Mama Said

It sounds like a son who after loses his mother acts like its no big deal, and then later in life he realizes just how important she was to him. He tells the story out of order for dramatic effect so timeline-wise the story really starts with these lines:

‘Rebel, my new last name Wild blood in my veins Apron strings around my neck The mark that still remains’

‘Cutting the apron strings’ is a saying which means going off and being physically and emotionally independent from your mum, so he may have initially perceived her as a limiting force when he says things like ‘apron strings around my neck’. With this verse he communicates his need to rebel at that point in life and to reject domestic life which was the domain of his mother. He has ‘wild blood’ in his veins and he wanted to get out and be independent. When he says ‘the mark that still remains’ it could mean a few things, either that up until this point he always remembered his mother in the negative light of someone he wanted to escape or alternatively it could mean that this negative relationship that he had with mother when she was dying has scarred him for life.

He then goes on to say that he left home young and that might be wrong but he knows that leaving home after she died isn’t the problem here, it was his relationship with her. I think he puts this line in there about leaving home to say that he was always going to leave and go do big things anyway, he’s not just leaving her specifically.

I’ll come to the chorus later, now we go back to the first verse where he is an adult looking back and he viewing his mother more fondly:

‘Mama, she has taught me well Told me when I was young "Son, your life's an open book Don't close it 'fore it's done"

"The brightest flame burns quickest" That's what I heard her say A son's heart sowed to mother But I must find my way’

Here it looks like he’s realized that she was wise in her own way and it’s only as an adult can he understand that wisdom. The ‘brightest flame’ line is interesting because it shows that he sees that she really did understand him and his extreme creation/destruction tendencies. For those who were wondering there is a line in Blade Runner where they say that ‘a star that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast’ so the ‘brightest flame burns quickest’ is a similar concept, ie being spent up by your lifestyle. I’m not surprised to hear James use fire metaphors after his pyrotechnics accident!

Now the next verse:

‘Mama, now I'm coming home I'm not all you wished of me A mother's love for her son Unspoken, help me be

Yeah, I took your love for granted Not a thing you said to me I need your arms to welcome me But a cold stone's all I see’

So now he’s ready to come back to that relationship with his mum after all the growing that he has done away from her. He’s a successful musician and he wants her to be proud but it sounds like he might not think that he was the best person. He wants her to help him and comfort him, he’s ready for that guidance and love again. However, the sorrow at the heart of the song is that she died. He wants her to hold him in her arms but all he has got to embrace is her tombstone.

Personally I see the verses as being there to tell the story and I see the chorus and bridge as direct expressions of this sorrow:

‘Let my heart go Let your son grow Mama, let my heart go Oh, let this heart be still

Let my heart go Mama, let my heart go You never let my heart go So, let this heart be still’

These chorus lines are far more ambiguous than the verses, so they could mean a lot of things. The pain he feels is pretty clear, in light of the story in the verses I think he’s never been able to escape the pain of losing her, he’s never been able to move on from that pain or be free of that pain. His mother’s got his heart, ie he still feels extraordinary love for her and it pains him. So he seems to be asking to be free of that pain or at least to ‘let this heart be still’, which might mean he wants peace from this emotional turmoil. You could interpret it literally that he wanted her to let him go when he was a teenager but it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the emotion. And the bridge part:

‘Never I ask of you But never I gave But you gave me your emptiness I now take to my grave’

‘Emptiness’ is another ambiguous word, he could be saying a lot of things here. I think not having her has left an emptiness in his life, and that can’t be filled.

It’s a pretty revealing song, we never really saw this side of James before Nothing Else Matters so its great that he started to become comfortable in expressing his deeper emotional stuff! Anyway this was my interpretation, it’s alarmingly long but it think the song has got a lot in it!