The Band song that explores the history of American unions: “Gangsters, assassination, power”
The songs that big up the cause of the everyman, no matter what period they hail from, are often the ones that stand the longest test of time in speaking to music’s vital role in creating and preserving pockets of history. The Band knew that all too well – from their beginnings backing up the lyrical sorcerer of Bob Dylan until they branched out to produce their own political mouthpiece tunes.
The patently most laborious of these efforts was the song ‘King Harvest (Has Surely Come)’ from their 1969 self-titled album. It explored the effects of poverty, desolation, and desperation for an out-of-luck farmer in need of a dose of hope and promise—but which ultimately never becomes fulfilled. It spoke to the deep-rooted corrupt union culture pervading the US south, offering a beacon of vision and solidarity to workers left by the wayside.
Written by The Band’s guitarist, Robbie Robertson, ‘King Harvest’ all at once laments the farmer’s position on a level of personal introspection while also simultaneously broadening out to encompass a sociopolitical worldview on working culture in its midst.
With reference to the song’s inspiration, Robertson explained: “It’s just a kind of character study in a time period. At the beginning, when the unions came in, they were a saving grace, a way of fighting the big money people, and they affected everybody from the people that worked in the big cities all the way around to the farm people.”
He added: “It’s ironic now, because now so much of it is like gangsters, assassinations, power, greed, insanity. I just thought it was incredible how it started and how it ended up.” This growing pernicious juxtaposition reveals itself within the song not only in a lyrical sense – just take words like: “Long enough I’ve been up on Skid Row/ And it’s plain to see, I’ve nothing to show/ I’m glad to pay those union dues/ Just don’t judge me by my shoes” – but was also laced intricately in its sonic position.
For instance, the verses are energised with pacy bursts of funk-infused rock, while the choruses take on a quieter, somewhat more melancholic feel – reflecting a constantly swinging pendulum between hope and utter depletion that the farmer faces. On the part of the instrumentation itself, Robertson explained that: “The chord progression was a little bit complex. There’s a sifty feeling we were trying to get, which was subtle and bold at the same time.”
Between subtlety, boldness, promise, and destitution, The Band’s ‘King Harvest (Has Truly Come)’ is a complete masterpiece of using rock music as a political and historical vehicle to fuel conversation and awareness on issues that can all too easily be dwarfed by the noise of the world we live in. It’s particularly powerful that a song written in the late 1960s about the industrial struggles of the 1920s and ‘30s can be as resonant to modern America today as it was at any point before – but with a whole slew of lyrical mentors at their disposal, Robertson and Co had the task of penning a transcendental tune down to a fine art.
