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There’s little logic in much of the violence of this world, little logic in many murder ballads, and little logic to Franky’s violence – almost none in the song outside of the reference to service in Vietnam. In Penn’s film, Joe asks, “I’m trying to understand why you’re such a selfish son of a bitch.” Franky says, “What can I say … I get in a violent way.” Earlier, he admits, “as far as Mr. Trouble goes, he ain’t no less one place or another.” Maybe that’s about what Pretty Polly’s Willie might say. There do not seem to be any clear gains for Franky after any bout of villainous behavior. His cruelty is not premeditated and doesn’t seem to serve him. It is, as poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said of Shakespeare’s Iago, motiveless malignity. Here’s an example:

The Purpose of Poetry

Poet Czelaw Milosz said, “The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.” This complexity – this tension between wanting to be one man and knowing you’re at least two – is at the heart of “Highway Patrolman.” It’s a bramble around which many ballads twine. “The Sardonic bard, the sly salesman, the trusting soul, the blank-faced or charming killer, the hopeless fool,” write Wilentz and Marcus, “are all of a piece.”

Sean Penn’s Indian Runner opens with the flat plains of American farm country, barbed wire stretched across the screen like a trip wire, and a siren cutting into silence. It also opens with death – Joe Roberts defending his own life by shooting a man shooting at him. The man is no more than a boy. He could be Joe’s brother, except he’s not. He is someone’s son, and in the next scene we see the young man’s father in the police station, hauled out by an officer trying to maintain order. That father is played by Harry Crews, whose appearance here feels like metafiction: Crews as Southern Gothic writer playing a bit part as a Gothic figure singing an old southern ballad in a film adaptation of a twentieth-century ballad riffing off old ballad themes. The father (Crews), unraveled, sings “The Ballad of John Henry” as he’s pulled out. That detail, of course, isn’t in Springsteen’s song, but Penn must have felt, too, that at the heart of “Highway Patrolman” an old ballad beats its sad rhythm. Years later, Springsteen recorded “John Henry” for his Seeger Sessions album. This musical confrontation in Penn’s film is fierce and defiant, it bleeds into something close to a field holler, it feels like a curse, and it covers the classic elements of a ballad: love, betrayal, and death.

 
If we expand the purpose of poetry as Milosz defined it, we don’t have to reach very far to say that a poet’s job is to acknowledge complexity. The best songs reach for this complexity, and Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman” is a fine example. Through Joe Roberts, Bruce Springsteen shows the mind thinking about something unanswerable. Did Joe turn his back on his brother when he chased him to the Canadian border, or did he save him? If Joe was the man watching the taillight disappear, Franky was the one with the back turned. But when Joe turned around, he turned his back too. Is there a defined border between a good man and a man who ain’t no good? Some songs simplify these questions, and in that simplification, something artful, delicate, and important is lost. In “Highway Patrolman,” Springsteen enacts thought without conclusion, showing us a mind (and a heart) at work in a beautifully bleak world.

A Note on Covers

Poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “So much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow.” I think of Williams when I consider, so much depends on Bruce Springsteen. Can anyone cover “Highway Patrolman” effectively, or does this song need the voice of the man who wrote it? The way you answer that question most probably depends on your connection to and relationship with the original work. It’s impossible for me not to compare the cover to the original, which serves, inevitably, as a fixed reference.

In any cover, musical elements are bound to be handled (or mishandled) in various ways. The Australian band Pony Face covered Springsteen’s entire album, and this band’s version of “Highway Patrolman” exceeds nine minutes, making it nearly twice as long as Springsteen’s. It’s still morose, but it’s souped-up morosity (which isn’t even a word, but I prefer it to moroseness). The rhythm is off. There’s something digitalized, synthesized, and distracting in this cover, and even those passages that feel close to Springsteen’s treatment just aren’t close enough. Because here’s the thing: it’s really hard to cover a Springsteen song. Admittedly, others might listen to the Pony Face album with more tolerance and appreciation for what is different. For me, though, Springsteen’s voice is too distinctive, too much his own to clone. Close doesn’t count, or maybe close is a travesty. Something is not quite right, or something is both beautifully right and terribly wrong. The beginning of this song feels exaggerated, and exaggeration feels like parody. The best part of the Pony Face cover is in the last 30 or 40 seconds of the song, when we hear only the harp (harmonica) and percussion. The percussive element here owes more to those passages of Penn’s film that explain the myth of the Indian Runner (“The Indian knew that deer moved in circles… that if the hunter calculated his moves with skill … he could run the swift deer into submission …”). The last instrument we hear is the wobble of a harp – lovely vibration for a story that vibrates long after the needle is lifted.

 
When Johnny Cash covers this song, there’s no doubt you’re listening to an American voice, and there also is no doubt that it’s Cash. This is problematic. For one thing, Cash’s voice is too old for this song. In Springsteen’s song, the storyteller’s emotions are still raw, and the teller is a younger man than Cash. Cash as Cash is distracting. This song is too quintessentially Springsteen to be covered by Cash, who doesn’t (or can’t) try to be anyone other than himself. The other issue here, which is more distracting, is the arrangement. It’s too perky. I feel as though I’m in a polka tent at a Polish festival (or maybe with Joe and Maria dancing to a song about a disaster). The tempo is inappropriate for the story, and the last-ditch effort to underscore what’s serious doesn’t work. Cash applies the brakes too quickly, giving the last three words, “ain’t no good,” dramatic emphasis that feels inauthentic. This, indeed, is a true cover: Cash is on top of this song, not in it.