Covered: "I Can't Write Left Handed"

Bill Withers met a man. He was a soldier in Vietnam who had lost his right arm at war. He met this man and, to write a song, he became him:

"I can't write left-handed.
Would you please write a letter-write a letter to my mother?
Tell her to tell — tell her to tell the family lawyer.
Trying to get a deferment for my younger brother.
Tell the Rev. Harris to pray for me. Lord, lord, lord.
I aint gonna live — I don't believe I'm going to live to get much older.
Strange little man over here in Vietnam I aint never seen, bless
his heart, aint never done nothing to, he done shot me in my shoulder.

Boot camp we had classes.
You know we talked about fighting — fighting everyday.
And looking through rosy colored glasses, I must admit it seemed exciting anyway.
Oh, but someone that day overlooked to tell me bullets look better,
I must say — brother — when they're coming at you than going out the other way
And please call up the Rev. Harris. Tell him to ask the Lord to do some good things for me.
Tell him I aint gonna live — I aint gonna live to get much older.

Whoa, Lord. Strange little man over here in Vietnam I aint never seen - bless his heart—
I aint never done nothing to, he done shot me in my shoulder."

He recorded the song at a performance at Carnegie Hall in October 1972, the month the war was declared over.



The John Legend and The Roots album, Wake Up!, which dropped yesterday, is a slew of covers of both well- and lesser-known political songs from the days: from Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy” and Donny Hathaway’s “Little Ghetto Boy” to Baby Huey’s “Hard Times.” The idea is to inspire people to act on modern struggles that parallel those that the 60s and 70s artists scribed in song.

The point of a cover should be to change something in the song — to reach into its innards and pluck on a new nerve. That happens on “Left Handed.”

In Withers’ version, the storied man sets you down in a church pew and tells you it straight, like an adult, but on both knees. He holds you down in that melancholy, your head sways back and forth.

Legend and The Roots’ start in the church too, but you’re not listening to him. You are him (if you let it happen to you). You went. And now that you’re back, it won’t leave you. You don’t just beg someone to write a letter to your mother — you rip in and out of PTSD flashbacks; the snares march; people scream; war's poetic chaos snarls at you. And when you think you've outlived its memory, it pulls you back.

Here are two live versions.

Withers (audio):


John Legend and The Roots (audio and video):


(Photos: Withers: kalamu.com; Legend & The Roots: VH1Blog)