El Paso (song) - The Song

The Song

"El Paso" was, at some four minutes and thirty-eight seconds in duration, far longer than most contemporary singles at the time. Robbins' record company was unsure if radio stations would play such a long song, and so released two versions of the song: the full-length version on one side, and an edited version on the other which was nearer to the three-minute mark. The full-length version was overwhelmingly preferred.

"Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl..."

The song is a first-person narrative told by a cowboy who is in El Paso, Texas, in the days of the Wild West. He falls in love with a young Mexican woman, Feleena, a dancer at "Rosa's Cantina". When another cowboy makes advances on "wicked Feleena", the narrator guns down the challenger, then flees El Paso for fear of being hanged for murder or killed in revenge by his victim's friends. (The truncated version of the song, often found on compilations, omits a verse in which the narrator expresses shock and remorse over the killing before realizing he has to flee.) Exiting El Paso, he hides out in the "badlands of New Mexico".

The narrator switches from the past tense to the present tense for the remainder of the song, describing the yearning that drives him to return to El Paso: "It's been so long since I've seen the young maiden / My love is stronger than my fear of death". Upon entering the town, he is attacked and fatally wounded by a posse. At the end of the song, the cowboy recounts that he is found by Feleena, and he (apparently) dies in her arms.

Six years later, Robbins wrote a sequel to "El Paso", telling the story from Feleena's point of view (see below). This song confirmed that the cowboy does indeed die in Feleena's arms.