| Genesis – For Absent Friends Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Steve Hackett wrote the music, but was too shy to approach Peter Gabriel, the main lyric writer as he had just joined the band (it was the summer of 1971). Instead, Hackett approached Phil Collins, who also recently joined and the two of them finished the song together. Collins sings it. It was included on the album to encourage the newbies, I think. Tony Banks later said he didn't particularly like it. The story is very simple: two widowers (we don't know if they are male or female) leave a park on a cold Sunday afternoon and then go to church, all the while lamenting their lost partners and seeing reminders of their younger days in the playground and the young mother. Straightforward and tender after the violent histrionics of the Musical Box, the previous track on the album. |
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| Genesis – Harold The Barrel Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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This was the first 'funny' song done by Genesis (they did more on later albums). The lyrics were written by Peter Gabriel with a few added by Phil Collins. On the album cover they are presented as a script of a news report or play of the tragic events, as if it was on Play For Today. There is also a small picture of a street scene in a provincial English town, complete with ladder and figure on a window ledge. As other comments indicate, it is the sad story of a business man who has a mental breakdown, apparently involving self mutilation before committing suicide. As I said, 'funny' stuff! The humour comes from the uncaring attitudes of all around him - the British public, the Lord Mayor, and even poor Harold's own mother, who is more bothered about respectability than her son's mental health. A sign of the times (1971) perhaps. Only the police officer seems to care, but even he is characterised as 'Mr Plod', the officer from the Noddy books. The end is as tragic as it is inevitable. Interestingly, the words are sung by Gabriel and Collins together, but Collins' higher pitch dominates. As they were both recorded on the same track, Gabriel's vocals could not be made any louder. |
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| Genesis – Supper's Ready Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Bloody Hell! Madprophet must be right. No one can write that much unless they know exactly what they're talking about. No, really. He's not a geek, he's a mad prophet. | |
| Genesis – Supper's Ready Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Good God! Get a life. | |
| Genesis – Aisle Of Plenty Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| This may be obvious, but for those who wern't alive in England in the 1970s, Safeway, Fine Fair and Tesco were all (and some still are) supermarkets. | |
| Genesis – Firth Of Fifth Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This is one of the great Genesis songs, but the title is obviously a (weak) pun on the Firth of Forth. The music is largely Tony Banks' work, and the lyrics were him and Mike Rutherford, although apparently he later said they were some of the worst lyrics he had ever been involved with! The imagery is all watery. "He" in the second verse is a river, who flows past men's homes, but they don't even notice his beauty or power. A waterfall is the river's "madrigal" - a short song for 2-3 vocals - while an inland sea is "his" greatest achievement - a symphony. Undines were water nymphs, while the Sirens were bird-women who lured sailors to their death. They seem to be inserted somewhat randomly to keep up the watery feel. When the river enters the sea, Neptune (the God of the Sea) has claimed his "soul". The stuff about gods, men and sheep? No idea. Perhaps the suggestion is that, unlike the river which carves its own majestic path to its destiny, men are like sheep - standing uselessly by until someone shows them the way to go? Oh dear, I've gone all pretentious. Sorry... Anyway, Steve Hackett's solo is absolutely brilliant - his best work ever? |
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| The Decemberists – After the Bombs Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Isn't it "portends an early dawn"? "Portends" means a forecast or prediction, or even an omen. | |
| The Decemberists – Annan Water Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| A "wrack" is something that's been destroyed,especially a shipwreck. | |
| R.E.M. – Auctioneer (Another Engine) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Michael Stipe said that he wrote the song at 3 o'clock in the morning on a train trip after splitting up with his girlfriend (who later featured in the video for "The One I Love"). On the next three tours he would preface the song with stories about her. When he looked at the lyrics three months later, he had no idea where they came from. The song clearly has two apparently unrelated themes: 1. The end of a relationship resulting in a train journey 2. An auction But the juxtaposition creates an almost cinematic drama in which two people go their separate ways against a backdrop of a bustling old-time train yard, with goods being auctioned and loaded. |
