This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Gone are the days when the ox fall down,
Take up the yoke and plow the fields around.
Gone are the days when the ladies said' "Please,
Gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me."
[Chorus]
Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down,
And it looks like the old man's getting on.
1929 when he stepped to the bar, drank to the dregs of the whiskey jar.
1930 when the wall caved in, he made his way selling red-eyed gin.
[Chorus]
Delilah Jones was the mother of twins,
Two times over and the rest were sins.
Raised eight boys, only I turned bad,
Didn't get the lickin's that the other ones had.
[Chorus]
Tumble down shack in Big Foot county.
Snowed so hard that the roof caved in.
Delilah Jones went to meet her God,
And the old man never was the same again.
Daddy made whiskey and he made it well.
Cost two dollars and it burned like hell.
I cut hickory just to fire the still,
Drink down a bottle and be ready to kill.
[Chorus]
Gone are the days when the ox fall down,
Take up the yoke and plow the fields around.
Gone are the days when the ladies said' "Please,
Gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me."
Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,
Take up the yoke and plow the fields around.
Gone are the days when the ladies said' "Please,
Gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me."
[Chorus]
Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down,
And it looks like the old man's getting on.
1929 when he stepped to the bar, drank to the dregs of the whiskey jar.
1930 when the wall caved in, he made his way selling red-eyed gin.
[Chorus]
Delilah Jones was the mother of twins,
Two times over and the rest were sins.
Raised eight boys, only I turned bad,
Didn't get the lickin's that the other ones had.
[Chorus]
Tumble down shack in Big Foot county.
Snowed so hard that the roof caved in.
Delilah Jones went to meet her God,
And the old man never was the same again.
Daddy made whiskey and he made it well.
Cost two dollars and it burned like hell.
I cut hickory just to fire the still,
Drink down a bottle and be ready to kill.
[Chorus]
Gone are the days when the ox fall down,
Take up the yoke and plow the fields around.
Gone are the days when the ladies said' "Please,
Gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me."
Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,
Lyrics submitted by itsmyownmind, edited by DelilahJones, Purrsival
Brown-Eyed Woman Lyrics as written by Robert C. Hunter Jerome J. Garcia
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I don't think it's necessarily about sex. It's about wanting to start the day with some love and affection. Maybe a warm cuddle. I'm not alone in interpreting it that way! For example:
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Page
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Yeah, definitely talking about prohibition, bootleggin' and all that. I'm aghast at the lack of passion in the comments about this song. This is a song that reminisces on a distinctly American tale in a bygone era (gone are the days when the ox fall down...). Today a Deere does all that nonsense for ya. Yay progress.
Jack Jones is at the center of the story in this song. He is a simple, hard working man (take up the yoke and plow the fields around). And in this simple context the man gets a little attention from the ladies (... the ladies said please, gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me) and starts a family. Though really, the "gentle Jack Jones won't you come to me line" also speaks to his youth. A youth that evaporated along with the bygone era, and you realize that the old man is moving from this life to the next (and it looks like the old man is getting on). That simpler time is dying with him, all respects....
And so this song becomes a retrospective of this American, early 20th-century everyman's life, told from his son's perspective. And as the son reflects on that life, it is impossible to segregate that life from the time and place in which it was lived. Prohibition, the Depression, America, the infancy of modern technology all play a role.
The beauty of this song is the simplicity of the life it describes. A man tills his land and sews seeds. He is a part of a large family - a necessity, as mortality rates are a bit higher back in the day (Delilah Jones was the mother of twins, two times over and the rest were sins). And a large family serves an agrarian purpose or lifestyle. Delilah enters the tale at this point, apparently a force of her own. She has the brood, half of it out of wedlock. Jones's brown-eyed woman passes when a cabin collapses under the weight of snow in the wilderness, and the song says that part of Jack Jones's essences leaves him that day. His imperfect love for an imperfect woman is that powerful. Plus this drives home the fact that hardship is never far away.
The son is taught the art of bootlegging (I cut hickory just to fire the still, drink down a bottle and be ready to kill). This is another romanticized aspect of Americana. Alcohol is legal today, but it's in all of us Americans to bristle at authority, and we love to do things our own way. A whiskey still is thus a damn fine thing. Some things never change.
The son registers all this as he looks backwards, some time in the future when Jack Jones is on the brink of succumbing to old age, and it impossible to look back on his life without remembering the time that that life spanned, and all that took place in and around it.
Early twentieth-century America is a place that would be largely foreign to us today. Both It's simplicity and our "advancement" are a blessing and a curse. This song, in my opinion, touches on all that and is about more elemental humanism and our agrarian roots. It is a very distinctly American folk song.
I'd love to see affirmation or contention of my assertions. Feel free to comment!!!
@bmwdotde I have recently started singing dead songs for others, solo with my acoustic guitar, and am constantly amazed at what happens once I start to practice and sing a song by myself a few times. Though I know the lyrics and have sung along with the songs for decades, something else happens when I have to sing them alone, I guess I do fall into a storyteller role, without exactly knowing the story when I start.<br /> <br /> Most of my singing is in front of others who are not dead fans and I loved that band, so it is important to me to really try to convey the evocative magic that is in the Hunter/ Garcia legacy and the Dead’s life work. Somehow, for me, learning to play the songs seems to transfer some kind of wisdom/knowledge to me and that is the closest thing to magic I know of.<br /> <br /> Anyhow, today I was learning to play this song, after a few times singing it, the complete story formed out of the many images and evocative feelings that I have always known as separate images. Hunter is so good at painting pictures with words. <br /> <br /> This has happened before with other songs and I am always blown away at how all of a sudden the song comes together to a complete story. When it happens I always come here to see if anyone else hears the story I hear. <br /> <br /> So, in this longwinded answer, yeahh ! this is pretty much what I got today and I am here to affirm completely, one year later, neat-o, happy new year, we are everywhere and all !<br /> <br /> Though I did not make the connection about bristling at authority, love it, agree, and it’s probably another reason so many of us love this song.<br />
@bmwdotde
@bmwdotde
@bmwdotde I concur with the original comment and the first reply. Couldn't of said it any better myself
@bmwdotde You nailed it, brother.
@bmwdotde You nailed it, brother.