Okay, let’s get this part out of the way:
In 1925, the Tennessee state legislature passed The Butler Act, which made it a crime to teach evolution in public schools. It didn’t take long for a young science teacher named John Thomas Scopes to challenge the law by flagrantly violating it and inviting prosecution, which came swiftly and with much notoriety.
The “Scopes Monkey Trial” attracted worldwide media attention, thanks in large part to an all-star cast that included presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan leading the prosecution, famed attorney Clarence Darrow and the American Civil Liberties Union representing the defense, and popular journalist H. L. Mencken calling the play-by-play for the people at home.
The trial became a media and spectator circus, and if you don’t already know how it turned out, it’s easy enough to consult a history book or a google search to find out. It’s not worth our time to discuss it any further here.
I bring this up only because every–and i mean every written account I’ve ever seen of “Part Man, Part Monkey” paints Bruce’s song as a commentary on the Scopes Monkey Trial.
But it’s not.
It may have been inspired by Inherit the Wind–a play, film, and TV movie that dramatized the events of the trial–but that’s not what the song is about. So let’s take a listen to this Human Touch outtake (which Bruce eventually released as a B-side to “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” and on Tracks six years later), and then we’ll discuss.
The Scopes Monkey Trial has about as much to do with understanding “Part Man, Part Monkey” as Mary’s dress does to grokking “Thunder Road.”
“Part Man, Part Monkey” isn’t societal commentary; it’s basically a sex romp. Bruce settles the question of whether man evolved from the monkey by answering: what do you mean by “evolved?” I’m still a primal beast that’ll sleep with anything in a skirt.
Let’s start with the first verse, the one that invites all the Scopes comparisons. (To be fair, Bruce almost always introduced the song with a direct reference to it.)
They prosecuted some poor sucker in these United States
For teaching that man descended from the apes
They coulda settled that case without a fuss or fight
If they’d seen me chasing you, sugar, through the jungle last night
They’d a-called in that jury and a one two three, said
Part man, part monkey, definitely
Why waste time with a trial, Bruce argues. I’m living proof that men are still part simian.
With the second verse, we leave the trial to the pages of history, as we learn that while our narrator may be single-minded, he’s not exactly monogamous.
Well the church bell rings from the corner steeple
Man in a monkey suit swears he’ll do no evil
Offers his lover’s prayer but his soul lies
Dark and drifting and unsatisfied
Well hey bartender tell me what do you see
Part man, part monkey, looks like to me
Even on his wedding day, our narrator recognizes deep down that he’s not a paragon of fidelity. It’s only a matter of time before he strays, and he attributes that to millions of years of evolutionary biological urges. Let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge the clever “monkey suit” reference–it serves both as common idiom for a tuxedo and as ironic humor (because he’s more accurately a monkey in a man suit).
The bridge sets up some romantic imagery, but we quickly learn that romance isn’t really what’s on his mind.
Well the night is dark, the moon is full
The flowers of romance exert their pull
We talk awhile, my fingers slip
I’m hard and crackling like a whip
Bruce wraps up the song by returning to the root of the debate: was the first man created divinely or via evolution? Our narrator enters himself into the evidentiary record as Exhibit A.
Well did God make man in a breath of holy fire
Or did he crawl on up out of the muck and mire
Well the man on the street believes what the bible tells him so
But you can ask me, mister, because I know
Tell them soul-sucking preachers to come on down and see
Part man, part monkey, baby that’s me
The irony of “Part Man, Part Monkey” is that it’s a slight song, yet it tends to get more credit than it deserves for having substance.
And that’s too bad, because taken for what it is–a light-hearted reggae rocker featuring the return of David Sancious on keys–it’s a perfectly decent song that would have been thematically if not musically at home on both Tunnel of Love (for which it was originally recorded) and Human Touch (for which it was re-recorded and eventually released as an outtake).
Bruce seems to have recognized that in concert, often hamming it up on stage both while introducing and performing the song throughout the Tunnel of Love Tour in 1988.
Bruce shelved “Part Man, Part Monkey” after that tour, but when history rhymed in 2005, he saw an opportunity to bring it back to the stage with new relevance.
Another trial (less famous than the one 80 years earlier) captivated the media that year: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District centered on a local school district’s requirement for a pseudo-scientific theory called “intelligent design” to be taught as an alternative to evolutionary theory in the classroom.
At the very end of the year, a federal judge rejected the school district’s policy, but Bruce had already spent much of the year lampooning the very fact that the trial even happened at all.
Bruce has only brought “Part Man, Part Monkey” back once since that lawsuit was resolved, as an audible during a Magic Tour show in Hershey in 2008.
It’s been absent ever since, most likely because it’s an outlier in Bruce’s catalog–musically different from the rest of his body of work, too slight to offer food for thought and thankfully now removed from relevance to current events.
It’s still a fun song, though, and one that acknowledges an elemental truth: you can seek enlightenment all day long, but at the end of that day that inner monkey will still be there waiting for its turn at the wheel.
Part Man, Part Monkey
Recorded: January 1990
Released: Tracks (1998), 18 Tracks (1999)
First performed: February 25, 1988 (Worcester, MA)
Last performed: August 19, 2008 (Hershey, PA)
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A very important “Roll”. After reading your insightful review I tend to believe both: It is a “sex romp” but also social commentary, perhaps to justify Bruce’s personal demons that haunted him during his personal infidelity of 1987 and ’88. There’s no question Bruce had a deep “edge” during the Tunnel tour. “Part Man” was most often followed by “Walk Like A Man” on that tour, seeming to balance the emotional/moral fight within. But then again, you may be right as Bruce implores, “Sylvia, how do you call your lover boy?” “Her” arousing response follows, “Baby. Oh Baby! Oh Baby! You’re the One!”