Lyrics for Monkey Gone to Heaven as interpreted by numb

Monkey Gone to Heaven Lyrics
There was a guy
An underwater guy who controlled the sea
Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge
From New York and New Jersey

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

The creature in the sky
Got sucked in a hole now
There's a hole in the sky
And the ground's not cold
And if the ground's not cold
Everything is going to burn
We'll all take turns
I'll get mine, too

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

Rock me, Joe!

If man is 5
If man is 5
If man is 5

Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6

And if the devil is 6
Then God is 7
And God is 7
And God is 7

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

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bongo
05-17-2004

Rated 0 
the 5, 6 7 thing is just a heirarchy. man is beneath the devil and the devil is beneath god. In terms of power or whatever. The numbers might be significant, but to be honest 1, 2 and 3 would work just as well, 7 just happens to rhyme with heeaven.

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Potatoes9000
06-06-2004

Rated 0 
i think deddatlas is right, because i wouldn't put it past frank to do some crazy shit like that

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peripheral
06-10-2004

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Man -- was created on the fifth day of the first "week".
God -- 7 is the biblical number of perfection,
Therefore, the Devil -- 6, as it is one less than 7 and therefore imperfect, but more powerful (one more) than Man (5).

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BuckWilder
06-15-2004

Rated 0 
1 2 and 3 wouldn't work, they aren't historically significant. Like peripheral says, it has biblical references. This is almost like telling everyone that we aren't as good as God. I'm not a big religious fan so that whole half of the message is gone on me. But the second verse is talking about the erosion of the ozone layer. The creature might be God, don't know there. But he's also talking about global warming here too.

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themachine312
06-19-2004

Rated 0 
buckwilder, youre right cuz the lines right after that...talking about how the ground isnt cold, its burning, is def about global warming

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Where.is.my.mind
09-27-2004

Rated 0 
Frank Black's real name is Charles Thompson...

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cor_heaven
10-12-2004

Rated 0 
The whole mani s 5, devil is 6, god is 7...well yes the whole 666 thing makes sense...but in a SPIN interview Thompson (frank black) said that he did 7 because it rhymed with heaven. He couldve been kidding but that and the 666 thing seem most logical especially since he said that/

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beanicka
10-18-2004

Rated 0 
i would just like to respond to something plosion said a really long time ago (on 03-11-2003 @ 02:52:33 pm):
there is no such thing as the hebrew religion. hebrew is a language. it is the language of a religion, though. it is the language of the jews (the religion being judaism)
and now a response to oidimed and peripheral: man was created on the 6th day of creation, not the 5th. animals were created on the 5th.

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oidimed
11-15-2004

Rated 0 
oops. my bad. thanks for the correction, i was too lazy to read my bible

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Popeitstimetogetup
11-26-2004

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the creature in the sky (god)
got sucked in a hole (god manifested as jesus for our sins)
now there's a hole in the sky(god's not home anymore)
and the ground's not cold (I know jesus ascended to heaven but he also died for us so I think it's something like his death kept the physical world warm)
and if the ground's not cold(ie, we're still here)
everything is gonna burn (because we fuck up the enviroment/we're still sinners)
we'll all take turns
i'll get mine, too (we're going to hell)
this monkey's gone to heaven (the monkey's still pure but we're not)
I think....

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pianoguy
12-01-2004

Rated 0 
I agree with the environmental interpretation. Hole in the sky = hole in the ozone layer. The underwater guy and the creature in the sky are either the animals we're killing with our sludge and CO2, or they're representative of old water and sky deities (Poseidon and Zeus, say). They show how we've lost all our reverence for the sea and sky and the world around us. It's like how Nietzche said, "God is dead" - well, he wasn't talking about literal killing, he was talking about a shift in attitude toward the divine. Here, Black Francis is saying we've changed our attitude toward the environment.

"Everything is gonna burn . . . I'll get mine, too" is talking both about environmental disaster and about judgment (hellfire).

5,6,7: what peripheral said. Also, the 6 corresponds to the number of the Beast (antiChrist) - 666. But I kind of see how it could just mean God>Devil>man. Kind of like "Triangle Man beats Person Man" in the They Might Be Giants song "Particle Man."

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Alieno
12-02-2004

Rated 0 
For Shinjiikari:

I think that the analysis of Deddatlas goes too far on assumptions, moreover if we consider that Black Francis not necessarily puts a reference in every verse. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" might be a quirky song with a few images put there as coloured papers on a collage, and not intended to have a conceptual cohesive meaning.
But that's not to say that Deddlatas' analysis is crap. I don't believe in numerology because I think that with numerological procedures you can relate everything to anything, but it was interesting and pedagogical.

