Man In A Long Black Coat

I was going to wait another day or two, after all i've been thinking about this song since '89 and always felt this way about it but never wrote it down.

anyway, right after the last post i pulled out oh mercy and started listening and typing.

now that my homework is done can i go cook dinner? :-)))

"Crickets are chirpin', the water is high, there's a soft cottondress on the line hangin' dry,
the windows wide open, African trees bent over backwards from ahurricane breeze."

Bob's lyrics do what literature does; they paint a picture in your mind. You feel the heat of August's hurricane season, feel the ominous wind blowin the clothes. You can picture the trees oddly bent as though from a foreign landscape and all the while you hear these crickets chirpin`. The setting is in olden days before laundromats. Countryside pastoral barns and white clapboard churches with wooden steeples. Dropping his "g's" to me symbolizes simple country people, the type that would wear an unstarched white apron like dress. The music is menacing and has a tremendous moodsetting quality. His staccato delivery with a voice that is mysterious, deep and full, set the scene across as well as the 4, 6 and 12 string guitars chirpin' squeakin' thumpin' slurin' sustainin' and a harmonica punctuatin` momentarily the hot windy setting.

Bob finishes this first sentence at 1:30 and what a lot has been said already in this intro.

"Not a word of goodbye, not even a note, she gone with the man inthe long black coat."

She gonnnne - and quick too, left her dress on the line and no word of farewell. This man in the long black coat always makes me think only of a preacher. A classic southern or old west character, carrying a bible under his arm with dark clouds and lightning and thunder crackin' behind him. Long black coats in olden day rural America remind me of funeral parlors and churches - maybe I watched too many westerns with my dad who btw always called them padres. I can see that man in his flowing coat running up the stairs of a small town church. The comical all full-filling full length leather coat line was years later, and anyway this ain`t it. This coat to me is cotton with big buttons or looped hooks.

"Somebody seen him hangin around at the old dance hall on the outskirts of town, he looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask if he wanted todance, he had a face like a mask."

I've heard the interpretation that the man is the grim reaper, "death" himself in the long black coat as he was comin' to get her. But this line rules that out to me. First of all a woman wouldn't ask a bag of bones like "death" to dance. And anyway,everybody knows that when death comes knockin' on your door he wears a hooded cloak and carries a big scythe and that woulda caused the townsfolk to talk a little hysterically if they saw him hangin around their hoe down, um, hootenanny.
To me the mask means means he was expressionless. If he was apreacher incognito as a regular single unattached available man then he was in an awkward situation. A preacher would only be used to good church women who approached him on Sundays to tell him innocent stories, give him a home made pie or tell him that they enjoyed his sermon.

"Somebody said from the Bible he'd quote there was dust on the manin the long black coat."

THE BIBLE HE'D QUOTE kinda stands out, don't it just say "HINT,HINT."

Small town people talking about the stranger and the woman. "Somebody seen him", "somebody said" yep, the gossip was stirring. Dance halls were for floozies, the girls in the redgarters. (I got Joe's attention now.) Dust of rumors, dust of the road he traveled to get from the town where he preached to this town where he was a stranger dressed like a preacher and who quoted from the bible. Some people say it is dust from digging her grave, but I'd go with the dust of rumors that bob "covered" in another song.

"Preacher was a talkin' there's a sermon he gave, he said every man's conscience is vile and depraved, you cannot depend on it to be your guide when it's you who must keep it satisfied. It ain't easy to swallow, it sticks in the throat, she gave her heart to the man in the long black coat."

Woah, pure Bob brilliance. He's bringing out in song yet another human loop that we all fall into. Every---All--- are fallible and preachers too are subject to fail and fall. Some sermonize to seek perfection, to come to God with a white clean angelic life, and they therefore are hypocrites preaching hypocrisy. This preacher knows better, this preacher has walked a few miles on the wrong side of the road and been covered in dust. The guilt is enormous for a preacher who looked into the eyes of a married woman and stole her heart away from her husband.

"There are no mistakes in life some people say it is true sometimeyou can see it that way. But people don't live or die, people just float. She went with theman in the long black coat."

Everything is meant to be, there are no coincidences, life happens as it should. Free will, she went on her way and floated along withher destiny where it led. She was in a dance hall and asked a man to dance so the relationship with the abandoned man at home was already over.

"There's smoke on the water, it's a been there since June, tree trunks uprooted, 'neath the high crescent moon. Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force, somebody is out there beating on a dead horse."

The abandoned man is seeking understanding of her discontent. He recalls the warning signs - where there is smoke there is fire -like a tree, a relationship rots from the roots and eventually topples over and dies - and he is rehashing the past which at this point ain`t going to do him any good. She`s gone and there is no use in beating himself up over the loss but for a while he will rant "WHY?" and beat the dead horse till he gains understanding, time heals his wounds and her memory has faded and he is able to move on.

She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote, She gone withthe man in the long black coat

Karen