This song is clearly about death. I figure it is about someone who had to leave their home and their parents to start their own life and before you know it that persons' parent(s) are dead.
There's no one left to take the lead,
but I tell you and you can see
we're closer now than light years to go.
This is obviously aimed at a sibling. The loss of family members, especially parents, pulls the members that are remaining together. 'No one left to take the lead' refers to the heads of the family passing away.
Michael Stipe once said this:
"Find the River to me has a lot of emotional baggage. It doesn't have that much to do with anything that would make sense to anyone else but me, particularly. I know the place I wrote it. I know the connections I had with it when I wrote it. I know connections that came afterwards, people that died. So yes, I can sing that song... but we've tried and tried to work it into some form which will translate live and for whatever reason we can't seem to play it. It's like a curse."
It has to be written about people who are very close to him.
This song is clearly about death. I figure it is about someone who had to leave their home and their parents to start their own life and before you know it that persons' parent(s) are dead.
There's no one left to take the lead, but I tell you and you can see we're closer now than light years to go.
This is obviously aimed at a sibling. The loss of family members, especially parents, pulls the members that are remaining together. 'No one left to take the lead' refers to the heads of the family passing away.
Michael Stipe once said this:
"Find the River to me has a lot of emotional baggage. It doesn't have that much to do with anything that would make sense to anyone else but me, particularly. I know the place I wrote it. I know the connections I had with it when I wrote it. I know connections that came afterwards, people that died. So yes, I can sing that song... but we've tried and tried to work it into some form which will translate live and for whatever reason we can't seem to play it. It's like a curse."
It has to be written about people who are very close to him.