deadsongs - Wharf Rat

"August West" by Jerry Garcia

I never used to like "Wharf Rat". I thought it dragged, even at the best of times. A plodding, dreary sort of song that never seemed to give Jerry (or anyone else) a place to go.

Over time, and especially recently, that has changed. The song really grew on me. I finally realized that it sounds exactly the way it should- it's about a long unchanging routine of aimless and even joyless wandering...a tired soul with nowhere to go and nothing much to do but drink. The music captures the dreary atmosphere perfectly, and I'm starting to think that my initial dislike was not as much a negative assessment of the song itself as much as a negative response to an extremely well-presented emotion.

Lyrically, there's an obvious resemblance to narratives like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and songs like Neil Young's "Old Man", in which one is confronted by a specter of what could be. It may or may not be a 'there but for the grace of god go I', but there's definitely a sense of connection and understanding despite the difference in age and circumstance. One can easily read it as a warning to change one's ways, but one can just as easily feel the empathy and a personal, significant insight into the weight of time and experience on all of us.

There's also a resemblance in structure and resolution to "Black Peter"...two verses that lope along with a certain amiable bleakness, and then suddenly the middle section that brings about a subtle but intense emotional crescendo, and then a return to the verse. "Black Peter" has its "shine through my window, and my friends they come around", and for "Wharf Rat" it comes in the wrenching "I'll get up and fly away". In both songs, the endless repetition of days culminate in a sudden change in the state of affairs for the main character; Peter senses the approach of his death, but it seems that August West is expecting a change of fortunes that will deliver him from his current state. It may well be death that he is really expecting, just as the "I'll Fly Away" of the old religious folk song refers to the migration of the soul to heaven.

What is striking is the different portrayals of loneliness; Peter mourns, or at least wryly observes, that the people around him are turning his suffering and death into a spectacle...while August West seems even more obviously alone but makes no reference to it- in fact, the entire song is a conversation with the narrator, and one in which August discusses his "girl" several times. So August West may not feel as desperately alone as he seems to us. Musically, the ever-so-slight jaunty edge to "Black Peter" takes the edge off (or throws into contrast) the sorrow...while the flowing dreariness of "Wharf Rat" seems to insidiously drive the sorrow more deeply into the listener.

Anyway, I now understand. It took me a little too long...but I guess I had to have my own personal appreciation bloom before the song could really ring true to me. I'm now hoping to get up and fly away someday, too.