Lyrics for Here Comes Your Man as interpreted by riffic

Here Comes Your Man Lyrics
outside there's a box car waiting
outside the family stew
out by the fire breathing
outside we wait 'til face turns blue
i know the nervous walking
i know the dirty beard hangs
out by the box car waiting
take me away to nowhere plains
there is a wait so long
here comes your man

big shake on the box car moving
big shake to the land that's falling down
is a wind makes a palm stop blowing
a big, big stone fall and break my crown
there is a wait so long
you'll never wait so long
here comes your man
there is a wait so long
you'll never wait so long
here comes your man

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bytat
09-24-2009

Rated 0 
in this context the box car would imply an ice cream van.. young, wrestless kids, nervous walking, waiting untill their faces turn blue, anticipating their ice cream-fix, "waiting for the man".. much like drug addicts.. a quite suitable metaphor.

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TeenageRiot125
09-19-2009

Rated 0 
Atomic Bomb really? Ive always thought this song was about a drug deal.

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ArrrtStarrr
07-04-2009

Rated 0 
I gotta agree with pereubu. Why can't we just believe that, being the genius that he is, Frank Black decided to put several meanings into the one song?

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Andrewmanties
06-07-2009

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i know there is no connection between the two, but this song reminds me of "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.
does anybody else feel the same?

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4S4K3N
08-19-2008

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The ambiguity of the lyrics in Pixies is why I still listen to them; you get something different from at every stage in life. Even when the writer himself has revealed that the song is about the experience of an earthquake and the homeless people who died during the California earthquake ^_^

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igotfakeid
08-09-2008

Rated 0 
"This is a pre-Pixies song that I wrote when I was about 15. It’s about wino’s and hobos travelling on the trains who dies in the California Earthquake. Before earthquakes everything gets very calm, animals stop talking and birds stop chirping and there’s no wind. It’s very ominous.
I’ve been through a few earthquakes actually ‘cos I grew up in California. I was only in one big one in 1971. I was very young and I slept through it. I’ve been awake through lots of small ones at school and at home. It’s very exciting actually, a very comical thing. It’s like the earth is shaking, and what can you do? Nothing."

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Flourophoric
07-13-2008

Rated 0 
Thinking about it now... it's an oddly sinister song.

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Flourophoric
07-13-2008

Rated 0 
Thinking about it now... it's an oddly sinister song.

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uky24
04-28-2008

Rated 0 
I am intrigued by how well so many different fit this song so well. Originally, reading the H Bomb definition with the "Bockscar" and "fatman" connections and the big wind I was convinced. However the closer I look at it the less it makes sense. How does family stew, dirty beard and waiting til face turns blue relate? Clearly the Hobo explanation and earthquake fits the lyrics the closest unless he was deliberately trying to throw us off. And he is quoted to support this meaning. But the Hobo meaning seem so straightforward and the main thing lacking in this meaning is the title itself. Is the earthquake your man, it doesn't seem quite right. I read a third interpretation on youtube that said the song is about a rape of a girl in a boxcar by a relative. If you read it this way it also makes a lot of sense. The nervous walking, the boxcar shaking, the title and chorus all add up. Of course the stone breaking the crown may not fit this one. What an amazing song though to be so simple but so many possible meanings.

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Catalista
03-29-2008

Rated 0 
I didn't relate it to a bombing.
But for me , in my mind it evoked the image of War widow, a woman with the family waiting for the cadaver of her husband coming back from war. to come in the box cars where they transport the coffins.
for me the stone breaking the crown, and the wait so long was about what was going emotionally in the mind of the dead soldier's wife, and widow.
And also the fact that while the husband was at war, the woman was waiting for him to come back, but ultimately he comes back in a box.
But the bombing theory makes sense too.
I love this song anyway .. and it's definetely about anticipation

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gonzgonz
03-09-2008

Rated 0 
Que es un hobo?

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billythecrashsxcker
11-27-2007

Rated 0 
i'm waiting for the man of the 90s

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rkpetersen
04-21-2007

Rated 0 
I'm guessing the real Black Francis knows how to spell 'signed'.
Loser.

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axhacker
03-28-2007

Rated 0 
I'm going to write some more songs with ambiguous lyrics just to have all of you tell me what they're about! (or not about) ;D
It's a cool song, no matter what the meaning is (if I do say so myself). Perhaps the meaning changes, depending on how many drugs and what types you're on when you listen. (I strongly suggest you don't do drugs, though, and just enjoy the song for what it is.)
Sighned,
Black Francis

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futatorius
11-03-2006

Rated 0 
I always picked up the hobo thing, and the sense that he's returned and is looking in the window of his old home before jumping back on another train and heading out. And the earthquake references refer to the place, not necessarily to an earthquake happening at that instant.