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| R.E.M. – Oddfellows Local 151 Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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To support some of the comments made above: Peter Buck said that the "Oddfellows" were a social organisation, "just like the Mooses or the Shiners", with lodges all over Athens. He also explained that the song was about the old winos who lived near Michael Stipe. They drank all day and slept in their cars, so the band called them the "Motor Club". Buck remebered that one of them really was known as Pee Wee. The name Oddfellows is used ironically to suggest that this assortmnet of drunks were like a fraternal society. Stipe himself said the song was a debunking of the "Southern folk" myths he had written for "Fables of the Reconstruction" (e.g. Wendell Gee, Old Man Kensey). In other words, the quaint eccentrics of his earlier songs turn out to be nothing more than sad old drunks. |
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| R.E.M. – The One I Love Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Michael Stipe himself said that the song was "violent and awful. But it wasn't directed at any one person." Later he also claimed that he thought it was too brutal and ugly to record (but that didn't stop him singing it every night on the "Green" tour). | |
| R.E.M. – Harborcoat Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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In 1988, Michael Stipe said that he thought this song was a "real simple narrative"! He also called it "violent and brutal" but so folded-in on itself that people would only pick this up as a general gut-feeling. Later he claimed that it was a rewriting of the "Anne Frank Diaries", though I'm not sure if that helps us understand the meaning. Other band members seemed to think that a "harborcoat" was some sort of metaphorical, perhaps emotional, protection, but Peter Buck later admitted that he had no idea what the song was really about. |
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| R.E.M. – I Believe Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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The song was originally called "When I Was Young" and is listed as a track on "Fables of the Reconstruction", but was pulled at the last minute when the band realised it was no good. They then took it apart, kept the good bits and called it "I Believe", which Stipe took from a Mahalia Jackson gospel song. The song is positive and upbeat, as were most of the songs the band were writing at that time (1986). The old cliches the narrator sincerely believes in, like "think of others" and "practice makes perfect", are bolstered by humourous asides about sore throats and old shirts. Ultimately, what does he believe in? "Change" as a positive force in life. Interestingly, one of the best lines is the result of an accidental mis-reading. The first verse originally ended with "What do you do between the HOURS of the day", but when a friend read it as "HORNS" Stipe realised that was a much better image and kept it. |
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| R.E.M. – Maps And Legends Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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In 1985, Stipe said that reading a map is used in this song as a metaphor for reading a person: "There are a lot of people like maps. You look at them, and you can lay them out on a table and read them and run your finger over them. You can find their little stories, their squares and circles...you go down the key and it tells you what the circle means. And then you look at the map and it starts to make sense." He also said (in 1986) that it was "kind of about" Reverend Howard Finster, a baptist minister in Summerville, Georgia (died 2001) who was known for his visionary and folk art (e.g. the cover of "Reckoning"), hence the references to painting. |
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| R.E.M. – Old Man Kensey Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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In 1984 Kensey was a real person who helped the Reverend Howard Finster in Summerville, Georgia (Finster was the cover artist for "Reckoning"). Stipe heard various stories about his odd behaviour, such as kidnapping dogs and holding them for ransom ("wants to be a dog catcher"), and lying in a coffin and then jumping out to scare people. Stipe used Kensey to create a tale about an eccentric old man who has crazy ideas. |
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| R.E.M. – Swan Swan H Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I read that the song was written on the tour bus at 3 o'clock in the morning on the "Reconstruction" tour. Buck came up with what he called "fake Irish music", and Stipe quickly (20 mins) fitted words to it that he lifted from an old (1920s) book he had on post-Civil War slave hymns. It was the last in a series of "Southern folk" songs they wrote in 1984-5 (e.g. Wendell Gee, Good Advices, Green Grow the Rushes, Maps and Legends) because Stipe was going through a nostalgic phase in his lyric writing. |
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