Three days after Otis Redding recorded the song he died in a plane crash on the 10th December, 1967, two days before I was born and a month before the song was released. It was far and away his biggest hit and also had the notoriety of being the first ever posthumous Number One single in America. At the time of his death, Redding was still a rising star moving closer and closer to mainstream success. Who knows what other classics he would have gone on to record if he had lived?
From its opening lines, the song finds Redding stuck in a lifeless humdrum: "Sittin' in the morning sun/ I'll be sittin' when the evening come/ Watching the ships roll in, and then I watch them roll away again." The lyric could be written off as some sort of country and western nod to the contentment of living a simple-life, but Otis grows increasingly despairing as the song goes on: "I've had nothing to live for/ And looks like nothing's gonna come my way" he moans on the second verse, giving way to "Sittin' here resting my bones/ And this loneliness won't leave me alone" on the third and final verse.
To me the song has always been about the point when you realise nothing is working out in your life, and you decide to stop fighting everything. Not in a defeatist, or suicidal giving-up hope way, just stopping the struggle and the fight and taking a break from it all. For me it’s about taking a moment and and relaxing long enough to notice the beauty of nature all around you and quietly watch the world go by and enjoy it rather than battle it.
I’ve always thought that there’s a hidden beauty in wasting time, everybody needs to waste time at points in their life. It’s a recharging of your life force and a reconnecting of your soul with nature and the world around you. Somehow rising above the stress and conflict of life in the end by just wasting time and in course, finding renewed hope. The gentle relaxed whistling at the end is the moment in the song where that reconnection with our inner soul and future hope happens for me.
The whistling at the end, although never intended to be left in the song, actually conveys so much of the mood and attitude that it is an essential element of the track. It immediately translates to something akin to inattentively wasting time. It makes for a perfect way of capturing the real life emotional experience of the song. In this way, I’m glad Otis never got a chance to finish the song and write a final verse as it’s perfect as it is. Most people when mixing it would have been tempted to repeat part of either verse one or two’s lyrics at the end rather than leave the whistling in, Steve Cropper though was wise enough to see the value in keeping it in and I think it’s a very important part of what makes this song the classic that it is.
The Mind’s Eye
I must say Stax guitarist and co-writer of the song, Steve Cropper, did a wonderful job mixing it. Even using the sound effects of waves and seagulls as deftly as if they were musical instruments. In a time before music videos it was impossible not to listen to this song without seeing everything play out inside your head in full techno-colour real life images just like you were watching a wide screen movie.
(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay reminds me of so many times in my life when all seemed hopeless. It’s yet another example of the apparent futility of the hands we are sometimes dealt. But in it there’s also a nod to hope and a better future. Otis Redding was just an awesome soul performer. It still amazes me to see the power and emotion he put into every single song he did.
So as I said, the track is one of my all-time favourite songs, I mean - how can you not love it? It's so mellow and just has such a laid back vibe that you just don't seem to find in songs these days.
For me, this is quite possibly the greatest soul song ever written. There's nothing quite like cracking open a cold one, listening to "Dock of the Bay" while sitting by the ocean just wasting time.
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