Song Lyric of the Day (Billy Joel, on the Fate of Billy the Kid)

“One cold day a posse captured Billy
And the judge said string him up for what he did
And the cowboys and their kin
Like the sea came pouring in to watch
The hangin' of Billy the Kid.”—Billy Joel, “The Ballad of Billy the Kid,” from his Piano Man LP (1973)

When I was first heard as a teen Billy Joel’s account of the death of Billy the Kid, it never really bothered me that he got the facts of the case all wrong, I was so caught up in the excitement of hearing this fresh new rock ‘n’ roll voice (not to mention the not-so-subtle tribute to the Western strains of Aaron Copland in the background of the song).

To be fair to the Piano Man, he has acknowledged that he took considerable poetic license with the facts of the case: i.e., that William H. Bonney / Henry Antrim/ William McCarty (the different names and how he came by them illustrative of the few facts we have on his life) in actuality met his end at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett on this date in 1881.

Now, I wish that musicians (and screenwriters) would try a different interpretation of The Kid’s life, something more along the lines of Michael Wallis’ Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride: that this legendary desperado was hardly either a cold-eyed psychopath or a Western Robin Hood, but more likely a scrawny kid from the streets of New York, son of an Irish Potato Famine emigrant, a fish out of water in the Southwest, forced to live by his wits after the death of his mom and stepfather; a junior member of a cattle-rustling outfit who came of age in when Civil War veterans often combined, in deadly fashion, alcohol and firearms to produce a deadly environment; and that he even had plea-bargained with New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur) when the deal came undone and he ended up with his appointment with legend.