Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man

From rocksbackpages.com/features/0009_parsons_scoppa.html

"Written while the Byrds were on tour following the release of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, this Parsons-McGuinn-penned caricature showed up on the Byrds’ subsequent LP, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde, after Parsons had left. "Gram and I were in a hotel room in London reminiscing about our encounter with Nashville D.J. Ralph Emery," McGuinn recalls. "We'd taken our single, ‘You Ain't Goin' Nowhere,’ to him in hopes of getting it played on WSM, a powerful clear-channel radio station. Ralph previewed the demo disk and said, ‘I'm not going to play that on my show!’ We asked why not and he demanded, ‘What’s it about?' I told him that it was a Bob Dylan song and no one knew what they were about. Ralph didn't think that was funny. He said, ‘Bob Dylan! If he wore green socks, everybody would wear green socks.’ We left the station feeling discouraged. So now in London, I suggested to Gram that we write a song about that experience. We decided that because Ralph had advertised truck seats on his show, he reminded us of a drugstore cowboy, only in his case a ‘Drugstore Truck Drivin' Man.’ "

I read somewhere that the song is also about Ronald Reagan, who was governor in California at the time, and him being a rasist.

A red-necked bigot ?

About what puppyfat said...the idea that this song is about Ronald Reagan makes no sense. None of the language used even implies anything about him. Even if you think he was a racist, which he wasn't, it wouldn't make any sense for them to have not have written in one single reference to anything else about him. Using a DJ as a metaphor for a governor and talking about whether or not he likes your music doesn't exactly make sense.

As a prelude to the performance of "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969, Jeffrey Shurtleff, accompanied by Joan Baez, spoke at length about the draft resistance movement(*see below) in the United States and dedicated the song to the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan (a stout supporter of the Vietnam War) referring to Mr. Reagan as "Ronald Ray-Gun ... Zap!” With his tongue-in-cheek dedication, Shurtleff set the stage for comparisons to follow. The character in the song "don't like resistance I know/And he said it last night on a big TV show./He's got him a medal that he won in the war/Weighs five hundred pounds and it sleeps by the door." Clearly, the conflict that existed was between the government and the people, between the draft resistance movement and the politicians, between the draft resister and Ronald Reagan. (home.comcast.net/~dongillette/contemp.html)

"Hello to all friends of the draft resistance revolution in America. Good evening, I hope it stops raining. One thing about the draft resistance that's different from other movements and revolutions in this country is that we have enemies. It's one of the beautiful about it. To show that our hearts are in the right place, I'll sing a song for the Governor of California, Ronald Ray-Gun...Zap!"

home.comcast.net/~dongillette/contemp.html

Thanks for the comment explaining the Ralph Emory incident. The line at the end of the song, "This one's for you, Ralph" made me wonder if they were talking about Ralph Emory. Very interesting.

The idea that it refers to Ronald Reagan comes, at least, from Joan Baez's version at Woodstock.

And I think it is an entirely plausible interpretation.

Especially after RR got his syndicated radio show.

After all, songs mean what their singers or listeners think they mean.

And I always think of Ronald Raygun when I hear this song.