Tears Of Rage

I've always been intrigued by the first lines of Tears of Rage:

We carried you
In our arms
On Independence Day

But it's only in recent years I've given more thought to the full lyrics of this touching song, its most transcendent version by The Band (below performing it at Woodstock, a performance I witnessed), and most recently relistened to it again, prompted by the discussion of the song in a podcast on The Band at National Review (it's a wonderful and insightful discussion on one of our best American bands, and certainly the best American band consisting of four Canadians and a guy from Arkansas).

Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics in 1967 and then approached Richard Manuel of The Band to do the music, which explains why it's melodically so different from most Dylan songs.  Dylan and The Band were in the midst of the casual recording of what became known as The Basement Tapes.
You can watch and listen to Garth Hudson, along with Robbie Robertson the only surviving members of The Band, talking about the recordings here.

According to Manuel (via the blog Untold Dylan):

“He came down to the basement with a piece of typewritten paper … and he just said, ‘Have you got any music for this?’ … I had a couple of musical movements that fit … so I just elaborated a bit, because I wasn’t sure what the lyrics meant. I couldn’t run upstairs and say, ‘What’s this mean, Bob: Now the heart is filled with gold as if it was a purse?”

Although some view the lyric as a metaphor, it can be read directly as the story of a father, anguished and heartbroken by his daughter's rejection, a rejection to which his own actions may have contributed.  It's unusual by the tenets of pop music and even by Dylan's standards which tended to be more caustic.  Manuel's soulful vocal adds to the pain in the lyrics.  Dylan was married in 1966, the year his son Jesse was born.  His daughter Anna arrived on July 11, 1967, a week after Independence Day.  From what I can determine of the hazy chronology of The Basement Tapes, Dylan wrote the lyrics after her birth.  In Dylan's autobiographical Chronicles: Volume 2, he talks of the 1966-67 period as one when he used the excuse of a minor motorcycle accident to withdraw from the pressures of his adoring public, and instead spend time with his young family.  This may have been the origin of the remarkably mature and thoughful lyric.

Richard Manuel is a tragic figure.  Painfully shy and introverted, he wrote or co-wrote several beautiful songs on The Band's first two albums, including Whispering Pines, When You Awake, We Can Talk, and Lonesome Suzie.  After The Band's initial success he plunged into alcohol and drug abuse, contributing much less to the group's remaining albums.  In 1986 he killed himself.

We carried you in our arms
On Independence Day
And now you’d throw us all aside
And put us on our way
Oh what dear daughter ’neath the sun
Would treat a father so
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him, “No?”
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We’re so alone
And life is brief

We pointed out the way to go
And scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand
Now, I want you to know that while we watched
You discover there was no one true
Most ev’rybody really thought
It was a childish thing to do
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We’re so low
And life is brief

It was all very painless
When you went out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe
And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse
But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We’re so low
And life is brief