Lyrics for House Of The Rising Sun as interpreted by Novartza

House Of The Rising Sun Lyrics
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one

My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new blue jeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans

Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun

Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain

Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
---
"The House of the Rising Sun" as written by Eric Victor Burdon, Dp,
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
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whorehouse  brothel  prison  gambling den 


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HubCap1438
04-23-2002

 Rated  0 
the house of the rising sun symbolizes hope or better, a need to accomplish something. it says that if one thing goes wrong in ur life, it can ruin everything else.

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HubCap1438
04-23-2002

 Rated  +2 
oops... the song is actually about a brothel (house of prostitution) in new orleans that had only been known in myths at the time the song was written.

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Willowbear
07-25-2002

 Rated  0 
Yep, this song is about a whore house that actually still exists today, cept it's not a whore house anymore. I hear you can get guided tours of it. Lol.
Besides that fact I love this song, the Animals do an awesome version of it.

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sugarshotsarefun
08-07-2002

 Rated  0 
this is our third song in our marching band show this year...and lady marmalade is out last song i am begining to sense a pattern other than just "a walk down bourbon street" which is the name of the show

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Danielle1987
03-27-2003

 Rated  +2 
Its about a whore house. The guy is talking about how his father went there and got drunk, it was the only time he was happy. He is turning into his father.
"And it's been the ruin of many a poor Boy,
and God I know I'm one. "
He doesn't want to go there, but feels that he will only be happy here. Or that something is calling his name and pulling on him to go there.

"Oh mother, tell your children,
Not to do what I have done.
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the house of the Rising Sun. "
He regrets going and being pulled in to this house to live a life where you are only happy drunk and with whores.So he says mothers don't let your child live my life..

Its a great song.

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TheShill
04-29-2003

 Rated  0 
Now doesn't the House of the Rising Sun sound anything like a Gambling house too? I'm avid poker player and when read the lyrics, "And the only time he'll be satisfied Is when he's on a drunk." I see that he plays poker all the time (maybe for a living) and when that drunk sits down he's a happy man because now he can make a living again. Hence "my father was a gambling man." I don't know for sure just my opinion.

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ed
04-30-2003

 Rated  +1 
this is a bad ass song but it even more bad ass when they play in at the end of casino you know were everybody is getting killed.

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TheMalletMan
06-27-2003

 Rated  0 
This songs melody is actually from a classical/jazz peice called "Channel one suite". The Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps did it as a part of there show in 2002. Check it out. :)

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Muzikman182
06-01-2004

 Rated  -1 
GEEZ guys it is obviously about how a guy commited a crime :grew up in a dyfunctional family: and is going to jail....

And the only time he'll be satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk.


I'm going back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain

Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the house of the Rising Sun


Well I've got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train


PUN: very important the guy was genious who made this

The house of the rising son... refereing to church and the son being jesus rising again

and the house of the rising sun... refers to jail wen he is working in the fields... the sun rises and burn their backs

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slayer877
07-05-2004

 Rated  0 
actually the explanations the others have put up seems better than yours Muz.

When he's on a drunk

Sounds more like when he's rolling a drunk for money at cards

I'm going back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain

The ball and chain is symbolic of the gambling addiction or addiction to all the vices as in brothels they tend to have it all.

Well I've got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train

Could be saying he's a wonder. Could also be about how he's undecided about marking the decision about going back to New Orleans or if he's gonna stay.

The stuff about House of the rising son and house of the rising sun sounds a little unlikely unless the guy who wrote these lyrics was very religious. Although i'd have to lisen to the song again and i can't at the moment

Anyway songs mean a lot to everyone so that was just what i got from reading the lyrics and remembering the songs just now.

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slayer877
07-05-2004

 Rated  0 
P.S.

*wonderer,

Also if it so obvious, why does everyone else see it a different way?

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Searchin4AnimalChin
10-14-2004

 Rated  0 
yeah, it's a brothel... kinda like the song, though.

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Raging_Pyro
10-26-2004

 Rated  0 
Hum, I always thought it was dissing Church, relating it to the whore house AND the jail.
I usually write pages on here, but this is a masterpiece i dont want to destroy with my foul interpretation.
It's funny, cuz according to my analysis, your all partially right. Besises the guy who dares use the word OBVIOUS before handing an OBVIOUSLY inadequat interpretation. But so is mine. Just think about it.

Religion = prison
Church = whorehouse


That's why all those line refer explecitely to jail... anyway, this is another mere mortal's analisys of a legend.
Peace

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BlakeQHatfield
11-02-2004

 Rated  0 
The House of the Rising Sun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The House of the Rising Sun is a United States folk song.

Like many classic folk ballads, the authorship of House of the Rising Sun, sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues", is dubious. Folklorist Alan Lomax, author of the seminal 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, wrote that the melody was taken from a traditional English ballad and the lyrics written by a pair of Kentuckians named Georgia Turner and Bert Martin. Other scholars have proposed different explanations, although Lomax's is generally considered most plausible.

In the early 20th century, the phrase "Rising Sun" may have been used as a euphemism for a brothel or house of prostitution, and it is not known whether or not the house described in the lyrics is an actual or fictitious place.

