Friday Tunes: Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)

This week’s installment of labour-related music takes us back to the late 1970’s with Styx’s Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)—it can’t all be Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Blue Collar Man touches on unemployment and pride during the deindustrialization of the North America. As a bonus, ‘80s fans will notice Larry Gowan rocking the spinning piano (looking a bit like Mike Myers). And I’d say the boys have dabbled a bit in the botox (apparently rock'n'roll's drug culture has changed some over the years...).



Give me a job, give me security
Give me a chance to survive
I'm just a poor soul in the unemployment line
My God, I'm hardly alive

My mother and father, my wife and my friends
I see them laugh in my face
But I've got the power, and I've got the will
I'm not a charity case

I'll take those long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my eye to the keyhole
If it takes all that to be just what I am
Well, I'm gonna be a blue collar man

Make me an offer that I can't refuse
Make me respectable, man
This is my last time in the unemployment line
So like it or not I'll take those

Long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall
If it takes all that to be just what I am
Well, I'm gonna be a blue collar man

Keeping my mind on a better life
Where happiness is only a heartbeat away
Paradise, can it be all I heard it was
I close my eyes and maybe I'm already there

I'll take those long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall
All that be just what I am
Well, I'm gonna be a blue collar man
You don't understand

I'll take those long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my eye to the keyhole
If it takes all that be just who I am
Well I vow to be a blue collar, gotta be a blue collar,
Gonna be a Blue collar man.

Believe it.

-- Bob Barnetson