the role of Sam The Lion in the life of the town and Duane will end up like Abilene, a tough pool playing roughneck who always has at least $1,000 cash in his billfold. I thought Texasville was as absurd as doing a sequel to The Graduate.

Since that and the very short remembrance of Neal Cassidy in Spit in the Ocean #6 are all the Larry McMurtry I've read, I can't comment on it as a sequel. I enjoyed it because it gave me some guidance on how to manage being a middle-aged-becoming-old man. I also liked Love in the Time of Cholera because it taught me how to keep my house cool in the summer without air conditioning, so possibly the lesson to learn from all this is that Arkansawyer guy looks at the finger when the sage points at the moon. Or maybe he's giving the sage the finger. It's hard to tell some days.

[beantownbubba]

As I guess is by now traditional, I disagree, Rev.

I know I'm a sentimental sap, but the most striking and immediately noticeable thing about this song is that it's Cooley singing Hood. I find that hugely symbolic and significant. Coming off a 2 year break that saw each of them tour solo and release solo albums, coming back w/ an album that includes a song in which they shared or switched roles that way is very encouraging to anyone who believes that this particular whole is a lot bigger than the sum of its parts. Any sign that the 2 principals value the band is a big deal to me. Yes, I'm overreacting but I do believe there's some truth buried in there.

I don't know how you can talk about this song w/out acknowledging the central double entendre, Rev. In fact, by not acknowledging it, your "alternative" interpretation becomes IMHO bizarrely homoerotic. A metaphor for marriage? Say WHAT?

Going back to the beginning, the song is catchy. And the more I listen to it, the more I think that musically, this song is one of the most direct responses the band has laid down to its time w/ Booker T. Brad & Matt are incredible, locked into a soulful yet rockin' groove and Jay comes in on top of that w/ his soulful yet poppy keys and the tension between that pop overlay riding on that rockin' beat propels the song big time very much in a Booker T'ish way. Catchy and propulsive. That's a very good thing in my book. If that's what you mean by the "Proud Mary" reference, jj, I'm down w/ that. And yes I know Matt wasn't a part of those Booker T sessions, but hey, he's Matt.

Lyrically, I find the song a little bit confusing because at certain points (especially in the last verse) pronouns seem to be thrown around willy nilly and it's hard to know whose point of view is being expressed. Despite that, I think that essentially what we've got is a country boy overwhelmed by a country girl w/ big dreams, a large sexual appetite and a wild sexual imagination. She's also a "little bit less than all that" which i think is a totally wonderful expression in that understated southern way that PH so often captures so well. Perhaps the fact that she's a little bit less than all that also creates some interesting tension in the song because in the popular imagination great sex goes along w/ great looks and the idea that someone less than beautiful can be both ambitious and sexual goes against a number of stereotypes.

The 2 have an intense relationship built almost entirely around sex w/ some of her ambition added for spice. She drags him to the big city and dumps him in favor of...well... in favor of pretty much everyone lol. The wordplay around "bell/belle" is duly noted and appreciated (right, Duke?). Even though she's moved way beyond him and rubs his nose in it at every turn, he knows she's the best thing he's ever seen or will see and ever had or will have so he's willing to put up w/ it and wait her out. By golly, he'll do his best and try to live up to her standards and fulfill her dreams (her dreams become his because he has none of his own and he's learned that she needs to see that in him) and in the meantime, hey baby, it's still rising, or as Roger Daltrey might sing, he can still raise a line every time and he knows that matters to her. A lot. And that's his ace in the hole, so to speak, because he's willing to be used for as long as she's willing to ride him.

[John A Arkansawyer]

I don't know how you can talk about this song w/out acknowledging the central double entendre, Rev. In fact, by not acknowledging it, your "alternative" interpretation becomes IMHO bizarrely homoerotic. A metaphor for marriage? Say WHAT?

We're talking about Bob Dylan's "Isis" now, right?

She's also a "little bit less than all that" which i think is a totally wonderful expression in that understated southern way that PH so often captures so well.

I'm slightly distressed but completely unsurprised to find some of Patterson's rhetorical moves showing up in my own. It'll stop, one of these days.

[Clams]

The melody is very reminiscent of Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark.

Btw - I've only had a few people sign up to start one of these threads. Plenty of songs left. Send me a PM.

[RevMatt]

I don't know how you can talk about this song w/out acknowledging the central double entendre, Rev. In fact, by not acknowledging it, your "alternative" interpretation becomes IMHO bizarrely homoerotic. A metaphor for marriage? Say WHAT?

The metaphor I posited isn't that Cooley and Hood are married to each other. Instead, both of them are married to "The Muse". They have dedicated their lives to chasing it and it will ride them until they are dead or they rise to the occasion.

