Rosilita, Virgil Caine, Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner, Delila Jones…
I was listening to Craig Finn’s record “I Need A New War”, which I have on repeat, and I realized there is a certain kind of song that I really dig. I thought about all of the songs I’ve really loved over the years and noticed a theme that I never really considered before. I like a song about a fictional character that isn’t the narrating songwriter. I love the “Delila Jones” of The Grateful Dead’s “Brown Eyed Women”, the “Virgil Caine” of The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, and so many of Springsteen’s characters. Who is Rosilita? Was she a real person? It doesn’t matter, and if she wasn’t, that’s even more impressive.
Special mention has to go to “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” by Warren Zevon. I mean, seriously, how do you write a song about a private military contractor (a.k.a. mercenary) who comes back from the dead to get revenge on those who did him in?
For me, that’s a whole upper level of songwriting skill. That’s your Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Warren Zevon, Tom Petty top level narrative songwriting skill. Not that it’s easy to write songs, but it’s easier to write a song about yourself, just as I find it easy to write blog posts about myself. I’ve never written any fiction, and to me, it’s much more challenging.
A book or screenplay gives you hundreds of pages to flesh out characters, but a good rock and roll song gives you under five minutes, three verses, a bridge, and a chorus at best. That’s what is so impressive to me about this kind of song; it pulls it off. By the end of the song, I know these people. Also, I know Jenny’s phone number
