Banks of the Ohio letter
Ed - The real meaning of the original lyrics behind this song!
SO yet another artist has changed the gender in which a song has been written and lost the meaning of a once good lyric.
I refer to Olivia Newton-John’s version of “Banks Of The Ohio”. I can remember the original lyric in a version by Joan Baez, backed by the Greenbriar Boys and the effect of the story was twice as powerful, even though a girl was singing it. It is about a boy who gets a girl in trouble, but kills her in a moment of passion, because he is afraid of having to marry her and face up to it.
Olivia Newton-John’s version eliminates all of this and suggests it is a simple case of murder by the girl because the boy refused her advances. Somehow it just doesn’t work. Who is the prude who ruined this great ballad?
MARTIN SHENK, Kensington Park Gardens, London W11.