Better Things: 5:01 AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking)

"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.

I was a teenager in the '80s; I was at least as dramatic as the average; of course I was a Pink Floyd fan.

I had a Floyd song in This Year: When The Tigers Broke Free, which can still make me tear up when I hear it.

This time around, I have a song from around the same era, from Roger Waters's first solo record, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. This is more or less the title song: 5:01 AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking).

The whole record, as is standard for Waters, tells one story - in a loose, disjointed, not straightforward way, which is also typical. It's the story of one night, of one set of dreams, probably, for one man, who may or may not be Waters himself.

This section, or song, has some of the best guitar work on the record - the saying at the time was that the only way Waters could get a better guitarist for his solo work than Floyd's David Gilmour was by hiring Eric Clapton, and that's what he did.

The first two verses are scenarios - it's exactly what the title promises. The implied main character is a man, in the middle of his life - like Waters and his narrator. First comes the "cons," he's hitchhiking and picked up by "an angel on a Harley" who 

takes your hand
In some strange Californian handshake
And breaks the bone

In the second verse, the narrator gets picked up again, in what counts as the "pros:"

A housewife from Encino
Whose husband's on the golf course
With his book of rules

And Waters heavily hints they have a bit of afternoon delight.

Then the main character has a weirder, more clearly dreamlike vision, in which Yoko Ono urges him to jump to what would probably be his death - or maybe that's the shock that makes the main character pull back from his dangerous activities, since the whole album is the story of him going wild and then coming back to his wife.

Waters always has complicated metaphors and deep meanings, which aren't always completely clear or explicable in his songs. But the general idea is bold and upfront, and this is one of his best-sounding songs, from a record that I tend to think gets forgotten. That guitar is hard to resist...as is the sense of possibility and adventure on the open road.