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Alieno
12-02-2004

Rated 0 
Sorry. The prior entry was addressed to Lukie, not Shinjiikari.

My apologies.

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Alieno
12-02-2004

Rated 0 
Sorry. The prior entry was addressed to Lukie, not Shinjiikari.

My apologies.

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soundgoround
12-02-2004

Rated 0 
this song is amazing live.

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yowza_bean
12-04-2004

Rated 0 
For a long time, I thought this song was about the death of religion as a way of explaining the world. The "underwater guy who controlled the sea" is clearly the Greek god Neptune. "got killed by 10 mllion pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey" seemed to me to be a metaphor for our modern society taking control of the Earth in such a way that we no longer have any use for superstition, myth and religion to comfort ourselves and explain things. "Hole in the sky" would be the void created by the removal of God, "the creature in the sky," from people's lives. Without any hope for the afterlife, everyone is screwed: "Everyone is gonna burn, we'll all take turns." Then the 5-6-7 verse is just a maniacal kind of mocking of the hierarchy of man, devil and god.

The "monkey" could be the monkey that was on mankind's back for so many years, again, religion. Saying that the monkey is dead by saying it's "gone to heaven" could be another ironic way to mock the idea of religion and afterlife.

But I may be overthinking this. The environmental interpretation makes plenty of sense, too.

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Alieno
12-22-2004

Rated 0 
Well, Yowza Bean, I think that's exactly the point here: to analyze lyrics with no barriers. You're not overthinking, but giving your opinion, and, as for me, I love to read it.

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mammynuns
12-22-2004

Rated 0 
i hate to rain on everyones parade but the line 'monkey gone to heaven' has nothing to do with the rest of the song.

charles HIMSELF said that it was just a working lyric and he never came up with anything better.

sorry.

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lactosefreeman
12-28-2004

Rated 0 
I think the whole:

"if man is 5
then the devil is 6
then god is 7
this monkey's gone to heaven"

thing was put there because "7" and "heaven" rhyme.

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StraightNoChaser
01-01-2005

Rated 0 
I looooove this song. This was the first Pixies song I ever heard and the reason why I checked out their other stuff. It's definitely my favorite.

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rjennar
01-19-2005

Rated 0 
Everyone wants to know the 567 verse here. Looking on the cover, the only numbers appearing are 5, 6, 7 and you guessed it, 13.

I do think that there's a trilogy here between tracks 5, 6 and 7, Here Comes Your Man, Dead, and Monkey Gone to Heaven, as suggested.

Perhaps it deserves its own page.

I also think that the math leading from 7 + 6 = 13 is the logical solution, as suggested, as 7 is the only way to get to that solution, Hey, which seems to be about sex and the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost and such.

Thank you Deddatlas, although I'm unsure of what gave you the numbers to mulitiply. Explain if you can for me, I'm math illiterate. Oh you counted the repetitions. I get it. Clever. Pixies do that numerology thing you know. Offbeat timings and such.

The only else I can contribute is to say that the earth needs a winter or it gets too dry, becomes too susceptible to lightning storms and forest fires. A hole in the ozone layer and a global warming is bad news for winter.

As an aside, do you find it possible that he would sing "then the devil has sex" at least once, maybe as a voice over or under? I'd heard it suggested and hearing it after that, well okay, you'll see.

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caleby
01-25-2005

Rated 0 
Zyklon J, track 5 is Here Comes Your Man, not I Bleed. Deddatlas' thing could work... seems maybe a bit far fetched though. Then again.... who knows? It is a good point about tracks 5,6,7 being about man, the devil and God. And since the album cover seems to portray this song, maybe the number 13 is significant?

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cloud_9_
01-28-2005

Rated 0 
great song

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escape164
01-29-2005

Rated 0 
"if man is five,
then the devil is six,
then god is seven"

right?
ok. then why is six afraid of seven?
cuz seven-eight-nine.

So then who the hell is nine?

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DarkSideOfTheMoon5
01-29-2005

Rated 0 
I think that the 5,6,7 is saying we are even rather from god than the devil because we distory what was givin to us and are selfish to the envirment as explain through out the song."This monkeys gone to heaven" That means soon enough we will kill ourselfs too with pollution.

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