He “roamed” passively to lose himself, “just to make this dock my home.” Remember, Redding “left home in Georgia.” To now describe a dock as “home” suggests a complete severance with his past. Redding did not journey for two thousand miles to find himself. The plaintive peak arrives with a pang “this loneliness won’t leave me alone.” After failing to heed the advice of others and running away from home, Redding feels alone. Only his physical substrate finds relief from the exertion of life. Redding is “sittin’… restin’ bones,” not his mind or his soul. He does not paint a picture of relaxation. After describing his inner state, Redding comes back to the dock of the bay. How can you expect your life to change if the song you are singing keeps circling the drain?Īnd this loneliness won't leave me a lone
The repetitiveness of the song begets a feeling of hopelessness, of being quagmired. From Redding’s perspective, it “looks like nothin’s gonna change.” Increasingly ecliptic, Redding disparages “everything,” which “seems to stay the same,” but also resigns to “remain the same” in light of the conflicting advice he receives. The penultimate stanza begins with a line that closely mirrors the closing line of the last stanza. However, co-writer and guitarist Steve Cropper, not present during Redding’s stay in the Bay area, “always envisioned a ship going under the Golden Gate Bridge.” It is Cropper who contributed these lines. As an aside, Redding actually spent his time on the Richardson Bay (some ten miles from San Francisco) with no view of the Golden Gate Bridge. A view of the Golden Gate Bridge, famed landmark and implement in hundreds of suicides, must add to the dread. The despair he feels provides a metaphorical weight to the San Francisco Bay where Redding spends his days sitting. Redding repeats his words he has “nothin’ to live for” and “nothing’s gonna come way.” Accompanying his constant sitting is a constant misery. A spectre stalks Redding across the continental United States, displacing him from his “home in Georgia.” Again, any argument that this song is uplifting or mere melancholy fails to account for the following bleak prescriptions. It is in the second stanza that we find out how Redding came to sit on the dock of the bay. Looks like nothin's gonna come my way, so Instead, he feels that he is “wastin’ time.” Although an overworked populace often fantasizes about wasting time, the rest of the song makes clear that the dock of the bay is not a paradise but a prison.
Redding does not prescribe sitting as joyful or relaxing or rejuvenating. Yet, the chorus also provides the first hint of resentment. Much like the ships, here the tide rolls in and out.
A world where the ships come and go, the sun rises and sets, and Redding, moored to the dock, sits and watches the world circle around.įirst, the chorus continues the description of the cyclical nature of Redding’s dock life. In embracing repetition, Redding juxtaposes the cyclical nature of the surrounding world with his own stagnation and lack of momentum. I have taken the liberty of bolding all phrases and words that Redding repeats in the song. It is striking how often Redding repeats his words, particularly when describing his own actions. Through repetitiveness and minute adjustments to common verses, the song conveys a spiralling into oblivion. And although highlighting a few choice lines would get that point across, there is a more subtle lyricism at play. Despite its simple, poppy melody, the lyrics betray a moroseness so deep. Rather, the song chronicles a broken man mired in loneliness and depression. It is an amazing song but also one that is often interpreted as an ode to relaxation, to melancholy. A work in progress, the song nonetheless became the first posthumous single to reach #1 on the Billboard Charts. In the days before a fatal plane crash, Redding was still in studio recording (Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay. The most famous song recorded by Redding is also the most tragic.
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