I didn't interpret the double entendre or bring up the Cooley singing Hood angle because I didn't want to eat up every slice of the pizza. More polite to leave some slices for everybody else. I did liken their stage personas to the characters in The Last Picture Show. Cooley comes across as a Jeff Bridges type of character. Hood comes across more like Timothy Bottoms/Sam the Lion. He is like the wise, small town sage who knows everybody's secrets. This is the onstage personas. Offstage Cooley is a quiet and thoughtful man and certainly not the type who would carry on an affair with his boss's wife like Abilene in The Last Picture Show. But onstage? He's a badass.

[Zip City]

I have no idea what the fuck any of you are talking about, so I'll just say that this song is sorta okay

[Tequila Cowboy]

I came to post this and saw that marklynn already had but thought I'd post it in this thread particularly for when people revisit it later. From PH:

I thought Rev. Matt did a great job with his interpretation of the song.
It's open ended enough (I would hope) that anyone's interpretations should work for whatever you like.
That said, the central inspiration for me writing the song was that scene in TLPS where Ellen Burstyn tells Jacy that she isn't scary enough to compel that boy into being able to support her in the way she was raised to expect. That scene always really hit a note with me, as when I fell in love with that movie, I had already experienced the receiving end of that situation in more than one relationship.
Pretty much everything in that book and movie rings very true to me.

As for Cooley singing it, people can read whatever bullshit into that they want if it makes them happy.
The truth was I wrote it around a riff on guitar that placed it in a key that was not a good key for me to sing and that happened to be in MC's sweet spot.
I heard the harmony in my head and really wanted to sing that part. Cooley was kickass enough to offer to sing the lead and it took a song that would have been a bonus track and made it a keeper cut for the album.
I way prefer singing harmony anyway and was honored that Cooley thought I had written a song worthy of him singing.

George A. (my beloved Great Uncle that I wrote Sands of Iwo Jima and Heat Lightning about) was a lot like Sam The Lion. He didn't drink and wasn't the former wildass (as far as we know) that Sam was, but his personality was a lot like a cross between Sam the Lion and Atticus Finch.(Maybe a little George Bailey too).

I could probably write five more songs from that same book/movie.

Cooley wrote Birthday Boy, partly inspired by another Peter Bogdonovich film, Paper Moon, specifically Madeline Kahn's character. ("Let Miss Trixie sit up front with her big ole titties".)

DBT=A bunch of geeks.

Have a great June and see you'z soon.
Patterson

[John A Arkansawyer]

That said, the central inspiration for me writing the song was that scene in TLPS where Ellen Burstyn tells Jacy that she isn't scary enough to compel that boy into being able to support her in the way she was raised to expect. That scene always really hit a note with me, as when I fell in love with that movie, I had already experienced the receiving end of that situation in more than one relationship.
Pretty much everything in that book and movie rings very true to me.

Well, RevMatt, I'm impressed! That is not a leap I'd've made. Possibly I need to read the book (my usual preference), see the movie, or both. Even if I had already known them, though, I don't think I'd've gotten there from here.

[Tequila Cowboy]

The book and the movie are great but if you've never experienced either I'd go, in one of the rare instances I'd recommend this, with the movie first. Great gets thrown around too much with movies but that one fits the bill.

[RevMatt]

For those of you who have only seen the film, here are a few of the differences between McMurtry's novel and the screenplay.

-- In the film it is never made clear that Duane and Sonny share a room in a boarding house. (It is mentioned once.) Sonny's mother is dead and his father is ineffective, having become addicted to pills. Duane's father is out of the picture. Neither boy has a family capable of providing a stable home life.

-- Billy, the autistic kid who is always sweeping, is from a very poor and dysfunctional family who are incapable of raising him. Sam The Lion takes him in and acts as a surrogate parent. In the film Sam's relationship to Billy isn't made clear.

-- In the book the senior class takes a trip to San Francisco and Duane's attempt at deflowering Jacy happens in a hotel room in that city. In the movie it is in a motel near the lake where they have their senior class picnic.

-- In the book coach Popper shares a bed in a motel room with one of the kids on his team. He attempts to have sex with the kid and later claims he was asleep and mistook the kid for his wife, Ruth. Sonny relays this story to Ruth thinking she would find it amusing. She gets angry and lets Sonny know that the coach prefers teenage boys to women. The coach gets the focus away from him by claiming that the English teacher is a homosexual on the grounds that only a homosexual would teach high school English. The school board agrees and fires the English teacher. None of this is shown in the film.

-- In the film, after Sonny and Jacy's marriage is annulled, Jacy's mother and Sonny drive back to Texas together in Jacy's convertible. They share a bottle and memories of Sam The Lion. In the book Jacy and Sonny share a motel room and get it on, giving Sonny a proper wedding night. Personally, I think the decision to strike this from the screenplay is one of the few times in film where making a plot change from the book actually works out for the better.

