Videos by American Songwriter
Ever since acclaimed Mexican-American rock band Los Lobos released “Will the Wolf Survive?” in 1984, various theories have abounded about the song’s meaning. Was it actually about a wolf, or about the challenges faced by the Mexican-American community (as the music video seemed to indicate), or just about people trying to make their way against the changes and storms of life in general? Written by Los Lobos members Louie Perez and David Hidalgo, and produced by T Bone Burnett, “Will the Wolf Survive?” didn’t exactly burn up the charts, but it became a classic that helped define the times of the MTV generation.
Perez, the band’s drummer-turned-guitarist and primary lyricist, gave American Songwriter the story behind the words via phone from his Southern California home. “The song really was inspired by the cover of a National Geographic magazine,” he recalled. “There was a picture of a wolf, and the title of the piece was, ‘How Can the Wolf Survive?’. When we started throwing the idea for the song around, David was walking around the room with an acoustic guitar, singing melodies or whatever, and he came up with sort of a skeletal version of the lyrics, a chorus I believe, and started a verse, and I ran the rest of the way with it.”
Perez talked about the significance of the final verse first. “If you look at the last verse of the song, it’s definitely about this movement that was happening around the U.S. then, being called ‘punk rock’ or the ‘new music’ movement or whatever. It was about a camaraderie that was going on among bands, like when a communal truck would get somebody to a gig and load out and take another band somewhere else. It was a community of young people who were no longer gonna follow the track that had been laid out by the record companies.”
That third verse was:
Sounds across the nation
Coming from your hearts and minds
Battered drums and old guitars
Singing songs of passion
It’s the truth that they all look for
Something they must keep alive
Will the wolf survive?
Will the wolf survive?
“The other verses, and the overall thing, is about trying to sustain something that we all believed in and that we see slipping away,” Perez continued. “We [Mexican-Americans] saw the importance of preserving our culture, and of passing along the traditions of our fathers. So it’s all of that wrapped up into one song. But it’s about America … I always thought of myself as an American kid. I grew up on Carl Reiner sitcoms. It all becomes kind of intuitive. Stuff bubbles to the top when the time calls for it. All of it is instilled into that one song.”
In 1986 the late country star Waylon Jennings cut the song as the title track of one of his albums. “It was great!” Perez said of Jennings’ take on the tune. “Tony Joe White introduced him to the song, took the record over to him one day, and Waylon recorded his own version.”
Los Lobos is still at it as hard as ever today, and played “Will the Wolf Survive?” at some 200 shows in 2016. “We’re a working band,” Perez said, “and we hope we bring some joy to people when we play.”
