| Dire Straits – The Man's Too Strong Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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@[mike105163:18109], I developed my interpretation as a teenager, the same age as your students, around the time this song was released. "Underling of some monster" sums up my perspective perfectly. At the time, I'd been reading a bunch of Stephen King. Randall Flagg, a powerful, sinister bringer of death, chaos, and manipulation, made his way through many of King's books, most spectacularly The Stand. I thought of that book’s Lloyd Henreid as the teller of this story; he was a wild, if petty, criminal who Flagg placed in a position of enormous authority over the remaining and naïve rabble of humankind, imposing Flagg’s totalitarian agenda. In my imagination, Lloyd looks back on his past with joy, remembering with bright finger-picking guitar his "run with the money" days robbing convenience stores and scoring drugs before becoming the book-burning enforcer. Knopfler delivers one of my favorite vocal performances in this song. He’s typically so very dry in his delivery, but the subtlety he brings in this piece shows he is a skilled actor delivering what he calls “an experiment in character and playwriting.” (http://members.tripod.com/~Dire_Straits/interview.html) Though Lloyd never experienced the chilling betrayal the song's protagonist relays ("Your sister gave me diamonds... and ah give 'em to your wife..."), he experienced nearly as bad, or in some ways even worse, at the hands of The Man. This song, in my imagination, allowed me to combine Lloyd’s universe with the blind followers of Flagg's many personas in The Dark Tower, Eyes of the Dragon, and more of Stephen King’s books. Lloyd was asking himself, “How did I get here? How did I become such an agent of evil?” |
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