Further to my previous comments. This was a lyric written by Lol Tolhurst as his mother was terminally ill. She had lived through the black-outs and aerial bombardments of the Second World War and often used the expression 'All cats are grey' to describe how everything was indistinguishable in the dark. All of these thoughts came back to him as he anticipated her death.
So, with that in mind here are some thoughts on the lyric.
Being in bed amongst the stones is a reference to your house being rubble around you.
The columns are all men begging to crush me refers to the formations (columns) of planes trying to inflict death.
No shapes sail on the dark deep lakes makes reference to how dangerous it was for the merchant navy on the seas.
In the caves would therefore be the air-raid shelters.
The texture coating the skin would presumably be the dust from destroyed buildings.
The single note accompanying death would have been the drone of the planes.
So, this is a song about his mother's imminent death, using recollections of her wartime experiences as a focal point.
Tolhurst later named his son Gray but says that was NOT because of this song.
Further to my previous comments. This was a lyric written by Lol Tolhurst as his mother was terminally ill. She had lived through the black-outs and aerial bombardments of the Second World War and often used the expression 'All cats are grey' to describe how everything was indistinguishable in the dark. All of these thoughts came back to him as he anticipated her death.
So, with that in mind here are some thoughts on the lyric.
Being in bed amongst the stones is a reference to your house being rubble around you.
The columns are all men begging to crush me refers to the formations (columns) of planes trying to inflict death.
No shapes sail on the dark deep lakes makes reference to how dangerous it was for the merchant navy on the seas.
In the caves would therefore be the air-raid shelters.
The texture coating the skin would presumably be the dust from destroyed buildings.
The single note accompanying death would have been the drone of the planes.
So, this is a song about his mother's imminent death, using recollections of her wartime experiences as a focal point.
Tolhurst later named his son Gray but says that was NOT because of this song.