-- The subplot where the preacher's kid abducts the little girl is given much more play in the book. The gossip surrounding the decline in public morals (Sonny's affair with Ruth among other things) leads the church people in town to have a revival. The preacher's son makes his preaching debut at the revival where it is made clear that he has neither the talent nor the gift for the pulpit. (He drones on and on about "full gospel" and the only people who respond to his altar call are the same family that comes forward at every altar call.) He bombs at the revival and abducts the little girl -- but doesn't molest her -- as a way to lose any parental pressure to make preaching and the ministry his life's work. Ironically, the religious people in the town interpret his actions as proof that Satan has run amok and the revival is a huge success.

In the eighties Larry McMurtry published his "sequel" to TLPS. It is a novel called Texasville. I read this book but never really liked it nearly as much as the original. One interesting thing we learn in Texasville is that Sonny and Ruth carry on their affair for a couple more years until the coach walks in on them. He shoots Sonny, but not fatally. He and Ruth divorce. Ruth later becomes a secretary at Duane's oil drilling company.

[phungi]

I came to post this and saw that marklynn already had but thought I'd post it in this thread particularly for when people revisit it later. From PH:

I thought Rev. Matt did a great job with his interpretation of the song.
It's open ended enough (I would hope) that anyone's interpretations should work for whatever you like.
That said, the central inspiration for me writing the song was that scene in TLPS where Ellen Burstyn tells Jacy that she isn't scary enough to compel that boy into being able to support her in the way she was raised to expect. That scene always really hit a note with me, as when I fell in love with that movie, I had already experienced the receiving end of that situation in more than one relationship.
Pretty much everything in that book and movie rings very true to me.

As for Cooley singing it, people can read whatever bullshit into that they want if it makes them happy.
The truth was I wrote it around a riff on guitar that placed it in a key that was not a good key for me to sing and that happened to be in MC's sweet spot.
I heard the harmony in my head and really wanted to sing that part. Cooley was kickass enough to offer to sing the lead and it took a song that would have been a bonus track and made it a keeper cut for the album.
I way prefer singing harmony anyway and was honored that Cooley thought I had written a song worthy of him singing.

George A. (my beloved Great Uncle that I wrote Sands of Iwo Jima and Heat Lightning about) was a lot like Sam The Lion. He didn't drink and wasn't the former wildass (as far as we know) that Sam was, but his personality was a lot like a cross between Sam the Lion and Atticus Finch.(Maybe a little George Bailey too).

I could probably write five more songs from that same book/movie.

Cooley wrote Birthday Boy, partly inspired by another Peter Bogdonovich film, Paper Moon, specifically Madeline Kahn's character. ("Let Miss Trixie sit up front with her big ole titties".)

DBT=A bunch of geeks.

Have a great June and see you'z soon.
Patterson

While I am a relative noobie, I have been reading these threads with much interest... after reading the good Reverend's interpretation, I thought "it would be interesting to see what light Patterson would shed on this" not expecting some actual insight... quite impressive, all-around. Look forward to meeting many of you in Lancaster.

[Smitty]

I have no idea what the fuck any of you are talking about, so I'll just say that this song is sorta okay

Insightful commentary.
Rough monday, Zip?

[Zip City]

I have no idea what the fuck any of you are talking about, so I'll just say that this song is sorta okay

Insightful commentary.
Rough monday, Zip?

Sounded harsher than I intended. I haven't seen the movie nor read the book, so this level of analysis on this particular song adds nothing for me. I take the song at face value, and to that end, it's a good, but not great, DBT song. I'm glad it's on the record, and it can get stuck in my head some days

[Tequila Cowboy]

Surprises me Zip. I would have just assumed you had seen the film. Always thought you were a movie guy. Pretty classic film.

[porkulator]

I have no idea what the fuck any of you are talking about, so I'll just say that this song is sorta okay

Classic.

[Markalanbishop]

I love the different feel this song has taken on live as opposed to the record. More funk and groove. IMHO.

[Cole Younger]

This is one of my favorites from EO. I loved it right away

I had no idea that this song had anything to do with The Last Picture Show. But I love that movie so now I have another reason to love the song.

I thought Rev. Matt did a good job but the stuff about it possibly being about Patterson and Cooley's musical partnership was too much of a stretch for me but that doesn't mean anything other than people hear songs differently.

I've heard people say that they could have spotted this as a Patterson song a mile away. I'm not one of those people. There are a few tell tale signs but I would have dismissed that as Cooley having been in a band with Patterson for so long that some of his style had rubbed off on him.

I can't imagine Patterson singing it because it works so well with Cooley singing it.

And I don't know what's wrong with liking the collaboration. I personally never thought it would happen and a patterson even said he couldn't foresee it happening not so long ago.

Great song. I sort of saw it as Zip City Part II in a weird way. Years later with the tables turned.