This is a sappy song with a heart felt series of verses, and a gumptious elaborate arrangement of strings and stuff on the chorus.
But there is detail and structure and melody here that make it a great song. Not a riff song, not a rock song, but a pop song that expands people’s horizons rather than shuts them down. It’s a song that addresses adult concerns (who lives where, and why) rather than adolescent ones (who grinds where).
That isn’t rock, but it is a bit rockish in that whole Rambling Boy idea. Feel free to search for all the alternative versions on YouTube. They all help explain how a simple story became a trope. And how songwriting transcends genre. This is a song that is a short story. Or an anecdote. Or both.
I started writing about this song because I found a Lee Hazlewood version of it, which made me assume that he wrote it. He didn’t. But he gets it.
https://youtu.be/WNurCyZmoRo
This song was a big hit the summer of ’74, the year I graduated from HS. I would be starting college in Boston in September, so the song really spoke to me.
Me too, though I was heading to LA.
My friend Dollar Bill, a big country fan, liked this song as we drove around Cape Cod that summer.