Cockburn's early albums were fairly straight ahead folk music spotlighting his brilliant guitar playing. In fact, there were a good number of instrumental guitar numbers on those early recordings. A Christian element came into his music around the time of the album Salt, Sun and Time, and over time his writing has taken on a stronger and stronger political orientation.
Perhaps the most consistent element of Cockburn's music has been his willingness to change and evolve over time. In this way, he is similar to fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.
He has had a couple of radio hits in the United States, including (Wondering Where the Lions Are and If I Had a Rocket Launcher).
His albums in the 80s are considered some of his strongest, including Humans, Inner City Front, Stealing Fire, and Big Circumstance. After Big Circumstance he struggled with writer's block, and his output began to slow down; but he recovered with the formidable Nothing But a Burning Light, which led the way back to a sparer, more folk-oriented form of music. His later album The Charity of Night contains one of his most thoughtful songs, Pacing the Cage.
His 2006 album Life Short Call Now was preceded by Speechless, a collection of instrumentals, many of them from earlier albums. The album highlights Cockburn's prodigious abilities as a guitarist.
Cockburn's 31st studio album,Small Source of Comfort was released in March, 2011. BruceCockburn.com called the album "an adventurous collection of songs of romance, protest and spiritual discovery. The album, primarily acoustic yet rhythmically savvy, is rich in Cockburn’s characteristic blend of folk, blues, jazz and rock."
Silver Wheels
Bruce Cockburn Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Hot tires sing like a string being bowed
Sudden town rears up then explodes
Fragments resolve into white line code
Whirl on silver wheels
Black earth energy receptor fields
Undulate under a grey cloud shield
That cleaves apart hills soil rich as blood
Whirl on silver wheels
Highway squeeze in construction steam
Stop caution hard hat yellow insect machines
Silver steel towers stalk rolling land
Toward distant stacks that shout feed on demand
Whirl on silver wheels
Whirl on silver wheels
One hundred miles later the sky has changed
Urban anticipation, we get four lanes
Red orange furnace sphere notches down
Throws up silhouette skyline in brown
Whirl on silver wheels
Sun dogs flare on windshield glass
Sudden swoop skyward iron horse overpass
Pass a man walking like the man in the moon
Walking like his head's full of Irish fiddle tunes
Whirl on silver wheels
The skin around every city looks the same
Miles of flat neon spelling well known names
Used trucks dirty donuts you you're the one
Fat wheeled cars squeal into the sun
Whirl on silver wheels
Radio speakers gargle top forty trash
Muzak soundtrack to slow collapse
Planet engines pulsate in sidereal time
If you listen close you can hear the whine
Whirl on silver wheels
Whirl on silver wheels
Bruce Cockburn's "Silver Wheels" is a haunting commentary on the numbing isolation of modern technology and industrialization. In the song, Cockburn paints a vivid picture of a road trip, describing the landscape that rushes past the car windows, as well as the alienation that the passengers feel from the world outside their metal cocoon. The opening lines of "Silver Wheels" describe a "high speed drift" on a "prairie road." The tires sing like a bowstring as the car races along. But the world outside is fragmented and reduced to a "white line code." The car is insulated from the life around it, speeding through the landscape with no connection or empathy for the earth.
As the car moves into more industrialized areas, the landscape is replaced by "black earth energy receptor fields" and "rolling land" that stretch towards "distant stacks that shout feed on demand." The factories and towers are a reminder of humanity's destructive impact on the planet, as the land is defiled and the sky filled with pollutants. Cockburn's lyrics powerfully evoke the sense of desolation and disconnection that comes from being trapped inside a world of metal and concrete, driving through a land that becomes more and more sterile and homogenized.
