“L.A. grew too much for the man . . . .
Said he’s going back to find
a simpler place and time.”
James Weatherly’s lyrics having been written half a century ago, one can only wonder what “the man” might think of today’s L.A.
It probably doesn’t matter. After all, it was over a century and a half ago that the town of Concord, Massachusetts, with its whopping population of about 2,200, had grown too much for another man, who sought his simpler place and time on the shores of Walden Pond.
Thoreau’s celebrated experiment was little more than a grand and somewhat phony gesture by a self-impressed social misfit with a Harvard education. Nevertheless, he used the occasion to fire off some trenchant commentary about a social and economic system in which “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Embraced by liberal academia, his book would sell like hotcakes in the 20th century.
But back to the song by Gladys Knight and the Pips — with its all-American roots in R&B, Doo-wop, Country, and one other musical genre to be touched upon shortly.
The theme is familiar. Indeed, it’s not a stretch to say that the very creation of America in the European mind was an effort to catch the midnight train to Georgia. Yes, many came in the pursuit of wealth, even empire, but the tired, huddled masses were dreaming more modestly of a plot of earth and the intangibles that came with it. In their most purely idyllic fantasies, they imagined themselves as De Crevecoeur’s “new man,” an innocent new Adam dissociated from the historic past, dwelling in a paradise regained.
Some, like Brigham Young, claimed to have reached this place. More sober minds have acknowledged that the “new” man brought the old history with him — indeed, his descendants are up to their necks in the continued making of that history, some of it more dreadful than ever — and that it’s become nigh unto impossible to find a nook or cranny of America’s geography in which “Georgia” can be found. The TV series “Yellowstone,” for example, depicts a montane pastoral idyll filled with men and women whose desperation is far from “quiet.”
Back to the song — not that we should necessarily find the wisdom of the ages in a piece of pop music.
The first thing to understand is that it’s not about “the man,” his defeat and retreat, nor is it about Georgia. Rather, its subject and protagonist is the woman whose voice we are hearing, and who also will be boarding that train — not because her life is quietly desperate, but because “I’d rather live in his world, than live without him in mine.” It’s the principal declaration of the song, and presumably it hasn’t come without some internal conflict.
Perhaps she hadn’t been reading Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, but surely their question, which was blowing in the zeitgeist, had entered her mind — Was she going to Georgia only to raise this guy’s barefoot children and braise collard greens on the cook stove? Not well played, girl.
But if she is still conflicted, you’re not hearing it in her voice, which is positive, forward-looking, uplifted. It’s almost like we’re listening to a piece of Gospel music, which in fact happens to be the other major formative influence on this song. (Listen to it HERE and tell me you can’t hear The Pips sounding an “Amen” after almost every musical phrase.) Now capitalize the two male pronouns — “I’d rather live in His world, than live without Him in mine” — and you’re listening to two thousand years’ worth of Christian saints. Convert these words to female pronouns, and you’re thinking like a medieval chivalric knight about the secret lady of his heart, knowing that, socially, he can never live in her world, but will remain committed to living for her world until the day of his death.
Pretty noble stuff. “He who would lose his life for my sake shall find it.” This woman’s happiness does not lie in Georgia, but rather in her commitment to another person who appears to offer her something more than material comfort in Madonna’s material world.
Fifty years later we find ourselves among ideologues often characterized as utopians — “Great Reset,” New World Order types who feel that, if only we can erase past history and present values, together with the kind of people and thinking that created them, blend Western religion into a more universal spirituality that honors the Earth and no longer subjects it to “dirty,” non-renewable sources of energy, and liberate ourselves from “gender” stereotypes and so on, then behold The New Georgia and truly new men and women!
I don’t think the Gladys Knight persona would be buying it. You want “Georgia”? Just get on the train. It’s nearly midnight, when one day comes to an end, and a new day begins.
— Chad (“Bitter”) Klinger
the Aspen beat 
I always enjoyed Bitter Klinger’s comments. You are both great.
Ditto.
Kick-ass Chad.
I worked in downtown Atlanta from 1975 to 1982 while at GSU. After work (I worked at the Peachtree Plaza bartending and working banquets) some of us would go out on the ‘town’. Sometimes we would gravitate to the old Biltmore Hotel on Peachtree Street where in the basement you could be entertained by G.K. and the Pips (once we only got the Pips, but what a show) and Diana Ross and the Supremes (once, in an answer to the Pips show, we were treated to the just the Supremes, not as vocal, but fun to watch). Most all of the crowd was Black, but I usually went there with a gorgeous mature Black woman from the Plaza who was known to date Alex Haley off and on. There are many quiet and relaxing places in Georgia; fewer near downtown, but outside I-285 you’ll find them.
Y’all come see us.
Great piece. Just remember what century you’re in! 🤣
The late Andrew Breitbart was known to have frequently said that “politics is downstream from culture.”
Keeping true to that adage, this column smartly threads the needle …
References:
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2013/03/01/pop-cultural-conservatism-year-one-a-b-after-breitbart/
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2011/08/22/politics-really-is-downstream-from-culture/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/07/19/lessons-from-comic-con-all-politics-is-loki/
So, better than a ‘67 Plymouth Barracuda? I appreciate the linked Breitbart pieces.
Yeah, I took the bait:
Equally clever and powerful, Chad.
Plus, in another time I met one of the songs co-producers,
the often-brilliant Mr. Ritchie Wise – he said I had a hit song.
I remember February 1974. The song was all over AM radio (I wasn’t hip enough to listen to FM when I was 13) in New York. That winter break we took Amtrak down to Florida for a trip to Disney World. It was 10 o’clock at night and I’m standing between the cars, smelling the night air, and that song kept going through my mind. Even though I was in North Carolina, at some point it’d be midnight and I’d be on my way through Georgia. Thanks for the memory.
A good read!
Thank God for songwriters/balladeers This song reminded me of Johnny Cash’s song of desperation
Sunday Morning Coming Down
Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad
So I had one more for dessert
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
Amd stumbled down the stairs to meet the day
I’d smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and songs I’d been pickin’
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Playin’ with a can that he was kicking
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone’s fryin’ chicken
And Lord, it took me back to somethin’
That I’d lost somewhere, somehow along the way
On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I’m wishing Lord that I was stoned
‘Cause there’s somethin’ in a Sundays
That makes a body feel alone
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’
As half as lonesome as the sound
Of a sleepin’ city sidewalk
And sunday mornin’ comin’ down
In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughin’ little girl that he was swingin’
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singin’
Then I headed down the street
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’
And it echoed through the canyons
Like a disappearin’ dreams of yesterday
On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I’m wishing Lord that I was stoned
‘Cause there’s somethin’ in the Sundays
That make somebody feel alone
And there’s nothing short of dyin’
As half as lonesome as the sound
Of a sleeping city sidewalks
And sunday mornin’ comin’ down
Kristoferson wrote Sunday morning coming down
Back in the 1970s you could turn on almost any radio station and hear great songs like that.
Do you know who Julian Abagond is? Abagond is blogger and cultural critic with a black American culture centered approach. I call him one of the best cultural critics we have. If the print book era wasn’t over for some genres, his commentary could be collected into an edgy and forthright coffee table book for people like grits above Pablum.
This piece is just like some of the stuff Abagond does. You could put it on his blog and no one would know the difference.