Various places in New Orleans, Louisiana have been proposed as the inspiration for the song, with varying plausibility. City directories of the late 19th century record a "Rising Sun Hall" in the riverfront of the uptown Carrollton neighborhood, which seems to have been a building owned and used for meetings of a Social Aid & Pleasure Club, commonly rented out for dances and functions. Links to gambling or prostitution, if any, are undocumented for this building.

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mystery
01-09-2005

 Rated  0 
actually, i read that it was originally written from a girl's point of view, some girl that had ended up at a whore house, but then the animals took it up, changed girl to boy, which might have made some of it a bit confusing, but apparently that's when it became best known - when the animals did it, i kinda like the melody though...

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Arcadian
01-10-2005

 Rated  0 
...originally written from a female point of view-reworked by the animals...

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freedomBono
01-15-2005

 Rated  0 
Seriously, I allways thought this was about some king of underground casino or something, not whorehouse.

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1stname
05-01-2005

 Rated  0 
I always thought it was about the famous chimichanga drought of 1932..... guess not.

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SukiDarko
05-19-2005

 Rated  +2 
Back in the early 20s, the name "Rising Sun" was popularly attributed to brothels in our Anglo/American culture. The traditional version of "The House of the Rising Sun" speaks, not of a boy's experience, but of a girl corrupted into a life of ruin.

Your confusion probably starts with the fact that the Animals did not write "The House of the Rising Sun." (If you look at the really small print on their 1966 album, The Best of the Animals, you'll find that it was only arranged by Burdon/Chandler/Price/Steele/Valentine.)

According to folklorist Alan Lomax in his book Our Singing Country (1941), the melody of "The House of the Rising Run" is a traditional English ballad and the lyrics were written by Georgia Turner and Bert Martin (both from Kentucky). The song was first recorded in the 1920s by black bluesman Texas Alexander and later covered by Leadbelly, Charlie Byrd, Roy Acuff, Woody Guthrie, the Weavers, Peter, Paul & Mary, Henry Mancini, Dolly Parton, David Allan Coe, John Fahey, Waylon Jennings, Tim Hardin, Buster Poindexter, Marianne Faithful, Tracy Chapman and Bob Dylan . . . just to name a few.

Here from Lomax's book are the traditional lyrics :

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun.
It's been the ruin of many a poor girl,
and me, O God, for one.

If I had listened what Mamma said,
I'd 'a' been at home today.
Being so young and foolish, poor boy,
let a rambler lead me astray.

Go tell my baby sister
never do like I have done
to shun that house in New Orleans
they call the Rising Sun.

My mother she's a tailor;
she sold those new blue jeans.
My sweetheart, he's a drunkard, Lord, Lord,
drinks down in New Orleans.

The only thing a drunkard needs
is a suitcase and a trunk.
The only time he's satisfied
is when he's on a drunk.

Fills his glasses to the brim,
passes them around
only pleasure he gets out of life
is hoboin' from town to town.

One foot is on the platform
and the other one on the train.
I'm going back to New Orleans
to wear that ball and chain.

Going back to New Orleans,
my race is almost run.
Going back to spend the rest of my days
beneath that Rising Sun.

Did the House of the Rising Sun ever really exist? A guidebook called Offbeat New Orleans asserts that the real House of the Rising Sun was at 826-830 St. Louis St. between 1862 and 1874 and was purportedly named for its madam, Marianne LeSoleil Levant, whose surname translates to "The Rising Sun."

But no one knows for certain. When the Animals made the song popular in the 60s, Eric Burdon was overwhelmed by the theories:

"People would come up to me and say, ''You want to know where the real House of the Rising Sun is?' And I'd say, 'I've heard that one before.' Then I started going along for the ride. I'd go to women's prisons, coke dealers' houses, insane asylums, men's prisons, private parties. They just wanted to get me there."

Then, with a laugh, he adds, "They're trying to build up tourism, and here's this Brit singing about a whorehouse."

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bananaphobia
08-31-2005

 Rated  0 
Well there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know, I'm one
did he grow up in a convent?

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IvyBekket
09-05-2005

 Rated  0 
It's about a brothel, perhaps a predominantly asian one (Rising Sun pertains to Japan), maybe with poker added in. I believe the narrator of the song was raised by his mother, and heard stories of his father, and, as a grown man, he became like his father, and ended up getting busted, because he wore "that ball and chain".

Then again, SukiDarko pretty much nailed it on the head with the truth.

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chaotica0
09-07-2005

 Rated  0 
...wouldn't have thought it was there anymore

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thestamp
10-05-2005

 Rated  0 
I don't think it's so important to know who originally wrote the song or where the building is. There are places where you might get ruined even though they look like nice places with fancy names or icons (e.g. the rising sun or whatever). As we should keep to the lyric, we find no reference to a whore house, but to gambling and being drunk, that's all, and that's what we have to keep in mind to understand why he's going to jail. Just a last thing: the message - oh mothers tell your children not to do what I have done, and ... what Houses of the Rising Sun are there nowadays that the mother's children should not go to?

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thestamp
10-05-2005

 Rated  0 
Just a song about temptations and what we adults should act to our children

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Jeremiah Black
01-14-2006

 Rated  +1 
I think it says "spend your life in sincere misery," not sin and misery. Not that it changes the meaning of the song.

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