Line by Line Meaning
High speed drift on a prairie road
We are traveling at high speeds on a road that lies on a vast, open plain
Hot tires sing like a string being bowed
The sound of the tires is like the sound of a string from a musical instrument being played
Sudden town rears up then explodes
Suddenly, a town appears and grows larger until it explodes with activity
Fragments resolve into white line code
The individual parts of the town become visible and the road markings resemble code
Whirl on silver wheels
We continue to travel quickly on our silver wheels
Black earth energy receptor fields
We are passing fields of earth that absorb energy
Undulate under a grey cloud shield
The fields move in waves beneath a shield of gray clouds
We outrun a river color brick red mud
We move faster than a river of muddy red water flowing alongside us
That cleaves apart hills soil rich as blood
The river separates hills that have soil that is rich and red like blood
Whirl on silver wheels
We are still traveling quickly on our silver wheels
Highway squeeze in construction steam
The highway becomes narrow due to construction and there is steam rising from it
Stop caution hard hat yellow insect machines
There are warning signs for hard hat workers and machinery that looks like insects
Silver steel towers stalk rolling land
Tall towers made of silver steel are built on the rolling land around us
Toward distant stacks that shout feed on demand
The towers lead towards stacks that release smoke and produce supplies on demand
Whirl on silver wheels
We continue to speed along on our silver wheels
One hundred miles later the sky has changed
After a hundred miles, the sky looks different
Urban anticipation, we get four lanes
We are excited to see the city and enter a road with four lanes
Red orange furnace sphere notches down
The sun sets and becomes a red-orange ball in the sky
Throws up silhouette skyline in brown
The city skyline appears as a silhouette in the brown light
Whirl on silver wheels
We are still traveling quickly on the silver wheels
Sun dogs flare on windshield glass
Patterns created by sunlight reflect off the windshield and look like dogs
Sudden swoop skyward iron horse overpass
We pass under an iron overpass that rises up towards the sky
Pass a man walking like the man in the moon
We pass a man who walks like the caricature of a man in the moon
Walking like his head's full of Irish fiddle tunes
The man seems happy as he walks and might be humming Irish fiddle music to himself
Whirl on silver wheels
We continue to speed along on our silver wheels
The skin around every city looks the same
The area around every city appears similar
Miles of flat neon spelling well known names
There are many miles of flat land with neon signs displaying familiar names
Used trucks dirty donuts you you're the one
Used trucks driving around in circles are a common sight and you could be one of them
Fat wheeled cars squeal into the sun
Large cars with fat wheels make noise as they move into the sun
Whirl on silver wheels
We are still traveling quickly on our silver wheels
Radio speakers gargle top forty trash
The radio broadcasts popular music that is generally considered low quality
Muzak soundtrack to slow collapse
The background music played on speakers seems to contribute to a feeling of decline
Planet engines pulsate in sidereal time
The planet seems to have an engine that pulses in time with the stars
If you listen close you can hear the whine
If you listen carefully, you can hear a high-pitched noise
Whirl on silver wheels
We continue to speed along on our silver wheels
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Bruce Cockburn
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
P T
I got to sit with Bruce for about an hour at Ring Music in Toronto sometime in the winter of 1977/78. He walked in with his manager and his dog. He was there to pick up something that wasn't quite ready so he wandered toward the front of the store where I was sitting with a guitar. I knew who he was. I'd been totally absorbed by his latest album which was In The Falling Dark. I was sweating bullets but I got up the nerve to ask if he'd mind me asking about Foxglove (Dark Horse album). I'd never been able to figure it out. That's when he told me it was open C tuning with a capo at the 2nd fret. No wonder I couldn't figure it out. I didn't know anything about open tunings. He took the guitar I had, tuned it to open C (warning me about the possibility of the B string breaking sometimes) and then played Foxglove right there. I was all set after that. When I told him that I was transcribing a lot of his guitar parts from several albums by ear he was surprised and actually seemed flattered. (there was no internet then, no computers, no cell phones, no apps, no youtube, no forums - just a vinyl record, a turntable and a stereo receiver. You were on your own if you wanted to learn a piece from a record). I had figured out the guitar part for Silver Wheels and he asked me to show him. I was a nervous wreck but I managed to play about a 3rd of it for him. I asked him about the interesting lyrics to Silver Wheels. He said it was just a collection of visual memories of things he'd seen while driving back and forth across Canada. Back then he drove a pickup truck with a camper "cap" on the back and he drove everywhere to concerts and festivals. We spoke about a few other things in quick succession before he got up to carry on with whatever it was he came in for. Shortly before he left, his dog cleaned out the front window of the store when a woman carrying a cat walked by. Guitars and chairs went flying. Nothing broken as I recall. This was all 40 years ago now but it was a very memorable day.
Dan Kelly
Wow that’s a great story
I remember working on Silver Wheels way back then when I was 18. I get how you were so nervous with him! Thanks for telling the story.
Arno Kilianski
I always though it was a song about motorcycling. The lyrics describe perfectly how the world looks to me when I'm riding.
P T
@Timothy Berg Tim, one other thing I recall about that encounter : when I was showing him the chords I had transcribed for Silver Wheels, he stopped me at one point and asked me why I was anchoring my right hand pinky finger on the guitar. My answer was, " because I saw you play this way so I figured this must the right way to do it". He told me to try to break the habit if it wasn't too late ( I was a beginner then) because he felt that it limited what could be done with the right hand. He said he'd been doing it that way too long and he couldn't break the habit. He also said his brother was a better fingerpicker than him and his hand floated freely like a classical guitarist.
P T
@Timothy Berg You're welcome Tim. Once you get into Open 'C' tuning, the whole thing just falls into place. For the fretting hand, it's pretty easy for the most part. It was the right hand that I found challenging. At the time my fingerpicking skills were new and very limited. But after learning Foxglove, my skills went to intermediate and perhaps beyond. It took me a few months to get it perfect. Foxglove became a 'study' (etude) for me
Timothy Berg
Thank you for the story, and the last piece of information (open C ) that I
needed to start to learn how to play foxglove by using someone's acoustic
guitar cover; the playback speed is set to 0.75, capo on 2nd fret.
And practice until I get it right.
Bill Sampson
This album was so very important to me back then. It's still astounding.
jnsii54
Far too few know of this amazingly talented songwriter. A tremendous talent.
zauzari
Timeless magick!
Mike Niebauer
I saw him at a concert on Banff, Alberta when I was 15. I was there visiting and was able to get tickets on the day of the concert. His music and his love truly touched my soul.