Homeless Persons' Memorial Day Top 100 Songs
Song #4
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"Homeless Brother"
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"Homeless Brother" is an insightfully written song about the harsh realities of the hobo lifestyle with a sparse folk texture; just McLean on acoustic guitar and lead vocal and featuring Pete Seeger on banjo and harmony vocal. The song is the title track for McLean's 5th studio album and was released in 1974. Homeless Brother, the album, is a concept album with every song referencing the hobo lifestyle.
There are many differences between the American hobo during the Great Depression and persons experiencing homelessness in modern days. History has been kind to the hobo to an extent, having made a place in American culture for hobos during that era of great economic suffering by many Americans. We often see hobos depicted as being funny or living a chosen lifestyle that was more fun than facing the reality of unemployment, low wages, and the responsibilities of raising a family in harsh economic times. Public perception leans more towards a painted picture of hobos as having escaped those realities and trading them for some great American adventure that somehow was very fun for them and made them very happy.
From my personal homeless experience, I can say that being broke, being isolated from loved-ones, being insecure about ones future, feeling powerless and abandoned by society, these are all things that torture the human spirit. So, I don't believe that the hobos life during the Depression was fun at all. I believe it was just as miserable as being homeless today in many ways.
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The top five songs of the 20th century were:
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"Homeless Brother"
Lyrics
I was walking by the graveyard, late last Friday night,
I heard somebody yelling, it sounded like a fight.
It was just a drunken hobo dancing circles in the night,
Pouring whiskey on the headstones in the blue moonlight.
So often have I wondered where these homeless brothers go,
Down in some hidden valley were their sorrows cannot show,
Where the police cannot find them, where the wanted men can go.
There's freedom when your walking, even though you're walking slow.
Smash your bottle on a gravestone and live while you can,
That homeless brother is my friend.
It's hard to be a pack rat, it's hard to be a 'bo,
But living's so much harder where the heartless people go.
Somewhere the dogs are barking and the children seem to know
That Jesus on the highway was a lost hobo.
And they hear the holy silence of the temples in the hill,
And they see the ragged tatters as another kind of thrill.
And they envy him the sunshine and they pity him the chill,
And they're sad to do their living for some other kind of thrill.
Smash your bottle on a gravestone and live while you can,
That homeless brother is my friend.
Somewhere there was a woman, somewhere there was a child,
Somewhere there was a cottage where the marigolds grew wild.
But some where's just like nowhere when you leave it for a while,
You'll find the broken-hearted when you're travelling jungle-style.
Down the bowels of a broken land where numbers live like men,
Where those who keep their senses have them taken back again,
Where the night stick cracks with crazy rage, where madmen don't
Pretend,
Where wealth has no beginning and poverty no end.
Smash your bottle on a gravestone and live while you can,
That homeless brother is my friend.
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