Album: Drift Away
Year: 1973
I can’t even begin to tell you how much this song speaks to me. All I can tell you is this: it was one of those songs that was peaking on KYNO-AM just as I started listening like a fiend, meaning that I sometimes heard it several times a day as it rode its way to number 5.
But if this isn’t the greatest song ever written about the power of music, it’s way up there. And the first time 10-year-old Jim realized that people whose lives have been bettered by great songs could make great songs about how great songs made their lives better.
I also like how Dobie Gray’s version starts like he’s already been singing it for centuries, but just now somebody started to roll tape. Over a simple guitar, base and hi-hat, we enter his story already in progress:
Day after day I’m more confused
Yet I look for the light through the pouring rain
You know that’s a game that I hate to lose
And I’m feelin’ the strain
Ain’t it a shame
But, of course, he’s got an ace in the hole. And that’s rock ‘n’ roll.
Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away
But here’s the thing about “Drift Away:” it’s really a sad song. Unlike every other “WHOOOOO ROCK AND ROLLL!!!” song, “Drift Away” isn’t about rocking and rolling all night long and partying every day, it isn’t about how how rock and roll will never die or even about how his life was saved by rock and roll.
“Drift Away” is basically saying that rock and roll is only a temporary respite from a fucked-up existence.
Because here’s the thing about drifting away: you’re gonna end up landing somewhere. And all of your shit is gonna land with you. That’s why is so sad and so beautiful at the end when it’s just Dobie and some handclaps — this might be where The Handclap Rule first revealed itself to me — begging pleading asking for his boys to help him drift away one more time.
That last handclapped chorus is one of my most favorite musical moments — has there ever been a more transcendent yet tearful plea for musical transcendence?
And, of course, they probably do, and afterwards, you know that he just needed it again.
Official (!) video for “Drift Away”