It’s sort of accepted wisdom that our favorite stories are different iterations of familiar tales, something Joseph Campbell wrote about in his influential 1949 book Hero with a Thousand Faces. However in the entire book Campbell never once mentioned the outlaw or antihero.
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The stories told about these rebels don’t fit the moral structure of most stories where good is rewarded and bad punished, because the protagonist is transgressive. They defy laws in a way that call attention to how our institutions or systems are flawed or failing. But while this serves a purpose, these characters’ defiance of the social order typically demands they die, whether that’s James Dean’s character in Rebel Without a Cause or Jonathan Pryce’s tragically curious bureaucrat in Brazil.
“The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,” Georgie Fame (1968)
The song was penned by songwriters Mitch Murray and Peter Callander in response to seeing the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway gangster film Bonnie and Clyde, which shook up Hollywood norms regarding sex and violence. It ends in an iconic death scene as bloody any movie to that point. The fact that it glorified a pair of bank robbers/lovers, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, whose exploits made them tabloid famous in the ’30s, was problematic for many.
This song, written in a ragtime style, is a clap back at the movie, which portrays Parker and Barrow as victims of desperate circumstances, rather than focus on the nine police officers and four civilians they are believed to have kill. The song notes the “brave” person who stood up to them whose demise the couple laugh about, and in this performance from a contemporaneous Berlin show Beat Club, Georgie Fame smiles and makes a comic finger-pop with his mouth before delivering the fatal final lines.
“Take the Money and Run,” Steve Miller Band (1976)
It seems like Steve Miller loosely ripped off Bonnie and Clyde, not even taking the time to give them more than a caricature of an existence (sit around the house, get high, and watch the tube) or real names (with apologies to any Billy Joes or Bobbie Sues). It’s also fascinating that just eight years later an artist can craft a hit where the detective (equally regrettably named, Billie Mack) trying to solve a home invasion murder is dismissed as making his living off of the peoples taxes, and concludes by cheering the culprits’ continued freedom.
“Road Goes on Forever,” Robert Earl Keen (1993)
Robert Earl Keen delivers a more morally ambiguous story—at least compared to the prior two—in his tale of Sherry and Sonny. Sonny knocks out a man sexually assaulting Sherry and leaves without a word, winning her heart. They party down to Miami Beach, where, soon broke, they meet Cubans for something illicit which cops rush in to bust.
Sherry shoots a lawman to enable their getaway, but he heroically takes the fall and gives her the money. He gets the chair while she drives away in a new Mercedes Benz, like Gone Girl. Keen splits the baby to beat morality, handing out vengeance alongside undeserved riches. It’s become his signature song. “In the end, there’s some savage nobility about the characters,” Keen said.
“Copperhead Road,” Steve Earle (1988)
The great thing about Steve Earle’s breakthrough hit off the album of the same name, is how he traces his outlaw lineage back to his moonshine-running grandfather. The implication is that around the holler where he grew up, being an outlaw wasn’t just normal, it was the family business. On top of that is the suggestion that the protagonist, having served two tours in Vietnam, has already done his duty to the country and deserves now to live how he chooses.
Earle was deeply influenced by Bruce Springsteen’s Born In the U.S.A., which inspired his debut album, Guitar Town, and one hears in “Copperhead Road” a sort of flip side to the title track of the Boss’ album, also featuring a disaffected, returning Vietnam vet. It opens with a mandolin part that helps thread the song’s generational story in using an instrument connected to country’s past. “I only knew two chords on mandolin, and you hear ’em on that record,” Earle said. “It was years before I learned any more.”
“Pancho and Lefty,” Townes Van Zandt (1972)
Though many in the business, particularly those from Texas, consider Van Zandt one of the finest songwriters of his generation, he never enjoyed much financial success, nor for that matter did he chase it, finding more in the crafting of a song than how well it sells. To many this is his finest song, and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard would take it to No. 1 in 1983 after Nelson’s daughter turned them on to it late one night. Earle, who spent a lot of his early years palling around with Van Zandt, said, “You won’t find a song that’s better written, that says more or impresses songwriters more.”
Oddly the story about the great Mexican bandit is more about his sidekick, who eventually sells Pancho out for money to return home to Ohio, where the family he abandoned to chase adventure has moved on in his absence. Lefty is literally “left” to grow old alone in the cold of Cleveland, while Pancho grows famous from his grave.
“Tweeter and the Monkey Man,” Traveling Wilburys (1988)
The supergroup to end all supergroups was probably only possible in the shadow of Live Aid. It’s hard to imagine but George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Bob Dylan toured and completed two pretty good albums.
This track sprinkles the titles of half a dozen Bruce Springsteen songs among the lyrics (“State Trooper,” “Highway 99,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Stolen Car,” “Thunder Road”) in telling the tale of an undercover cop pursuing a pair of New Jersey drug dealers, one of whom is trans and the other is involved with the cop’s sister in an odd love triangle. The cop dies and nobody is held responsible.
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