Drawing Out Hardin's "Black Sheep Boy"

"Here I am back home again."

From its forlorn opening line, Tim Hardin's "Black Sheep Boy" absolutely nails the feeling of facing the folks who knew you before you went through some profound changes. It reminds me of "The Graduate" sans the humor and the irony.

Part of the brilliance of the tune is that the listener is in much the same position as the singer's kinfolk, i.e., out of the loop. They (and we) know he's "been West," but not exactly where. When they inquire (on our behalf), he complains, "All they ask is where I've been," as if their curiosity were unjustified. Disaffected and feeling misunderstood, he wishes to be let alone: "I'm here to rest," he says.

Problem is, you can't go home.

The singer apparently figures this out in short order since, by verse two, he's hitting the road again. On his way out, he tells someone (who?), "If you love me/let me live in peace." These are cold words. Presumably whoever he's leaving behind does love him and won't find much consolation in yielding to his individualism, usually, and probably in this case, a synonym for selfishness.

Kept in the dark along with the singer's family, the listener wants to condemn this rambling man but can't. Because the utterly convincing pain in his voice indicates that he came back east not to rest, but in search of home. As he turns west again, we know the search was futile. The Black Sheep Boy can find comfort only in the arms of "pretty girls with faces fair." That is, strangers.

Like many of Hardin's ditties, "Black Sheep Boy" is quite short at a hair under two minutes long. The song's transience, like the singer's, seems simultaneously selfish and merciful: We want it to stick around longer, but could we bear it?

What the song's two verses lack in specifics they make up for in their strong, simple imagery, of a young man following the sun, his "golden curls of envied hair," his drifting from a flock he reckons himself both above and beneath.

Hardin's lyrics and resigned voice combine to make "Black Sheep Boy" (covered beautifully by Okkervil River to kick off their 2005 album of the same name) a true jewel of a song. With fewer than 100 words, an acoustic guitar, and a plaintive melody, he lulls his listeners into a crisis of ambivalence. Unable either to damn or defend the "family's unowned boy," we can only watch him go.