Country Music’s Most Wholesome Song Is Truly Psychotic

4 Here’s What Happens in the Song

Tommy’s dad goes to prison and makes his son promise to be a pacifist. “You don’t have to fight to be a man,” he says, and Tommy grows up with a reputation as a coward. 

One day, three guys gang-rape Tommy’s girlfriend Becky. That’s kind of heavy stuff for a song you hear on Sunday Morning Country Oldies, but this sort of thing happens in the county, and there’s no shying away from that. So, Tommy goes to a bar and locks the room so it’s just him and these three Gatlin Boys. Once he’s finished with them, “Not a Gatlin boy was standing.” 

The conclusion here is that, sometimes, you do have to fight when you’re a man. 

Besides being a huge hit, this song led to its own made-for-TV movie, starring Kenny Rogers himself as Tommy’s uncle. 

3 Wait, Did He Just Kill Three Guys?

If so, your first reaction is probably, “Good. They deserved it.” Which is fine: We’re not expecting you to be the Pope about this. But your second reaction should be, “Huh. I guess Tommy is going to prison for life.” Which means this song’s conclusion shouldn’t be nearly so triumphant as people think it is.

“Whoa, whoa,” some might now say. “There’s no way Tommy is seeing the inside of the cell. Everyone knows those Gatlin Boys had it coming, so no jury would convict him.” Don’t be so sure about that. There are time periods and settings, perhaps, when everyone would feel that way, and they’d probably also all agree to send the Gatlin Boys to the gallows without Tommy even needing to do the job. But that’s far from universal. 

Despite what movies suggest, “the guy who died deserved it” isn’t an acceptable defense. Meaning, if you argue it, the judge instructs the jury that you’re wrong or even declares a mistrial. Justifiable homicide includes acts of defense (killing the Boys to stop them from raping Becky) and sometimes crimes of ion (responding autonomously immediately upon witnessing the act), but not retaliation afterward. Consider the case of Louisiana man Jace Crehan, who got life in prison for killing the guy who sexually abused his wife. “I made her life better by what I did,” he said, much as Tommy says, “That one’s for Becky.”

The song may well be purposely telling us Tommy ends up in prison. His father died in prison, and the song ends with him apologizing to his dead father for following in his footsteps after all. 

2 Or Maybe He Didn’t Kill Them

However, a lot of people who hear the song think Tommy didn’t go all the way and kill those guys. Mostly, they find it improbable that he’d be able to kill all three, unless he secretly trained with the Kingsman secret service. They think this bar brawl ended with him knocking them all out. 

That’s how the movie portrays it. Actually showing him beat three men to death, after walking in unarmed, would probably involve showing him first fighting them conventionally, then knocking them out, then taking a little break for a sip of water before systematically checking on each and fetching a plank of wood so he can crush their throats one-by-one. That would be a bit off-putting, so they stick to a normal brawl scene.

But if that’s how this story ends, how psychotic that we consider this a triumph just because Tommy proved he can throw a punch. Getting knocked out in a bar isn’t a punishment for rape. That’s just a fun Saturday night. You have to imagine that, the following day, the Gatlin Boys see Tommy in the bar again and say, “What do you know, old yellow is back. Or maybe he’s not so yellow after all, eh? Barkeep, gimme a beer for Tommy.” 

Either that or, having established that Tommy is able to fight three men, the Gatlin Boys go hunt him down the next night, now with backup from their friends the Oak Ridge Boys and the Statler Brothers. “Not so tough now,” says Jim-Bob Gatlin. “C’mon boys, let’s teach this guy a lesson he won’t forget.”

“Yeah!” says Phil. “And then we rape him!”

“Dammit, Phil,” says Harold. “Why do you have to say that every single time?” 

But now that the idea is introduced, they do have to go through with it, and afterward, no one ever finds the body. 

1 What a Muddled Lesson We’re Left With

The movie does not end with the barroom brawl. Instead, a jury convicts all three Gatlin Boys. The movie goes this route not to teach you never to take matters into your own hands (you don’t always need to turn the other cheek, it declares), but because it realized what’s necessary to make this story feel satisfying once you really storyboard the whole thing. 

Also, the question of Tommy fighting to be a man isn’t resolved by this one bar fight. Instead, they have him enlist in the Marines, because the movie is set in 1941. Here, the lesson isn’t so much, “Sometimes, a man must fight to avenge wrongdoing as a matter of pride,” as, “Sometimes, a man must fight, such as when the safety of the entire world is at stake.”

Without those additions, if we go just by what the song spells out, Tommy has such a Pyrrhic victory that this almost feels like one of those anti-violence stories that everyone misinterprets. You could imagine this really is a story about how Tommy should have followed his dad’s advice and got the Gatlins hanged while staying free himself and marrying Becky. But he didn’t, and now he’ll rot. 

Alternatively, this could be a story about how you do need to fight, not just sometimes but always. If Tommy had established early on that he has the strength of three men and the power to end you, maybe those Gatlins never would have touched Becky in the first place. The expression is, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” not, “Keep your stick hidden until after the other side has already attacked.” 

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