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pereubu
10-22-2006

Rated 0 
I strenuously agree with dadasarah. Even if Thompson did not write this awesome song as a statement about hiroshima, it still speaks to that. In light of the purported Black interviews supporting all 3 theories (yes, i know one of these posters is probably lying), knowing that he was a knowledgeable ass dude even at 15, and that he is a diabolically cryptic lyrical genius, i wouldn't be too surprised if Black wrote this as a fusion of a VU rip off about the anxiety of drug dealings, a narrative about a dead hobo, and an allegory of living in Nagasaki before Fat Man dropped. Black Francis seems like the type who might write a song with three paralell manings just to make people scratch their heads. Probably not, but it would be a cool trick.

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pereubu
10-22-2006

Rated 0 
I strenuously agree with dadasarah. Even if Thompson did not write this awesome song as a statement about hiroshima, it still speaks to that. In light of the purported Black interviews supporting all 3 theories (yes, i know one of these posters is probably lying), knowing that he was a knowledgeable ass dude even at 15, and that he is a diabolically cryptic lyrical genius, i wouldn't be too surprised if Black wrote this as a fusion of a VU rip off about the anxiety of drug dealings, a narrative about a dead hobo, and an allegory of living in Nagasaki before Fat Man dropped. Black Francis seems like the type who might write a song with three paralell manings just to make people scratch their heads. Probably not , but it would be a cool trick.

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guitarwolf
10-21-2006

Rated 0 
I think the first guy (or girl) got it right, nice one onafriday.

Anticipation.

Hobos waiting outside a boxcar, waiting for it to leave and take them away to a new place. The moments of stillness when you're waiting for an earthquake to happen. "There is a wait so long" sums it up really.

The chorus is the reconciliation of the anticipation, ie "here's what you've been waiting for" and is probably a nod to the velvet underground.

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plasmaHD
07-06-2006

Rated 0 
what does he mean by "here comes your man" anyway?

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twocent
06-19-2006

Rated 0 
If Black Francis wrote a song about hiroshima, it would sound more like his uptempo ditty "I've got a broken face" something more nihilistic, grotesque and cynical--nothing poignant and heartfelt because he's no Bono and thank fucking-god for that.
If you look up the cover to the single, you'll see a cute bull terrier, not a fucken a-bomb or radiation-sickness casualty. Vaughn Oliver as art director must have had some inkling as to what that fat cherub was warbling about.
15 Yr old charles thompson with his big big love for Lou Reed did a spin on waiting for my man, and that clever boy made the narrator a dog, ha! He made it charmingly upbeat and it's about dead hobos, ha and ha! Musically the song reminds me of velvet underground's Sunday Morning.

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lathyrus
06-17-2006

Rated 0 
thanks for the meaning about a-bomb...makes sense! awesome!!

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Dingbats
06-14-2006

Rated 0 
I never believed the atomic bomb theory, it seems too farfetched. Why is it that people always believe controversial theories even when a more normal analysis fits much better with the lyrics? Yeah, if Black actually said it's about an earthquake, it is indeed so.

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Audaciousmoose
04-17-2006

Rated 0 
Nevermind, Lactosefreeman wrote what I said, it's too bad he hadn't written it before the guy with the whole A-Bomb idea because now people are only reading that one...

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Audaciousmoose
04-17-2006

Rated 0 
Everyone needs to stop saying this song is about WWII. I know, it'd actually be cooler if it was, but in an NME interview Jack Black said:


"This is a pre-Pixies song that I wrote when I was about 15. It's about winos and hobos travelling on the trains, who die in the California Earthquake. Before earthquakes, everything gets very calm—animals stop talking and birds stop chirping and there's no wind. It's very ominous."

Now the lyrics:

"big shake on the box car moving
big shake to the land that's falling down
is a wind makes a palm stop blowing
a big, big stone fall and break my crown
there is a wait so long
you'll never wait so long"

Make sense. A "big shake" to the "box car" the box car being the train cars.

And the "wait" is the wait right before the earthquake when everything's quiet.

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1 Reply
suclid003
02-21-2006

Rated 0 
If this song IS about an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, what the heck is he trying to say about it?

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